A friend of mine recently showed up with a Winchester 1894 made in 1905. It is a standard rifle with octagonal barrel and crescent butt plate. The caliber is 32-40 Win. My friend has never shot it. He knew of my interest in old guns and wanted me to see it. The story was that my friend’s father had bought it used in the 1930s for use on his farm. About 15 years ago, long after his father’s death, the rifle came to my friend, along with a full box of “Duke” ammo. My friend didn’t want to shoot that box of ammo because of potential collector’s value. I agreed to try and reload some ammo so my friend could shoot his dad’s old gun.
I noticed that the action was very stiff and had a “gummy” feeling. There is little or no finish on the metal, although it is in good condition. I took it home for a good cleaning. The more I looked, the more cleaning it needed. I ended up having to do a complete disassembly. It looked like someone had used a grease gun to “lube” the gun 50 years ago. It was packed with hard, gummy old grease. The good news was that, overall, that had protected the metal. I only found a couple of minor rust spots in the receiver. The bad news is that it has taken me many hours, mountains of cotton applicators, rolls of paper towels, bed sheets worth of patches and gallons of solvent (this may be a slight exaggeration) to clean it. Every small bit of internal metal needed to be scrubbed, and usually a nylon brush didn’t touch the grease—it took bronze. While it is apart, I’m also cleaning the bore, which has been a copper mine. Everything is clean except for that bore, which is taking forever to clean. As long as the gun is apart, I’m cleaning from the breach. I’m anxious to get the gun back together to see how improved the action feels.
Now down to the reloading part. The bore has good rifling, although it is a bit pitted. It slugged at .320. I’m planning to use cast bullets only and I’m looking at Lyman’s 319247, which seems to have been designed for this caliber. Does anyone have a better suggestion?
As for brass, there doesn’t appear to be any new brass to be had. I’m leaning towards getting some Starline .38-55 brass to get things going. I note that they make two lengths of that caliber. I’m thinking of getting the longer kind and trimming it to fit correctly. To keep costs down, I’m going with Lee dies.
Any other thoughts here?
CC Griff