Thanks for letting me join the community!
Short:
I have a top eject Model 94, the serial number lands it 1970-1971 production year, it is missing the cartidge guides.
I bought the screws, realized it was missing the guides, and I took it to a gunsmith. He had the rifle for 2 months and finally said he couldn't find the correct guides, he'd tried 4 different sets with either the bolt hole in the wrong location or the thickness was not right. I believe he said one of the sets he tried was an angle eject set.
I can find a few places selling cartridge guides online, but now I don't know if I will have the same problem as the gunsmith of getting a set that does not work.
The Filler Story:
It has the same story as a million other model 94 rifles, it's a bare bones plain jane not worth much Rifle Passed from father to son, and again to son. This one definetly has the common loose trigger too.
It wasn't even grandpa's first model 94 (that 1912 model was passed to his oldest son)
The story gets interesting around 1976, the Teton dam gave way and destroyed most of Eastern Idaho, my Grandpa's ranch out in the middle of no where Sugar City was completely washed away and ripped apart, his tractor was washed into a sink hole and filled back in so just part of the wheel was sticking out (it was still like that in 1998- no point in digging it out). When the waters subsided he returned to a vacant mud hole where his house had been, at that time the only thing he owned was the pick-up he evacutaed in. My dad said he was always a Cowboy, he pulled up his boots and got to work rebuilding. A couple days of rebuilding passed and his horses found their way home- all but one, which was killed in the flood. His sons came to help and that's when someone noticed a bit of wood poking up. It ended up being this Winchester Rifle. It was one of the few things he recovered from the wreckage.
Before the flood, he had to drive the horses over to new greens and he carried this rifle as a tool and probably wore his cowboy hat the whole time treking around the mountains. He was still doing this up until his death, although he had a 4x4 atv when he was too old to ride the horses. The Rifle was in a gun cabinet by the door with a few other rifles, the other rifles, and the cabinet were never found.
I don't know what kind of treatment the Rifle had after the flood, my uncle says some of his step sons tried to clean it with no success, my guess this is when the cartridge guides were lost. My grandpa took the rifle and nailed it to his mantle of the new house and that's where it stayed for a long time. My grandpa died in 1999, no one wanted the old mantle piece, my dad took it down to find it was still fully loaded. We shipped it back to California where we were living then, but we moved to idaho again in 2001, my dad never fired the rifle, this past christmas 2011 I told him I was going with a friend to shoot some guns, he asked if I could take the Model 94 and have it cleaned and looked over. We ended up with a memorable father son moment when he passed the rifle to me.
He also gave me a box of ammo, just as old as the rifle, I cleaned the gun and took it out on christmas I put a round in the chamber- I wasn't sure if I was holding a bomb or not but I worked up enough courage to pull the trigger.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33gUTbI9-Hk
The rifle is really scarred up, chunks of blueing have been scrapped off and 'patina' took it's place, the wooden stalks are pretty chewed up too. When I finally got the magazine screw to turn the cap didn't budge, I pryed the cap off and pulled the spring out and dirt went everywhere and made the whole house smell like a swamp, but the internal parts all cleaned up good, barrel is spotless now everything moves smoothly, but no cartridge guides.
My dad made the leather sling + painting work on it- it was for arrows but the Bow he made eventually snapped and he put the rifle in there.
Shoulder section
-Doyle
and Welcome to the Forum.
Yep, shoulda told ya that the guides go in with the slot angled so it goes from bottom rear to top front? Or, the rounded end goes forward.