Home Forums Lever Action Central Lever Actions - General Burris Fastfire II on a Marlin 1894

Got a Burris Fastfire II in the mail last night and mounted it on my 1894 .45 Colt, a limited edition with a 16" barrel. Hope to get out and shoot this weekend to see how the sight does but thought I would give my first impressions.

Got this for a few reasons:
1. Even a scope as light as a Leupold M8 2.5 messes up the handling. Plus, you can't grasp the rifle around the receiver.
2. With a scope you have to mount your head too high. I wanted to get a lower cheek weld.
3. My eyes just can't use a peep sight anymore, even with a firesight front. I wear progressive lenses and to see the front sight I have to hold my head up and look out the bottom of the lens.

It looks like this Fastfire has solved all three problems.

The dot is right about where the bottom edge of a scope tube is. You can't hold your head quite as low as with a peep, but almost as low. It feels pretty good and is definitely a lot lower cheek weld than with the scope. Plus, I can crawl the stock and keep everything sharp. You can actually hold your head even lower, right where you would with a peep and the dot is still visible in the lower part of the view. I really, really like the "eyebox" of this sight.

The Burris mount is made to fit in the rear holes of a 336. If you do that with an 1894 the rear edge of the sight hangs off the back. Actually that is a very viable option as it only hangs about 1/4" and, while it gets in the way of cocking the hammer, you can still do it. Some folks might prefer this. I mounted it in the front two holes and it works just as well for sighting through, plus I can now grasp the rifle around the receiver at the balance point. It gets in the way just a little, but is worlds beyond how you have to grasp the rifle with a scope mounted.

I can see the 4 MOA dot and targets just fine without my eyeglasses on at all. Was discreetly aiming out the front door last night at stop signs and such. Obviously this doesnt have the target definition of a scope but then neither does a peep.

The whole sight is only 2 ounces. What a difference in handling! That little short rifle just feels alive in the hands now. You wouldn't think removing a mere 11 ounces of scope and mount would make that much difference, but it does.

This is my first experience with any red dot sight so this may be old news to a lot of you, but target acquisition is FAST! With 1X magnification you just throw that baby up and that little dot is sitting right where you want it.

Getting long winded so will try to wrap this up.

I really like this sight. My traditional minded brain is still trying to wrap itself around this high tech little gizmo sitting where a scope or peep sight should sit, but it does exactly what I wanted it to do and that's the bottom line.

For you guys that can't shoot a gnat's butt with peep sights like you used to I think this is worth a look. Gonna let it sit and percolate in my mind for awhile but I can definitely see one on my Ruger MK II 5 1/2" pistol.

I use an eotech mounted on the barrel similar to "scout scope" style. I used to have a 2x scope on it but have found this to set up to be even better. The red dot for the longer shots and the outer circle for the quicker shots. Of course it uses AA batteries but so does my flashlight, GPS etc so I always have extras.

PICTURES!!!

Was working on just that.

Got everything ready to go to the range today with the digital camera and woke up to the kind of drizzly, wet snow that is going to pee down incessantly all day. Good day to stay inside by the fireplace with a book.

Might still try to take some in natural light if/when it lightens up.

I have a couple of 1894's and am wanting something on there instead of irons. My 43 yo eyes need some help. I was leaning toward a straight tubed 20mm something scope but you have me thinking about the red dot stuff. I just kinda want to see how it looks.

It hasn't stopped snowing or raining for one second so I figured what the heck. Had hoped to show this in a more natural habitat.

It looks more "natural" to the lines of the carbine to have the sight in the rear two holes but as mentioned before the rear hangs off. I think mounted in the rear holes on a 336 or 1895 (the mounting holes are more forward than they are on this little 1894) where it would sit about even with the end of the receiver it wouldn't look any more obstrusive than the big sight on an Enfield or something.

Sure wanted to get out and shoot today to see what this is really like on 8" paper plates at 200 yards. Been playing with it over the past few days in the back yard, aiming at distant leaves on trees, squirrels and things. This isn't a target shooting sight for small targets at long range as the 4 MOA dot covers 8" at 200 yards, 12" at 300 etc. But I figured what an open sight front bead covers and that is about 12 MOA or 2 feet at 200. On a good target, like a stop sign even 3 blocks away (about 300 yards), you can aim dead center just about as well as you could with a peep sight and a round bullseye at that distance.

It still looks a little weird to me but I'm getting used to it. Lots bigger than a peep sight but obviously not as bulky as a scope. I'm getting presbyopia so near stuff is blurry but far stuff is still okay. What I really like about this is that I can aim again without using my eyeglasses. Just look at your target and that little red dot shows up nice and sharp against it.

I'm liking this so much that even without shooting the rifle I went ahead and ordered another one for my Ruger Mk II 5 1/2" bull barrel.







Don't bother to open the attachments as they are the same pictures shown here.

Where did you order from?

www.midwayusa.com

Enter "burris fastfire" in the search box for a list of the sight and all the different mounts.

