Cheesy, mine is exactly like that but w/a fixed 8X Lyman. Shot 800 rnds 13gr LG and a mix of 40 Varmageddons and VMax & Fed 205's @ gophers Memorial Day weekend. .
I'm going to order some of those Varmageddons from Shooters Pro Shop and give a try. Using a 36grain (or 35? I don't remember) Hornady "Hornet" soft point with good groups out of it. Dad loaded up some 40 Ballistic Tips and said they were tumbling on him. He swears he tried the VMax as well, but I don't remember buying any. Lil Gun powder, not sure what primer he used.
If I were going to spend the coin I would surely do another falling block single shot but on some sort of a high dollar action w/a good adjustable 1.5 # trigger and hammerless. The only things I don't really like about my WIN. LW are the crap stock (fit, checkering, that god awful huge Schnabel) and the trigger.
My trigger isn't terrible, haven't put a scale to it, but I've been tempted to drop it off at Lee Shaver's (supposedly one of the top 1885 smiths/shooters around), he is 20 miles from me so it would be convenient, and have him go through it.
BTW Cheesy were your factory scope blocks equal height above the center of the bore? Mine were .015" different and I had to shim the front one so the scope and/or barrel wouldn't bend when tightened and string 2 to 3" vert. -Muddy
The bases I bought were Burris labeled, from what I've picked up their the same as the factory/Browning labeled ones. I don't recall a height issue. Hiding it from my wife so dad mounted the scope up and did the load work up, he said the rings I sent with him (standard Leupolds I had leftover from something else) wouldn't tighten down on the bases right. He had a set of rings from a cheap Tasco scope I had bought 20 years ago that worked fine though. I think I'll clean it up with either some Talley's or go all out with Conetrol or something like that.
