Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Winchester Collectors Model 54 30 WCF

I figure it’s more likely to be seen here than in classifieds and less likely to get scam replies. I would love to find a shooter grade Model 54 in 30-30. If you have one or find out about one for sale somewhere please let me know.

A 54 in 30-30 with a Lyman or redfield peep just seems like a fun little rifle to take out walking.

I've seen them. Kind of unique. I also saw a cool rifle the other day, almost along the same lines. A walnut stocked 788 in 30-30. It was very clean. Almost looked new. It was a strange rifle though, had target apertures front and rear and a long barrel. Now, that one would be fun as hell to shoot. Good luck with your search. Maybe look at gunsinternational.

BSA mind telling me where you saw that 788 in 30-30? I am interested if you are not.

I may go there again tomorrow and look it over a little better. The last 788 I had, had trigger issues. I bought a rifle there about 2 weeks ago. They are always great to deal with. I'll ask them if they ship firearms. I don't think they do though.

Got to use one for a few years. Though I mounted a steel Lyman receiver sight on it, it just didn't look right. A big sharp lump on the back of the receiver. Went back to the factory flat top 2 bladed barrel sight and did well with it. I competed in local off hand matches with it and won my share. Well-worn it was, but without a doubt a dream to carry. Pointed like a finger. I could easily wrap my hand around the receiver so carrying it was pleasant. I killed an elk and deer with it plus a few smaller critters. I let a man finish off a bison with it. I tried to buy it from the owner but no go.

I shot my F in laws last year. Great rifle and very accurate. Once you get use to the 54s triggers they shoot very good

Thanks BSA!

There is just something about a bolt action chambered for a 30-30 cartridge. Seems like a red headed step child to me, but they are intriguing. I remember seeing an old Mossberg 30-30 bolt action at a shop. I went home to look it up and when I went back, it was gone!!! A model 54 would be cool. Wonder how that cartridge functions in a bolt action? I can see a CRF maybe working better than a push feed. Keechi Kid, if you end up finding one, please post pics!!

Last couple gunshows a guy has 25-35 in one for sale. It’s a legit model 54 25-35 the bad it’s not in the original stock. But barreled action is unmolested. See if he’s at the next show I might grab it this time. According to the record only a handful were made. Finding a stock will be the hard part.

I don’t have one but, what does the fire say a decent 54 in 30-30 with a non factory receiver sight worth?

I have a number of 30-30 lever rifles. They all work well up close with pigs with no recoil. I recognize objectively there is no reason to think a 30-30 performs any better just because you are up close than say my 20” barreled model 70 in 30-06. However, it just seems to hit the right sweet spot at close range of just enough power without being obnoxious. While my 94’s are quick handling, I just like a bolt action better.

So lots of words to say it shouldn’t be the optimal package for anything, but it still sounds like a combo I have to try at least once in this life.

I see 54s in 3030 listed at 1200-1400.

I've got a 54 in 30-W.C.F. and it is a dedicated cast bullet gun. When I got it forty years ago the first thing I did was mount a Unertl target scope. It averages probably 1.5 MOA five shot groups at 100 yards. I've never shot a jacketed bullet through it.

I can assure you that Winchester got it right with this rifle! My 30WCF feeds so smoothly that I have been known to open the bolt to make sure the cartridge was picked up from the magazine. I own both a Krag and a Mannlicher-Schoenauer (famous for their smooth actions) and this M54 is pretty dang close to them. The Lyman 48 and long sight radius with the 24" barrel makes for some fine shooting even considering my 74 yr old eyes.

I have considered selling mine because of my poor vision but, at least to this point, I'm hanging in there with it! I'd love to take at least one deer with it using my home cast PC'ed bullets. No deer offered itself up for sacrifice while I was carrying it this past season.

Cast bullets and a 30-30 bolt do make a nice combo.

That is a really cool rifle! I just bought a 788 30-30, the one I mentioned earlier. It’s set up like a target rifle. There was a bunch of reloading components and die sets, and a couple boxes of factory ammo, scope mounts, rings. Etc, etc. rifle in new contrition, also came with targets shot by original owner. I’m hoping I will be able to shoot it as well as he did!!

I had an older buddy by the name of Stony Miller he was raised on the south end of the Warm Springs Indian reservation got his start in Law enforcement for the tribal police their. Anyhow he took a job with malhuer County sherif department late 89-90 he was down in Jordan valley and he told me about guys showing up to rifle matches in eastern oregon in the 80’s early 90’s with these no frills 788 and beating guys with high end bench rifles. I wonder if the rifle you have was one of these rifles my friend was talking about. I want to say he was down in that country 90-92 time frame maybe earlier.

