Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Nothing Like A Great Article On A Great Gun

Oh, real important stuff.

He will mention something about giving it to Ken Howell...

Shrapnel, I can't believe you don't have a subscription to "Handloader" but since you allowed Mike V. to use your rifle I guess I'll give yoou a pass.

When a LGS went out of business here there was an 1895 in 30/03 and so marked for sale and pretty cheap. I wish to this day I would have figured out a way to buy that one. It would have to be one of the more rare chamberings.

I kind of like them AND the model 71's but have never packed either around in the mountains... yet!

Echos my feelings - never had much interest in them until I bought one. Mine's a 405 (repro, not original) with Providence Tool pattern 21 sight. It gets your attention but shoots and carries great - probably my favorite lever...

Showed up yesterday, right after I called them. Apparently, all this Global Warming has slowed up the mail.

I've always had a hankering for one of those, but never ran into one at the right time ( when I had money). There has been a very nice .25 Remington pump carbine for sale nearby for a year or so, but it's just too hard to feed, and $1250 is a little rich for me. It IS, however, very cool.

I read the article, it is informative. Back in the '80's I bought a few of those Browning reproductions, including an 1895 in .30-06. It became my favorite lever action just because it's practical, ugly as me, and a bit clunky to operate - in fact it sounds like my spine and knees when I stand up - snap, clink, pop. Something about it brings to mind things such as a steam locomotive with a little too much connecting rod slop, a frayed leather drive belt slapping around, and a carriage horse about to throw a shoe. But the thing works, shoots pointed bullets, is accurate enough for what I expect it to do, and is always entertaining. If nothing else, holding it connects me with my father and grandfather, and a time I never knew, in places where adventures were real and men were doing things for the first time. It's a form of time machine, not bad for the price.

Before the 1895 gets beat up too bad, I will have to admit that it is extremely well made and the action cycles and feeds reliably and smooth. I don't see me getting rid of this 40-72 anytime soon...

The 1895 is like the plain girl with the hot body you would see sitting alone in the bar night after night. She always looked kinda interesting but for one reason or another you never got around to chatting her up, and then you here that a buddy did take the plunge with her and discovered she was a wildcat in the sack.

If I run into another 1895 I think I'll ask her out for a cuppa coffee...

shrapnel;

they should proof read more.
I doubt the 405 has a rim thickness of .71,nor does your 40-72 have a rim thickness of .51.

" Now enter Shrapnel ,a friend so nicknamed because some years back he blew up a couple of very valuable firearms in a short period of time."
1. What were these guns?????
2. I hope you have grown out of this practice for this 1895's safety...........
3. Do you have a picture of you and the .40-72 with anything harvested yet? Seems every gun you have you have at least a dead pd in a picture with them ........
4. Judging from what I seen here this weekend at a local gun show ,you must have paid a Princely sum for the .40-72.
5. Mike is lucky to have friends such as yourself to help him procure guns to write about. Thank you for that.

My 1895 405 WCF is always the first gun I grab when I head out the door hunting.

Also a nice .256 Newton article by Terry Wieland in Handloader #295, even if there are errors in it.

Never had a desire for any of those rifles and found the article boring. There, I said it.

I wish the article had more pictures of the rifle and more importantly the action, then how to make brass from a .270..... but being "Handloader" and not "Rifle" I undersdtand why they did this. If Newton was a better business man, things like the .256 and .30 Newton would have taken charge early. The .30 Newton was a magnum type cartridge before it was even a thing to be. It took Winchester and Remington until the 1950s and 1960s to fill in the gaps Newton did in by 1920.
His guns were a little over complicated and probably expensive to manufacture, but in their day were cutting edge..... Nowadays, all the cutting edge guns are just designs made to be cheap to produce.....

Newton was a poor and unlucky businessman. He originally contracted with Mauser to provide large ring actions, but only a few were made before August 1914 and the beginning of "The Great War". Next, he built them in Buffalo on the 1st Model Newton action like the one in Wieland's article. When Newton went bankrupt, the unfinished parts were assembled and sold under the "Meeker" brand. Newton's next attempt was the New Haven built Buffalo Newton, which is a dangerous action and one that I would never fire a round from and would never recommend that anyone fire a Buffalo Newton either. The triggers on the Buffalo Newtons are beyond dangerously unsafe.

I can't say that I knew Bruce Jennings well, but I knew him well enough to visit him and talk Newtons with him a time or two. Another guy who is a true Newton expert is occasional firearms author Jim Foral.

The guns were original Colt SAA in 38-40 and Winchester 1876 in 45-60. I am not the only person to ever blow up a gun, it just seems that I am the only one people keep reminding that it does and did happen.

The 40-72 didn't come cheap and especially in this condition, they get spendy, but it's only money. People that buy cheap guns have never shown me what they bought with all the money they saved by buying cheap guns.

There are several other articles coming with unique guns which I keep buying. He just finished an article on a 23-35 1894 takedown. It will be in the next handloader magazine. Others to follow.

I haven't seen the article, but there should have been a picture of the 1895 and a dead rabbit, something like this with the eyes blanked out...

Your eyes or the rabbit's?

Something like this, I don't know if they got the cigar right in the rabbit's mouth...