38-40

[Lewie Girardeau]

          OK Guys,


                I have a stupid question.

          Is the 38-40 a 38 cal or a 40 cal ??

           I found some bullets but it said they were .401 dia. I would think something listed as a 38 anything would be .358" What am I missing??

          And also how would it stack up against the 38 spl. with black powder loads?
          Can the cylinders of a .357  MAG be bored out to take the lower powered 38-40? Or is it actually a 40 cal round?
          I know that more and more guns are being chambered for it and it is getting very popular with CAS folks but to me it is confusing.


                                                                     Thanks,

                                                                        "Louie Girardeau"

                                                                            Rob Wright

[Bangor Dan]

The .401 bullets are correct for 38-40\38 wcf.

[Dr. Bob]

38 is the caliber [more or less] and 40 is grains of black powder.  38WCF [Winchester Center Fire]

[Four-Eyed Buck]

The 38-40 is actually a 40 caliber round, .401 to .403. You'd have to talk with the guys that ran Winchester back then to find out why they decided to call it a 38.

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

the 38-40 (38WCF) was created by Winchester as the second chambering for the Model 1873 rifle in 1879. Prior to that time the 1873 was only chambered in 44-40 (44WCF). At least with the Model 1873 rifle, sales never took off with the 38-40 chambering, most shooters back then preferred the heavier bullet of the 44-40. Colt first chambered the SAA for 38-40 in 1884. Sales of the SAA chambered for 38-40 were pretty good, it was the 3rd most popular 1st Generation chambering, after 45 Colt and 44-40. Personally, I have always suspected that old Oliver Winchester was just trying to drum up some new sales for the 1873 when he told his engineers to come up with the 38-40. Sales for the 1873 chambered in 44-40 had slacked off for a while. Winchester was a master businessman and knew how to milk the last dollar out of a customer. Some customers will always want the latest and greatest, even if it isn't much different than what they already have. Some wags have said that the 38-40 reversed the conventional nomenclature of caliber followed by powder charge, but I don't buy that one at all. I suspect old Oliver just thought 38-40 sounded better than 40-40.

The 38-40 round is really nothing more than the 44-40 necked down further to 40 caliber.

Here are the dimensions for the 44-40:



Here is the 38-40



Loaded with Black Powder, the 38-40 has a much greater powder capacity than the 38 Special and will far out perform it. As far as boring out a 357 Mag cylinder, it depends. The cartridge is just about as fat as a 45 Colt down at the base, so you would need a pretty good sized cylinder, one that is big enough for 45 Colt. And you would need a .401 barrel.

[August]

The 38-40 is a .401 caliber round -- or, to put it another way, it is 10mm.

After you play around with the 44-40 and 38-40 for a while, you start to wonder if the 1873 was initially designed around the 38-40 and not brought to market that way because of the precedent of the Henry having been a .44 caliber gun.  Winchester might have had the european market in mind from the beginning with the 10mm round, to say nothing of potential military contracts on the continent.

It was named 38-40 to reduce the occurrence of people buying the wrong ammunition.  Calling it the 40-40 would have increased the likelihood of folks buying 44-40 ammunition for their gun and causing catastrophic failures.  It is interesting how much confusion the .357 sig has caused to people buying 357 magnum ammunition.  So, the name "38-40" was used to help eliminate confusion.  The numbers have nothing much to do with loading and nothing to do with caliber.  It should have been called the 10mm-40, but the country is still having a lot of problems with the metric system 130 years later, so that idea didn't get very far.

The increased bottle neck seals better than the 44-40 and it runs through the gun more dependably -- all this because of the greater angle to the neck.  One gets the sense that Winchester designed the gun around the 38-40 to begin with.

The advantage of the 38-40 over the .38 special is that it carries a much heavier bullet.  While the velocity of all black powder rounds is practically the same, a heavier bullet will have more inertia and resultant penetration.

Not only is the barrel a problem in converting a revolver to this caliber, the rim diameter is larger than a .45 Colt, making conversions of the new roooger pistols impossible -- unless someone wants to make a cylinder with five holes in it.

Around this part of the country, the 38 W.C.F. is the most popular round among CAS shooters who use black powder.  It holds this distinction because of it is easier to load than the 44W.C.F., has available bullet weights that make pistols more manageable than does the .44-40, it runs through the guns with great ease, and it leaves the action on an 1873 rifle completely free of soot and fouling because it seals the chamber completely.

When you shoot the 38-40, you never have to say you're sorry on the matter of period correctness in pistols or rifle.  It is also an extremely accurate round when guns are set up properly and loads are matched to guns.