I wouldn't give up my M54 .30-30 for anything. Mine too has been a strictly cast bullet shooter since I acquired it. Favorite hunting load is 28gr. 3031 + 190 grain soft cast FN bullet, for a chrono'ed 2000fps at the muzzle. With its Lyman 48 it'll do around 1 1/2 MOA, and with the Fecker 16x on it I can realistically expect to knock a 1/2MOA off that, with enough smaller groups mixed in on rare occasions to keep me coming back for more. For as much fun I load a variety of lighter cast bullets with varying powders - the .30-30 is a most versatile cartridge.

They feed very reliably.The magazine follower is shaped a little differently from the standard followers with an uphill angle built into it to stack the rimmed cartridges correctly, there's a spacer block behind the follower to create a magazine box tailored to the shorter cartridge, and the rearward travel of the bolt is shortened to match the .30-30 cartridge length too, but the bolt face is configured much the same as the others as is the extractor claw (in fact I had to replace my extractor because a previous owner had filed on it for some dumb reason, and a new old stock M54 .30-06 extractor works perfectly without altering it). The bolt picks up cartridges out of the magazine flawlessly and the controlled round feed aspect is the same as with its rimless brothers. Note also the barrel breeching is different than on the rimless versions: it's a flat faced breech instead of a coned breech.

Given the choice between comparable quality M54 and 788 .30-30's I would take the M54 in a heartbeat, as good as the 788 is it ain't no Winchester 54.

Cool info John. This rifle doesn't look like it's been shot much. However, he had reloading data and info on the rifle from 1985-1994, and maybe even 2020. I'll start a thread in the hunting rifle forums, where guys can mock/criticize it. I'll probably throw a scope on it to see what it can really do, then after load development, I'll go back to the target sights. The rifle came with a schidt ton of stuff, including a Canjar set trigger. It's a beauty. I'll post pics in a different thread.

Hard to beat a nice M54 in any caliber

Amen, Ted, amen! (And to toll the virtues of a Remington on the Winchester forum is blasphemy in its highest form! )

Except for the crappy triggers.

I’m very fond of M54’s, crappy triggers and all. One must realize that the newest one you’ll find is 87 years old.
Really enjoy shooting vintage guns with old two stage triggers, receiver or open sights and low comb stocks…..a true test of one’s shooting skills.

Maybe I'm just lucky, but every 54 I've owned had a very nice usable trigger, which breaks lightly/cleanly on the second stage of the pull. A lot of guys who missed growing up on 2-stage triggers on Springfields, Mausers, Krags, etc. or who have self-indoctrinated themselves against them, will decry their existence or at best damn them with faint praise. The protocol of taking up the slack of the first stage (put there for a genuine safety precaution), holding it there while fine tuning the sight picture, and then giving it the final squeeze, is so ingrained into my very soul that I don't even think about it. And, no, I have zero problems when switching around on my guns which employ every kind of trigger known to mankind - it's not that hard to think about what you're doing!

Or to NOT think about what you’re doing Gary

I’m sure whatever was popular for shooting in that part of Oregon was probably popular in northern Nevada as well. Those 788’s in the 30-30 were popular on the Rez I remember seeing a few of them. Even a couple 44 mags in 788.

I grew up in a house full of Winchester 52s and 70s, plus a few Remington 37s, so I was indoctrinated from an early age to appreciate the value of a crisp trigger. While two-stage triggers might have been a good idea for military rifles, if they were such good an idea commercial rifles manufacturers would have adopted them.

Despite their crappy two-stage triggers I like the over-all aesthetics of the Savage 1920s and 20/26s, proving that logic goes out the door in the world of rifle looneyism.

I'd really like to find a beat up 54 in 30/30 myself and have it rebarreled with a set of heavy barrels in 38/55, 32/40, 30/30, 25/35 and 219 zipper. Put it in a marksman stock and make a faux target rifle in the rarest calibers they made.

Just found out one of my buddies has a model 54 30-30 he got from his grandpa. He says he loves that rifle. We are going to get together and do some shooting with our bolt action 30-30's. I told him I want to get some pics of both rifles together. When I do, I'll post them here.

That will be interesting to see them together and compare the two.

They may be the only 2 in town, so it will be cool to have them on the same bench. I tried to shoot my rifle yesterday, but it was too damn cold (19 degrees), and the wind was howling and it started snowing on me. After 10 minutes out there, my jacket was covered in snow and my peep sight was plugged. Couldn't even see through it. Had to call it, but went back later. Good luck with your search. I'd imagine they are pretty dang hard to find, but still out there.

