Just from my little knothole, I visited the RBL production facility and saw most of the parts in production. As a manufacturing engineer with a couple decades of machined parts focus, I'd say the RBL had a number of design characteristics specifically to facilitate machining and reduce costs. I don't beleive those changes would be palatable to those interested in a "LeFever reproduction" as they would involve changes to appearance and mechanisms. Consequently, the cost to produce and "exact replica" would be much higher. The parts count, setup changes, tool changes, and any hand work necessitated by design all add to cost. The baseline RBL is a bare steel framed gun that is a through hardening steel machined in a pre-hardened condition to eliminate a number of issues and costs. And remember, you could pile the options on a RBL to make it cost almost $5k without any real engraving and still have a stock with checkering done with a wood burning machine.
I do think a Lefever repro could be made, sans engraving & fancy checkering, for about half again more than a upper end RBL was made for