The one down side to the cartridge is that dimensions of the cartridge varied widely over the years and components, loading equipment, and bullets often have to be modified to get an harmonious result from modern guns.  But, that's why this forum exists!

[PABLO DEL NORTE]

   OK GUYS, I GOTTA DUMBER QUESTION!  WHAT IS A .38-55??  IS IT A REALLY A .38 OR SAME AS ABOVE??

[Buck Stinson]

As stated above, the .38-40 or .38WCF is actually .401 to.403 bore size, depending on the rifle or pistol you're shooting.  Most 1873 Winchesters that I've owned were .403 and most of the 1892 Winchesters I've owned were .401.  The same bullet size will shoot just fine in either model.  I first read this in an article almost 40 years ago and then George Madis mentioned it again in a conversation we had a a gun show one time.  Winchester was always very much in tune with marketing their product.  They had the .44WCF, which was very popular as were all of the .44 caliber cartridges of the period.  They wanted something a little lighter and in the .38 caliber range, because it too was a very popular bore size of the period.  However, in order to keep within a certain bullet weight range and have a cartridge that still had power enough for short to medium range kills on small game, the best choice they could come up with was the .40 caliber bullet of 180 grain weight, with 40 grains of powder.  This cartridge would work in the 1873 Winchester without any mechanical alterations, what-so-ever.  It would not be necessary to design a new firearm around this new cartridge.  The only problem Winchester had was in caliber designation.  George's theory and the early article I had read years before, both stated that Winchester felt that  the caliber .40 WCF or .40-40 sounded strange and for that reason it would not sell well.  Instead, they would call it the .38 WCF and later, .38-40.  Winchester had the ".38" caliber they were looking for.  Customers seems to be impressed, both with the name of the caliber and the performance of the cartridge, because it turned out to be one of the most popular cartridges ever developed by Winchester.  It was still available in the 1873 model until production ended in 1924 and it continued to be a popular choice in the 1892 Winchester until production ended on that model in 1938.  As a side note, if you have a 1st generation Colt SA in .38-40, take the ejector rod housing off and look at the bottom of the barrel next to the frame.  It will probably be stamped with a very small "41".  Both the .41 Long Colt and the .38 WCF in a Colt single action, have the same bore size and the same barrel was used in most cases, for both calibers. 

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

Buck;  That is interesting about Colt's "41" barrel.  I've just had a new .41 Long Colt cylinder added to my 1896 made .38 WCF Frontier Colt.  Same barrel for two calibres!

[Short Knife Johnson]

  OK GUYS, I GOTTA DUMBER QUESTION!  WHAT IS A .38-55??  IS IT A REALLY A .38 OR SAME AS ABOVE??

.38-55 bullet nominal diameters are .375" to .376".  A Marlin 1893 I had sent away for a liner due to Rotten Bore Syndrome slugged out at .381".  I'm getting it back with a .375" groove diameter. 

Don't worry about suffering from "Calibre Confusion."  It takes a few years of study to become aquainted with the finer details.  And I find confusing chamberings are not really confined to any particular era. 

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy Again

The 38-55 is a rifle length cartridge. It is too long for a revolver. It is also too long for rifles with relatively short actions like the Winchester Model 1873 or 1892. It can be chambered in the Winchester Model 94.

In this photo, the cartridges from left to right are 38-55, 25-35, and 30-30

[Greeenriver]

Not really relivent to the discussion, but the single most dangerus man I ever knowed in my life was an old rancher, (In his 70's back then), in New mexico that carried the same Colt SAA 4&3/4 in most of his life. Wore it stuck in his belt loaded with 6 rounds and the hammer down between the cartridge rims. Blued, CCH, with old yellow ivory grips. He'd carried the same pistol every day for most of his life, only one he owned, and NOBODY, I mean NOBODY, gave him any trouble. One of the nicest men I ever knew, but he had growed up in the southwest, and had used that pistol in more than one "social encounter" in his life. That was back in the early 70's, and he had gotten the old Colt from his dad as a kid. His dad had used it from when it was new, and it had been blooded long before  the old man gave it to his kid.

It was a first gen. Black Powder frame Colt, mostly turned brown over the years, but still locked up tight and shot straight.
When I knowed him, old man carried it in his belt with the loading gate open and 6 rds in it, and had carried it that way all his life. Always lety the hammer completly down so the fireing pin rested between tow of the cartridge rims.That was how his dad taught him to cary it. Knowed him several years, and never seean him without that old Colt on him.


Just a little tidbit of memory from my mispent youth.

Greeenriver