Thread: Advice about an 1892 Winchester

Originally Posted by Hunter_Nick

Brilliant, thanks for all the info. That all makes sense to me. I’ll slug the bore and start piecing it together from there. I’ll be sure to be in touch at some point! There are a number of black powder shooters locally, so I’ll chat to them as well.
@JohnDuxbury what’s your preference in these - smokeless or black powder? The aim is to have some fun, to keep it running and to shoot some game now and again.

I think I enjoyed the black powder more than anything. All of my red deer with .44-40 were black powder. (And they died just as quickly as if I'd shot them with a .270)

But I shot a lot of smokeless as well. Happy with either, but I enjoyed the black powder shooting, and reloading BP is quite different too. Alloys and lube you have to consider. Whether to size cases or not, wads or grease cookies, (I even tried bits of cigarette paper over the primers to tone them down...)

THe most accurate load I had for the .44-40 rifles ( we had three) was a full load of black powder, but on top of a tiny little bit of smokeless as a primer. THis was something I learnt from old books from the early 1900's, and this kind of duplex loading was common for target rifles.
This load with either good cast bullets of a certain alloy - or with jacketed bullets, would shoot 1.0 - 1.5 inch five shot groups with each rifle. This is from old open sighted lever action carbines that were not intended when designed to shoot better than 4 inch groups.