Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting Resurrection

This rifle/cartridge project came to me last Thursday. It was a rifle from a friends recently passed father; his Dad had numerous guns and he didn't know the story if the gun was a "family" gun or just another acquisition. He did know his Dad cottoned to it but mentioned it had a "headspace issue", so it was never fired much, if at all. Its a Winchester 1895 flatside made in 1896 (Thanks Pappy).

I got the dies, some cases and loaded ammunition in November, but the rifle had to wait for another long trip back home for him.

The ammunition was correct headstamp Bertram 38-72, the powder charge was labelled and looked like 4895 and the weight matched a referenced load in Ken Waters' Pet Loads. The bullet appeared to be the old, defunct jacketed soft point Barnes with the core cutoff hole in the base, 255's.

Oddly, every case from this lot had been neck turned. Hmmm. Plus I didn't trust them AND they were loaded with light for caliber jacketed bullets. Yuck.

I scored some new Bertrams from Grafs, albeit 40-72's, but if there was a chamber clearance issue those would tell me once I seated a nice fat cast bullet.
I made up some heat treated wheelweight, 270gr. .378 LBT GC Flatnoses, trued them up nose first sizing with the gas checks in the die last and waited for the rifle.

The rifle, showing up last Thursday, was in great shape visually and the borescope revealed some minor pitting at the breech end but excellent past that area.
I re-sized a 40-72, trued the neck with my .375 HH carbide button, VLD chamfered the mouth and seated the bullet until I found the rifling kiss.
Perfect! The bullet, case and even the crimp groove all matched up (if we decided to crimp). We didn't; more on that later. There were no chambering surprises, no issues in the neck area with the proper brass and proper sized cast bullets.

The load was a smokeless "nitro for black" conversion I have used that Ross Seyfried shared with the world in the pages of Handloader when he was there. He used it when loading for British Express BP cartridges, which ironically the 38-72 is an American version of. Its 40-46% of the blackpowder charge for the correct bullet weight with IMR 4198 plus a measured charge of Dacron filler to occupy the airspace.

To SAFELY do this, as Ross has warned, FILL THE AIRSPACE. Don't use a tuft to hold the powder back; that can create a secondary projectile, treat it as "part" of the bullet.
In this cartridge I used 32grs. 4198 and 8 grains of Dacron or thereabouts to fill the airspace. It also comes in handy if you muck up the land kiss too much the bullet pulls out; no powder in everything, going everywhere. It also negates the need to crimp

Yes, black powder will work and Mike Veturino's "Lever Guns of the Old West" has BP loads and XMP5744 loads as well. I kept it simple in case my friend wants to load for himself and not use BP.

The moment of truth was a day later, on Friday. I had kissed the lands for two reasons: to make sure the gun went bang every time (remember the headspace lore) and to have our cast load not mashing and mangling off center and shooting poorly.
It shot great. All 25 round we fired were accurate, within blackpowder limits and every one went bang. We took turns firing it offhand at 50 yards and had a nice palm sized splash at the upper left hand of the steel.

Now we had ample cases fired and could now headspace off of the shoulder AND a bullet if need be.


What we eventually discovered with the unloaded, unfired cases that were neck turned and after looking through a loupe, is that someone also turned the rims thin on those cases.
Measuring them against the new 40-82 cases, yep. Thinned enough to not have positive headspace.

I'm going to get them all loaded and seated to fireform off the bullet, then partial full length to headspace off of the shoulder so they won't go to waste.

Pretty cool gun; glad it could come back from the gun rack. Right now he has 50 loaded rounds with more to come.

Enjoyed the read.

Thanks my friend.

Very cool.

Cool deal. That is a beautiful old 95, lots of finish left on the metal.

A nicely thought out approach to resurrecting a vintage rifle. Well played.

I'm still mystified as to why the neck turning and rim thinning. Out of spec Bertram brass that was corrected by a previous handloader perhaps? Too thick rims originally that they managed to over-thin? Wouldn't surprise me given the poor general quality of Bertram brass, at least the stuff I've crossed paths with.

The neck turning I kinda understand; you are correct, the Bertram stuff isn't Alpha or Lapua for sure when it comes to even neck walls. New cases look oblong when loaded, but the fireformed, partial re-sized stuff seemed like it ironed a bit out.
I guess I never rolled them across a runout gauge!

The only explanation I can come up with on the rims is that at one time there was no component brass and .405 cases were used, in which the rim DIAMETER was instructed to be turned down from .540 something to .519.

Perhaps a fellow thought down meant as the case sat upright on the table, "looking" at him, then put a .0 in the .519 or the .540? Who the heck knows.
But it is visibly thinner and looks squared on the upper part of the rim. "Fresh" looking, like the turned necks.