Sixty years makes a difference: when I first became interested in SS rifles, lowalls were beneath contempt. They were scorned. In the heyday of experimenters like Hervey Lovell (who for a while owned the fabulous Maharaja boattail Duesenberg), MS Risley and Lyle Kilbourn, only the hiwall and the Borchardt, and perhaps the 44 1/2, were worth putting a new varmint barrel onto. Ballards were for small bore target shooters who thought they could improve on the Winchester 52 or Remington 37; they discovered, after spending lots of money, that they couldn't. An occasional Hepburn was allowed to sneak in as a varmint rifle, but the odd tang angle was against them. Lowalls were weak, perhaps suitable for Hornet, but that was their limit. And they did not breech up well enough to be a really first class rimfire. When I went down to Washington to work for the Labor Department in 1955, plain hiwalls were in the pawnshops for $30-35, lowalls were $20. That mindset has stuck with me, I have never owned a lowall and it is too late for me to start now.
