That can mean a long wait for a Browning you may want if you order it. They order a lot of a particular model, distribute that lot and may not make it again for years but still catalog it. Most of their guns end up at distributors and rarely do they stock any guns themselves. They catalog guns that they don't yet have to sell. They spec the guns they want and the guns can be made in Portugal, Belgium, the USA, and Japan (and on occasion maybe other places?). Firstly, they don't make anything themselves. The BLR can be as accurate as any bolt gun and mine sure is.Ä«rowning does business in an unusual way compared to other gun companies. They stretch and bow making most pure lever guns only relatively accurate. That position allows the thin sides of the Receiver to have to take the pressures of firing the gun. The classic lever gun locks the bolt closed at the back of the bolt with a block of steel that slides vertically in the receiver and into the bottom or back of the bolt. The bolt head rotates into pockets in the front of the receiver just behind the where the barrel screws into the receiver. These are great guns and very accurate for a lever gun but they really are not a lever gun but a bolt gun which happens to be operated by a lever. Is that the actual BLR model you have? Do they even offer the BLR 81 in steel anymore? There is the BLR Lightning which I believe is different and available later than 1990. My BLR 81 in 243 was purchased new in 1990 and it is all steel. If you need to know which one just holler and I'll look through my gunsmithing library and give you the title. If you and your friend decide to do your trigger, there is one of the assembly/disassembly books out there that supposedly tells you exactly how to get the gun back together and timed correctly. So there is another piece in the system with tolerance and looseness which makes a classical trigger movement probably not possible. When the lever is operated the trigger goes with the lever. My impression is no trigger job will be perfect on the BLR as the trigger itself is a moveable link in the system. I did lighten the hammer spring, if memory serves me right, but you may not want to do that on a hunting gun as a hunting trip might be ruined by the gun not hitting the firing pin and the primer hard enough and cause a misfire during the hunt. I have not done a trigger job on mine for that very reason. It is the reassembly that scares everyone off. The actual trigger parts are like any other rifle with a hammer and the actual "trigger Job" is easy. It is easy to get them out of time and then the bolt won't close fully or the lever will not fully seat against the underside of the gun. The reason so few gunsmiths do trigger jobs on BLR's is that the rack and pinion bolt operation are easy to get apart but have to be timed correctly to get the gun back together. I'll let you know how the trigger job comes out, etc. I plan to try handloading some of the available 140-grain bullets and see how those do. Groups with the lighter bullets were almost 50% wider. I found one other surprise: it likes 150 grain ammo better than 130, which struck me as odd in a very light-barreled sporter. I figure if I can manage 1" groups with that nasty factory trigger, I should be able to shrink them considerably with a decent one. I've only heard of two gunsmiths with a good rep for that, and they're both east of the Mississippi. I've told Lloyd that if he can come up with a reasonably-priced way to get a safe trigger with a pull under three pounds with a crisp break, he should be able to survive just on the BLR owners beating a path to his door once the word gets out. I'd guess the pull on mine weighs in around 6 pounds, with noticeable creep. Don't know why Browning put such a horrible trigger pull on an otherwise beautiful rifle, but based on what I've seen online, everybody who's ever shot one has asked the same question, and not a few have traded them off because of it. Now that he's in business, I'm giving it to him to see if he can improve the trigger pull. I haven't tried working up custom loads because I've been waiting for a friend to get his gunsmith shop up and running. I've got a fairly recent-production BLR takedown in 270 Winchester that will shoot very close to MOA with factory ammo. Both rifles can deliver exceptional accuracy, in my experience. In terms of the lockup, it's essentially a bolt action with a very odd bolt handle, much like the old Remington 760 pump action. It's also the only one I've seen that uses that rack & sector system to work the bolt. The BLR is different from every other lever gun I've seen because of that rotating bolt.
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