Below my Model 54 Carbine in "30 W.C.F. from 1930. Note especially the receiver top without clip guides reflecting a special receiver made solely for this rimmed cartridge model! Note too, technical chambering nomenclature as not "30-30" which Winchester adopted production wide in 1932 as I recall.
The rifle version to my belief is less common and has the era European schnabel stock.
As far as notions of chambering conversion to "like" rounds, I'd just be mindful that there might be receiver guide rail consequences.
This is a great little rifle. As mentioned above I also have a Rem 788 and it's good too. Just a bit of the rougher production quality typical. Glad I own it too!

Best!
John

That is very cool John. So they don't have a hinged floorplate? Thanks for sharing the pics of your rifle.

The 54’s did not have hinged floor plates.

Thanks J. I have never owned one. I have picked them up at gunshows and looked at them, but don't know much about them. I'm looking forward to seeing the one my buddy has. He's wanting to get together and check another one of his "work" rifles out and I think he's anxious to show me his grandpa's 54. So we will have tacticool rifles out and really cool old rifles out. ha ha...

Interesting thread, I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

The stamped bottom metal is my only criticism of the 54 Winchester. But what the hell, it works. (And how many of us have really employed the hinged floor plate on other rifles except maybe to dump the magazine contents at the end of the day of hunting? Short stroking the rounds and ejecting them into my upturned cap has been my protocol in that situation all my life anyway, even with hinged floor plate guns because with them I invariably drop one or all of them on the ground anyway due to frozen fingers.)

Actually, I have another complaint about the 54 - it helped seal the fate of the Springfield M1903 NRA Sporter. The Armory stopped building them when the bolt action hunting rifle market in the late 20's-early 30's was finally satisfied by commercial interests, ie: the Winchester 54 and Remington 30. (The NRA Sporter was the result of the gov't wanting to provide a quality bolt action hunting rifle to the American public. Imagine that!!!! When commercial manufacturers finally got off their butts, the problem was solved and Springfield bowed out.) More's the pity, the '03 NRA Sporter was/is a mighty fine rifle, but so's the 54 and I love 'em both.

Good post gnoahhh. I agree about the floor plate. Not a huge deal to me either, as I grew up with a sporterized m1917. That's actually my favorite rifle to hunt. No hinged floor plate on those either, so you just get used to dealing with them in the appropriate manner. Like you said, short stroke it and eject the cartridges out. You don't have to fully chamber the cartridge. I've seen some guys do that and I shake my head. Definitely no need to do that with a good CRF. All this talk about the model 54 in 30-30 is making me want one. Guaranteed, if I run across one at a good deal, I'm snagging it!! I've been having fun with that dreaded Remington (cough cough) 30-30 bolt action, I just got. Of course we know the 54 has more cool factor going for it though.

Keechi kid, here you go:


Winchester model 54 30WCF

Winchester model 54 30-30

My 54 .30-30 isn't as nice as either of those two. It's steel is definitely showing gray, like its owner, but she's still very clean and presentable and most importantly has a pristine bore and shoots like there's no tomorrow.

I have a really nice 54 in 30-30. Great gun.

Well post some pics..^^^

BSA,

I will today.

Cool RAS. Thanks!

Thoughts/considerations.

1. The improvements in the Model 70 rapidly overshadowed the Model 54. As noted here, the bottom metal was stamped. As also noted the practical "So what?" beyond the feature designed of dumping rounds. A 'convenience' if to manipulate the small floorplate release competently; just that. The trigger was to me, perhaps the most significant improvement in the Model 70 but the 54 was 'competent'.
2. For decades after the 70 intro, the Model 54 struggled to maintain "also ran" on the used market. Disproportionately so, to my mind. Factually a damned nice gun on its own. The earlier models of both the 54 and the Remington Model 30, it's main rival, were of European Schnable Stock designs which weren't ergonomic. Potentates at the NRA complained about both and the in early thirties the so-called "NRA" stock - modern design - emerged in both rifles! The problem to be corrected was actually in the amount of butt stock drop below bore line transforming desirable "more nearly linear" recoil to unduly upward barrel rotation beyond 'reasonable' parameters. "Ergonomics", in other words. The side note that both Models 54 and 30 were great rifles. But the 54 benefitted from a "clean sheet" mid twenties design as the 30 was hobbled to the 1917 US Enfield design. It weighed more and reflected the "action heart of a battle rifle"; think weight and somewhat bulk.
3. The 54 in 30 WCF, was Winchester's bold experiment to compete directly with its own highly successful lever line Models. As noted above, not just simply "another chambering" but with a whole individually designed action for a single chambering! Once 'done deal' into manufacturing, just hanging in there, but I doubt the financial rewards expressed in 30 WCF Models 54 sold, justified the investment.
4. The Model 54 yet exists in the shadow of the Model 70. As an "also ran" of considerably more moderate used price, it competed well within the ranks of practical shooters. The collector ranks really didn't take to it except for uncommon chamberings. Such into the perhaps nineties era. I was buying these in quite nice shape for peanuts through eighties.
5. To my thinking nowadays, much of the value of the 54 is of "Collector specimens" defined by ORIGINAL configuration, great condition and preferably in less common chamberings as sealing the deal. Non-originality is a particular cliff for the 54. The non-original Model 54 or 70 remain 'ostensibly damn good guns where typically scope holes or recoil pads added. But the 70 remains the "modern era 'best in class" of what it represents. The Model 54, simply doesn't. The modified 54 shines where 'price point and utility retained make it a "practical bargain".
6. The above two currently listed rifles for sale reflect the 'pregnant pause' (Shakespearian term suggesting a pivotal fact of considerable implication) AS definitive receiver top photo OMITTED. My bet those guns are D&T, which holes render them "Non Collectors" and moved from likely overpriced even IF original, to 'way overpriced'! Seller 'intent' suggested in combo of pix omitted + "as is" emphasis.