The mounts are kind of expensive for what they are. I can't see how they justify charging what they do for something that doesn't seem to take any more machining than one scope mount base, although it probably is a limited demand item so they have to make up in price what they can't make in volume.

I put a Fastfire on my 1894 a couple of months ago. Still haven't gotten out to the range, a couple of hand surgeries have gotten in the way. Anyway, he's my writeup ...

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My Fastfire sight came a few days ago and I finally got everything together to get it mounted.

It's going on a Marlin 1894 in .44 Magnum. The rifle came with a Weaver scope base on it, and I used the picatinny mount that came with the Fastfire to see what it would look like.





I also have a Marlin 336 that has the newer two piece Weaver base. I stuck the Fastfire on it, this would be a serviceable way to mount the sight, but is kind of busy and has that big knob hanging out there on the side.



And it sits up pretty high.

I pulled the Weaver base off the .44, and mounted the Fastfire in the forward location (it would mount at the rear of the receiver, but would overhang and make the hammer hard to acccess).

The Marlin specific base is the thin grey looking piece under the Fastfire sight.



Note how much lower the Fastfire sits in this mount.



The sight comes with a nice little protective cover.



Next step is to get it to the range and see how it works with live ammo.

Jim in Idaho, have you had a chance to tryout the Fastfire 11 on your Marlin? If you have how do you like it now? Thinking about doing the same thing on my 44mag. Have a scope on it now but dont like how it carries the balance is off.

Have had it out to the range twice and I'm liking it just fine. The handling of the rifle is great. Taking almost 3/4 pound off of the top really makes a difference.

I used a 4" black square for a 100 yard sight in and it is easy to center the dot in the square. When I got it all sighted in at 100 the dot appears to sit almost right on top of the hood of the front sight so that should give you an idea of where your head position will be. Since it's a reflex sight your eye doesn't have to line up perfectly, if the dot is on the target you're going to hit it even if it looks off center in the sight window. It's very, very quick to use.

It's not a precision target sight, if you want to hit the second P on a Pepsi can then a scope works better, but then one of the main reasons for this is to get rid of the bulky scope. As long as you just want to hit center on your target this works dandy as far out as the point blank range of your rifle. And once I learned where to hold above it I was whacking the 200 yard ringer pretty regularly.

Probably said this 3 or 4 times talking about these, but if my eyes could still focus well on a front sight I'd prefer a peep. But that is mostly because of a "set in my ways" prejudice against electronic sights being as reliable as a mechanical device. But our soldiers in combat zones seem to find them real useful and reliable enmough for that sort of duty.

Bottom line is I am highly pleased with this Fastfire. It has satisfied all of my expectations and criteria for choosing it.

PS - It should be pretty easy for someone who can do precision drilling to add a third hole to the mounting plate so it could sit in the rear mount holes on the 1894 action and not hang off the back end.

That would probably be the ideal place to put it, but honestly it's not a big deal at all. I'm not having any problems using the sight with it in the front mounting position.

Thanks for the update I see one of these in my future real soon

Same here. I have both an 1894 an an 1895.

The only "improvement" (IMHO!) might be an option for a triangle (or slightly truncated triangle) instead of the 4 MOA dot, similar to the Trijicon. A blunt triangle could preserve the advantage of quick alignment with a little more precision for longer distances.

Stuart

I did in fact order one and put it on my 1894 yesterday. It certainly is light and unobtrusive and very bright even in sunlight. Mine has the Weaver/picatinny mount and yes, it's a tad too high but OK. I may try and make my own mounting plate as the factory ones are overpriced.

The only problem I've noticed is that at night the red dot, although visible, seems to tremble.(I put in a fresh battery, too, in case the factory-supplied one was weak.) Presumably the automatic illumination level control has turned the output down so far that the LED is not stable (?) I have the 1894 set up with the Burris and a Surefire G2 on the mag.tube as we have coyote and occas. black bear problems here and the coyotes esp. are most active at night.

Stuart

Guys how durable do you see the sight being on its own? I used a similiar model made by Dr. Optic on an Ar-15 but it had a protective cage/rollbar around it. Im just thinking of normal bumps and bruises, not expecting it to survive being thrown out of a moving vehicle...

It looks pretty durable but Burris does make a Protector Mount for the FastFire and I think I'd be inclined to use it if I was expecting any rough handling.

Stuart

How do you think it would hold up ina scabbard carry? Also. If you have an side extension on the hammer, does it still interfere?

Went and looked at mine and my honest answer is, I don't know.

The hammer side extenstion is not an issue, it wouldn't interfere at all.

Seems like the sight by itself would be no more vulnerable to knocks and damage than any scope and it does stick out a lot less. It's made to take some serious G-forces since it's regularly used on the slides of semi-auto pistols.

I would worry more about scratching the lens but again, any scope would have that vulnerability as well. It comes with a plastic cover that protects the lens from dust and dirt but it just slips on and off and might be lost out hunting.

For a scabbard that Picatinny protector mount would sprobably provide the most security, but it would make the sight sit up higher.

Here's a pic of the sight in the mount and the sight alone on a rifle.

Thanks Jim.