Many years ago I had a small collection of Evans rifles. I spent a lot of time and money acquiring all the necessary loading gear to be able to shoot them. I sent a chamber cast from my Evans New Model carbine to Huntington and had custom loading dies made. I found an original mould and cast bullets, but due to its condition, I was not satisfied with the bullets. I bought a number of original cartridges. I pulled bullets from several original cartridges and sent them to Richard Hoch. He made me a nose pour mould that exactly duplicated the original bullets.
The original and Hoch bullets were .419” diameter and around 390gr. I made cases from .30-40 krag brass. After a bit of load development , my NM carbine shot quite well; 2.5” -3” at 50 yards. This is using a .419” bullet in a .427” groove diameter barrel. Yep, that’s not a typo. The bullet is about .008” under groove diameter. That’s the way it was designed and it works using a soft alloy (30:1 or 40:1). I used black powder or pyrodex in my loads. I also experimented with duplex loads, but would not recommend them now. This was all back in the 1980s.
After buying my first Evans, a Transition model carbine and doing a lot of research, I wrote an article about Evans rifles for “The Blackpowder Report” magazine back that appeared around 1985. Geez, I can’t believe its been almost 25 years
![Shocked :o](https://www.cascity.com/forumhall/Smileys/cowboys/shocked.gif)
It is online here:
http://www.leverguns.com/articles/blancard/evans.htmSubsequent to this article, I acquired several more Evans New Models. I ended up using a NM carbine for most of my shooting. Anyway, the point I’m getting to is that I was scrounging around and found a bag with 12 pieces of my homemade Evans NM brass. Also, one dummy round made up using the Hoch bullet, one nice Hoch bullet and one empty original Winchester brand case marked “.44 EV.N.M”.
I no longer have any use for these. But with the renewed interest in these rifles, if someone would like to have them, I’ll I sell the lot for $25.00, shipping included. I’ll also include a copy of my Evans loading notes for the various loads I developed and my instructions for making Evans NM brass. E-mail me offline if interested.
Sorry, but the loading dies and Hoch mold are long gone, along with the rifles I had.