I was disassembling & cleaning a Browning 1885 High Wall BPCR that I’d bought for resale & thought I’d take a photo of the receiver parts.  This is the level of disassembly I perform on the rifles prior to listing for sale to ensure the action is clean & there are no worn or damaged parts.  As you can see they are a bit more complicated than an original Win. High Wall.  Since the BPCR models do not have an ejector system (only extractor) a few more parts would be displayed with non-BPCR models.

Wayne

After disassembling/reassembling a couple hundred 1885s it’s a piece o’cake.

Rather than job justification, with the exception of Browning’s lawyers, I understand the redesign from the original Win. receiver was due to liability concerns.  The B-78 came first around 1973, which incorporated some safety features but was even more complicated than the later 1885 receiver.  The 1885 receiver was introduced in 1985, simplified the B-78 trigger assembly and added another safety feature.  The B-78 hammer can be thumb lowered past the ½ cock step, resulting in the hammer resting against the firing pin.  The redesign reduced the number of trigger assembly parts and added a hammer sear and a hammer sear spring.  In actual operation the M1885 hammer sear is an inertial sear, making it just about impossible for the hammer to be in a fired position (resting against the firing pin) without intentionally firing the rifle.

Wayne

Thanks for showing us your Browning guts.

More than ever, I am of the mind that the best way into a High wall is original Winchester or the best Italians.  That basket of parts is anything but traditional.

Curl

About half the parts in a Colt Sharps.

Aaron

Ridgeline the Ruger's are well beyond being more simplistic and extremely easy to work on by comparison. Sometimes it makes one wonder why the current batch of younger engineers feel the need to over redesign what already has proven to work. Maybe to justify their pay? Bill Ruger to me used the most simplistic and common since approach for the owners to be able to work on what they have purchased.

JLouis

And as Rebel and John (eventually) pointed out, the young engineers grossly over designed the Colt Sharps.

One of the reasons I asked about the Miroku version of the 1885 compared to the Ruger No. 1 is that the schematics for both are shown on Brownells web site and they appear to be similarly complex in terms of number of parts, at least to my untrained eye anyway (the 1885's are shown in the Browning section but are Miroku's).  The Low Wall seems to have fewer parts and be simpler than either the Hi Wall or the No. 1, but of course a complicated looking schematic doesn't necessarily mean it's harder to disassemble/reassemble.  J Louis, it sounds like from your experience the No. 1 is much easier to work with.  I was contemplating either a Low Wall or High Wall in a modern cartridge to play around with.  Maybe I'll look more closely at the No. 1 as well, although the fore-end seems much more robust on the 1885.