Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Single Shots Stevens 44 .32 Long journey

Last month I posted a pic of a dandy very early Stevens 44 in .32 Long rimfire. Condition out the wazoo, but how to shoot it? .32 rimfire ammo in affordable shooting quantities is nonexistent.



I solved it like this: Since the .32 Long RF cartridge is dimensionally the same as .32 Long Colt centerfire (not .32 Colt New Police) I reckoned that by simply swapping in a centerfire breech block would get me there. (The original RF breech block is tagged and safely stored for posterity.) That's only half the battle, .32 Colt brass is made of unobtanium and a search for some proved fruitless. Sooooo.......I'll make some, say's I.

After several false starts in attempting to swage common .32 S&W Long brass down to .32 Colt dimensions (.020" difference in diameters) by turning/boring simple swage dies in my lathe and squeezing the brass into them via my 5-ton arbor press (problem lies in centering the buggers in the die for the squeeze), I hit upon a simpler solution. By happenstance a .25-20 Single Shot seater die (not .25-20WCF) will swage a .32 S&W case down pretty close to final dimension, then with yet another homemade swaging die (this time threaded to fit in a regular reloading press) the case is spot on in diameter. The last thing to resolve is the belt at the base that is a result of all the squeezing down, and a trip through my desk top Unimat lathe makes short work of that. Done. Thumb seat a soft plain base heeled bullet over a pinch of Bullseye and it's off to the races. Subsequent reloadings done the same way - no dies needed. A real soft ball backyard plinker, she is. Empty beer cans don't stand a chance.

The fixin's: (please ignore the glare from the camera flash)



Left to right: Starline .32 S&W Long case; .25-20 Single Shot seater die for initial squeeze; homemade swaging die for the final squeeze; swaged .32 Long Colt case (note the band of squeezed material at the base); .32 Long Colt case after trimming the squeeze belt in the Unimat; loaded round.

A lot of work to make a couple boxes of brass, but now that it's done I can shoot the thing forever. Brass should be everlasting in nature due to the small powder charges of 1.5 to 2.0 grains of Bullseye. Besides, what's time to a pig?

That is really cool, well done!

Impressive.

Any issues with thickness in the 32 Long brass?

I say that because Starline and Fiocchi are thick walled buggers; I can't remember if you told me what you used.

PPU is thinner walled.

That is one dandy domestic rook rifle!

Add artisanal brass crafter to your resume! Nicely done.

That is quite an impressive project, Gnoahhh.

Cool!

That's an elegant solution that'll keep it shooting for years to come.

A beautiful rifle! Are you casting the bullets?

Very nice Gary, Great project, and giving an old rifle a new life!