Adventures with 38/40

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earlmck
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Adventures with 38/40

Post by earlmck »

I want to use my recently-acquired 1873 for a Levergun silhouette shoot this coming week-end so I went out a couple of days ago to practice with the old babe and develop sight settings out to 200 yards. 210 grain gas-check with the "semi-combustible filler" I have posted on here previously.

First shot was hard to extract and when I reefed harder on the lever the cartridge head came off, leaving the decapitated round in the chamber. Back home I got out the little wire with the pick head bent/filed into the end that I use to extract these decapitated rounds from my elderly 25/20 that uses this decapitation thing as a signal to tell me when I have exceeded the life expectancy on my 25/20 brass. The little pick-end on the wire slips in between the end of the case mouth and the end of the chamber and you can get a nice pull to extract the brass from the chamber. Uh-oh -- I can't feel any gap between the end of the case neck and the end of the chamber to get the pick-head in. This case was just too long for the chamber and old earlmck had not bothered to measure cases. Letting cases grow too long with the resulting dramatic increase in chamber pressure is a mistake I have made several times in my reloading career and each time I swear it'll never happen again.

So do us 38/40 and 44/40 shooters have to trim cases? I have been blithely going along thinking these were pistol cartridges and I have never needed to trim my pistol brass (38, 357, 44 mag brass must have dozens of loads on them without trimming). When I get to checking these 38/40 cases though, it looks like a number of them are right up there at a couple or thousandths over listed length, where I'd be figuring on trimming rifle brass back to the "trim-to" length. Which I am going to do with these.

Oh yeah -- I still had a piece of brass clogging up my chamber. No sweat -- you just run a wire-brush in from the muzzle and it'll take it right on out of there, won't it? Wrong. Without some gap for the wires to sproing into between case neck and chamber the wire brush didn't remove the case. To get it out of there I ended up plugging the case mouth with an unsized cast bullet and pouring a bit of molten lead in to fill the case remnant (Yes, this part is kinda' tricky). Let it all cool and I then just let a cleaning rod drop down from the muzzle and the thing came right out.

Maybe I can get back out today and get some sight-settings figured out.
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Sixgun
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Re: Adventures with 38/40

Post by Sixgun »

Earl,
I have never trimmed a 38 wcf or a 44 wcf and I have numerous guns in those calibers and some rifles and handguns made in the black powder days that have logged 4-5 thou. rds. I've used the same 38 wcf. RCBS sizing die since sometime in the middle seventies that was manuf. in 1967.....this one pushes the shoulder back.

98% of my loads are factory equivalents or below...most below around 1200.

After numerous loadings, sometimes 5, sometimes "forever" :D , the cases will split about a 16th." , either at the case mouth or on the shoulder.

I've never been able to detect any excessive headspace in any of my guns...back in the seventies when I was financially forced to buy low end condition guns, I did have a '73 and a '92, both in 44 that would separate cases in anything but bp.

As for brass extraction from the chamber, yea, it's part of the game when dealing with old guns........yep, a brass brush connected from the chamber end and that a quick jerk back and forth will most always push the case back into the action. For sticking ones I simply cut a piece of air hose about 1/2" long and grind it to the I.d.of the case body......insert a screw with a washer and nut through the hole......and turn the nut from the chamber end to expand the air hose, then just pop in back in the chamber. This will require a cleaning rod with a screwdriver tip.----6
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GunnyMack
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Re: Adventures with 38/40

Post by GunnyMack »

Get a piece of cerrosafe( for chamber casting), follow directions as for doing a chamber cast and pour that in to decapitated case, the lower melt temp is a lot easier on your fingers if you spill some!
Another trick I saw was to use a tap, of course this is much easier on smaller cases, have to be real careful to NOT cut thru case into chamber wall( last resort for me)

Also, if ya had to you could put the gun in your freezer over night. Brass and steel contract/expand at different rates( can work on bedding jobs where release agent was over looked), then try the brush trick.
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Old Savage
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Re: Adventures with 38/40

Post by Old Savage »

Interesting tale Earl. Always enjoy Sixgun's posts. Good shooting fellows. Never owned either cartridge.
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