New Adventure in Handloading--32-40 Win

[Coal Creek Griff]

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

[w44wcf]

Coal Creek Griff,

Sounds like a neat vintage Winchester.    Very kind of you to bring it back to life.

Accurate makes a replica of the original .32-40 g.c. bullet.  Dimensions were taken from an original Ideal 321295 mold.
http://www.accuratemolds.com/bullet_detail.php?bullet=32-180B-D.png

I don't own or load for a .32-40 but I have read were .30-30 brass can be used even though it's a bit short. Running it through a .32-40 die will lengthen it. Perhaps .32 Special brass might be a bit better since the case mouth is already .32 caliber.

I may have a small amount of original .32-40 brass. I'll have to check.

w44wcf

[Coal Creek Griff]

Thank you, sir. I'm enjoying this project.

Someone else has offered me 100 bullets and 20 rounds of new brass. That should get us going. I'm going to hold off on the moulds until I see how much my friend decides to shoot it. Hopefully he wants to shoot it a lot because I enjoy casting too.

CC Griff

[Coal Creek Griff]

w44wcf:

How far back did the g.c. design go?  I always thought that the earlier designs were plain based.  Is the Accurate 32-180D (http://www.accuratemolds.com/bullet_detail.php?bullet=32-180D-D.png) also an early design?

CC Griff

[w44wcf]

CC Griff,

The first Ideal GC bullets came out in 1906.  The 32-40 bullet was 1 of 5 introduced that year. The others were: 308284 (now 311284) for the .30-40; 308291 (now 311291) for the .30-30; 321297 for the .32 W.S. and 375296 for the .38-55.

It all started with the 311284. See the story here....
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?4583-The-Gas-Check-100-years-old-in-2006

w44wcf

[Coal Creek Griff]

Thanks for the history lesson in that link.  I appreciate the way you've passed on what you've learned.  I've certainly learned a lot from you.

CC Griff

[cpt dan blodgett]

8 mm cast might be the ticket once you go thru the 100 you have.

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

I'm not sure why I missed this thread, but I do have some experience with the .32-40 but mostly in a Ruger #3 rebarreled for Schuetzen use. That combo turned out to be deadly accurate.

The proper case length would be about 2.12".   .30-30 cases work quite well but only come out to 2.03" if fired formed, and a bit less if manually resized. Using them is OK unless you get really picky about correct headstamped ammo, & such.  There is a wide variation in weight of .30-30 cases which results in varying capacities and neck tension. 

Hodgdon has data, but it looks like modern cast bullet loads for CAS and schuetzen use.  You would have to find an older source for hunting level loads.

[Coal Creek Griff]

Thanks for the input, gents.  I've held off on doing any loading or shooting for this gun until my friend can be there.  I want him to be a part of the process of getting his dad's gun back in action and he's excited to do so.  We're hoping for a day next week when he can come over and we can load up some ammo and shoot the gun.  I'm hoping to get a picture of him shooting it that I can post here.  This gun may not have been shot in 50 years so I'm looking forward to it!

CC Griff

[Coal Creek Griff]

My friend Tom came over yesterday and I spent some time walking him through the handloading process.  He had never done it before and it was fun to take him through.  We loaded up a bunch of fairly light loads for his old rifle, then took it out to shoot.  There are some issues I'll need to work through before the gun will shoot well, but he was thrilled to get it into action.  As I said above, it has been many years since it has been shot.  He inherited it from his father about 20 years ago and he knows he's never shot it.  Tom was all smiles.  I'm attaching a photo of him taking the first shot.  He was all smiles.

CC Griff

[Blackpowder Burn]

That's a great feeling.  I'm glad y'all had a special day. 

[ndnchf]

Very cool Griff - good on ya!

[Coal Creek Griff]

Thanks, gents.  I should mention that I was all smiles that day too.

CC Griff