And now having concluded with my own "conspiracy theory" in advertising...
Glass lifted to the Win Mod 54!
Best!
John

The rifle in the gunbroker ad shows the top of the receiver. Not D&T on the rear bridge.

So I found one. Will echo comments in here about how absolutely smooth the feeding is. It’s as smooth as any factory bolt gun I’ve ever felt.

I had it out this afternoon for a ride on the buggy with the family. A 7,4, and 2 year old prevented actually sneaking up on the pigs successfully, but I did spot some and stalked them up into the brush a bit before they totally spooked from all the activity behind me on the buggy. So she didn’t get blooded today, but came close.

I can tell already it will do the job well. Just felt right in the hands creeping up the gully into the brush behind those pigs.

Awesome man!!! Looks like a nice rifle. Thanks for posting the pic. I went out to shoot my new 30-30 today, but it was snowing too hard!!! I only managed to shoot 2 groups with my new 308 model 70. Had to double check some loads in that rifle. I'll be looking forward to seeing more pics of your rifle and maybe a range report.

Congrats guys, on those "recently found Models 54 in the less common 30 WCF! Special congrats to "K" on the several "single digiters" of family! Precious ages reminiscent of a Seventeenth Century poem, from memory as: "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. as life is but afleeting..." Analogous to happy wonder of kids before entering double digit age eras! Parental survivability always 'possible'

***

I particularly enjoy the Win Model 54 and the similar era Rem Model 30 for their virtues and to me relatively minor vices! Just plain functional guns. Same to be said of course of other rifles, but those two as long era "sleeper bargains"! And of course my acquisitions principally in days of old, as both in stratums of "also ran". The Winchester has regained belated credibility in the last decade or so. The Rem descended largely into more obscurity as seeming perhaps displaced by its military origins P17; "milsurp" aura appended.

To me one of the finest Factory stocks, the Super Grade Winchester edition. A great manifestation of the latter Model 54 era! Half century plus of collecting, I've only personally seen a few and only one portending semblance of originality. That one, I bought with rifle appended.! They're pretty uncommon in 54 edition particularly as a pricey species arising in mid-depression era! There were actually quite a few 54 model variations, paralleling somewhat the later Model 70, but the actual variety built and surviving and as original... I've never even view seen most beyond the late David Bichrest's definitive book on the Model 54. '

***

Rant appended! "Super senior" prospective! Nowadays to celebrate real steel and wood guns as era in which I grew up! In elder years, aka "O.F.", moved to appreciate and 'cling to' about anything of "simplicity, durability and dependability"! My guns for me such qualities of central focus as raised to emotional "Teddy Bear and Pacifier" dimensions. Spiriting me away from the 'techie world of the ever "new & improved" 'stuff',

Relief from "N&I" Syndrome, central characteristics nowadays largely defined as "techie" of design & materials. Ads as "Don't be left out!" Unheralded dimensions of "product cost savings & corporate profits" stealthily appended. Personally, N&I also often construed as "fixing the unbroken". Factually 'greater complexity solutions' with other side of coin as building in "more complexity to go wrong"!

So! Have your 'new stuff' and with my best wishes! I'll hang with the couple of dozen type bolt guns, the narrower category of levers and yet narrowest of such, pumps and single shots. Heralding "best" all steel, wood and quality construction. The 'right stuff' central of eras past. Not to 'dis; other tastes per se. But my Sharps falling block single shot, name on barrel reflecting my sentiments. "Old Reliable"

Just my take!
Best!
John

Nice looking rifle, Keechi! Bust'em!

Yeah, that is a nice one Keechi! You did good.

I’m gonna find me something to shoot with it this weekend.