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Message: <blockquote data-quote="henschman" data-source="post: 2127957" data-attributes="member: 4235">When they come in, anyone who is a Davidson's distributor will be able to order them.  Dale Spencer at Alex Arms and Instruction offered to sell these to anyone who mentions Appleseed at a discount.  Maybe he would be willing to do a group buy for us.  The Applesed crew first approached Ruger about this, along with Talo, the company that does special edition rifles for them.  They really were the obvious first choice since that is what most people base their LTRs off of.  But Ruger/Talo weren't willing to do any type of click-adjustable sights -- the best they said they could do is some Williams day-glow notch sights in the same place as the factory sights, and which still have to adjust windage with a hammer and punch -- also they weren't willing to sell it with any type of loop sling.  The best they would do is their Ruger branded nylon carry strap.  Their main issue was price point -- they didn't think that they could offer a Ruger LTR with all the features we wanted for a price that people would buy them at.  They said that once you get close to the $400 range, people will just go up to the S&W M&P 22.  They said that to be competitive, it would need to be under $350, which they didn't think they could do it for to our specs.  So basically if we went with Ruger, we would end up with a rifle that is an "LTR in name only," and wouldn't really be very suitable for use at an Appleseed right out of the box, which defeats the whole point.  The reps from Marlin, on the other hand, really "got" the LTR concept and the Appleseed concept, and we were able to quickly agree on the specs and have some demo rifles made up.  It didn't hurt that one of our Appleseed instructors from KY works for Marlin.  As far as price point goes, it doesn't hurt that the base 795 is about $100 cheaper than the 10/22 to begin with, and already includes sling studs.  Mfg. costs on the barrels were lowered by omitting the milling step required to make the dovetail base for the factory rear sight.  They didn't really have to change much to make this edition.  Just attach Tech Sights, engrave "Appleseed LTR" on the side  (it was easy to program their existing machinery, which engraves the S/N, to do this), and include sling swivels, a sling, and an extra mag in the box.  And it will be perfect to use at an Appleseed, right out of the box... which is exactly what we wanted out of this project.SMS, it doesn't have a youth stock, but more of our folks are working with ProMag to develop a collapsible CAR-type stock for the 795 that will work well with youth.  Also, a wood-stocked version that uses the same stock as the Model 60 is a possibility.  They actually had a demo rifle produced in that setup.</blockquote>

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