Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Single Shots Low wall in 32-20

Good morning all! Looking for load info for a rifle I just won at auction. It's an early 1900's winchester low wall in 32-20. Supposedly the bore is in shootable condition. Chamber is fine and action is tight. What commercial cast bullets do you prefer? Which powders are you having luck with? I'm looking forward to getting it out shooting. Thanks for any info you can provide. DCL

The Lyman Cast Bullet Manual is your friend. Can't help you with store-bought cast bullets, I make my own. I use typical fast burning pistol powders for my .32-20 shooting - stuff like Bullseye, Unique, 231, etc. Don't try to hotrod it too much, the brass is fairly thin and case life suffers. The Winchester is a whole lot stronger than a revolver but the brass is still the weak link. A .32-20 rifle is almost as much fun as kicking Joe Biden in the butt would be!

Important to note: first thing to do is determine the gun's throat diameter and select a lead bullet that matches it, groove diameter be darned. Vintage chambers tend toward larger throat diameters than new stuff today has. Don't be surprised if it has a .314-.315 throat as opposed to the modern standard of .312 (and yes those measly couple thousandths will have a direct bearing on accuracy). That leads to another issue - reloading die dimensions. Modern die sets are geared toward use with .312" jacketed bullets in SAAMI chambers. The neck expanders are designed to create a good grip on the smaller diameter jacketed stuff which results in a death grip (and bulged ammo) on a larger diameter cast bullet (not to mention the tight squeeze possibly - probably - altering the diameter of the lead bullet in the process). You only need a grip of a couple thousandths of an inch on a soft cast lead bullet (plus probably a crimp - but that's not really necessary for in a single shot rifle), ergo a .312" expander is called for in this instance not the .308" expander that's standard in new die sets. Not a big deal, RCBS and Lyman make proprietary cast bullet neck expanders.

Small pistol primers are all you'll really need here.

Hope this helps a bit.

Thank you for the reply. I was hoping it would run on the powders you listed. I have most of those. I'll see how the throat measures up. If it means casting bullets. It's not the end of the world. Looking forward to getting the rifle running. Thanks again for the help. Dcl

Rimrock bullets and Meister Cast both make lead and lead gas checked bullets suitable for the 32/20. For powders I’ve used Unique and Herc 2400. I’ve always used small rifle primers but small pistol primers work too.

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm having a great time with the low wall. 115 cast and unique are grouping well. 2400 powder really flattens out the trajectory and still groups nicely.

I use light load of 4227 7CC with Lee powder measure. Get GC bullets from John Stonecipher in Porter TX, found him on Gun Broker, Have a Winchester 1873 and 1892 in 32-20 and a Colt SAA. Only shoot paper--too old to hunt..

I shoot a few old antique rifles in .32-20. A Ballard, Rolling Block #1 and #2, and a Hepburn. Love the .32-20 cartridge! I have always bought .313" 113 gr. cast lead bullets from Laser Cast and buy them in bulk boxes of 500 bullets. My load for most is a 5.0 gr. of Unique, which is about 1350 fps. If you wanted something milder you can start around 3.5 grs. and work up to best accuracy from there.