Bullshops excellent NEW adventure with the 25-20 wcf

It has recently been my pleasure to become the new care taker of a fine old model 92 Winchester rifle chambered for the delightful little 25-20 wcf cartridge.  This is not my first 25-20 but this rifle has proven an adventure all its own.

This is a very nice clean well kept rifle mostly all original. Its bore at first look appeared to be very clean and in good condition but looks can be deceiving.  As is usually my procedure before starting to develop cast bullet loads in rifles that may have used mostly jacketed bullets I like to give the bore a thorough cleaning to remove all jacket fouling.  Starting with a good soaking of powder solvent this barrel after several very dirty cloth patches revealed that yes indeed there was red copper fouling under that burnt powder.

The next step was to dissolve that copper with Sweets 7.62 copper solvent.  Using ten minute intervals of soaking, scrubbing, and patching and after the patches stopped coming out green I thought I was done, NOT!!!  Yes the copper was gone but now with the copper removed revealed a layer of white fouling that I think was put there from very early cupronickle jacketed ammo.  This rifle dates to about 1912 so that is what would have been available when the rifle was new. 

Before starting any load development I did try shooting the rifle with some cast ammo I had on hand since the bore looked good and the ammo was available. The grouping was fair but not good and less than I had hoped for. It seemed like it wanted to shoot as some of the shots would cluster nicely but not all.  For that reason I decided a good cleaning was in order before load development started.

This was not my first encounter with this white fouling. I found the same fouling in my 1898 Springfield 30-40 Krag rifle and attributed it to the same source from the same time period, cupronickle jackets.  This fouling is a real bear to remove since we have no solvents that dissolve Nickle. The trick to getting it out is to soak the barrel for long enough intervals with a good penetrating oil so that the oil gets under the fouling and loosens the bond between the fouling and the barrel steel. What I usually do is to soak the barrel with a mix of Kroil and Marvel Mystery oil for a few days then load a low pressure round with a soft cast bullet with no bullet lube. Fire that one shot then repeat the process until the white fouling is gone.  That was pretty much the process used in addition to some scrubbing with a bronze bristle brush.

All the effort seemed worth the while because grouping immediately became better and consistent.  My intention was to develop two loads for this rifle.  I wanted a hot load that would whack coyotes with authority and also a very light load on the order of a 25 caliber magnum air rifle. 

I had hoped the bullets would be the 80gn Ranch Dog FN-GC for the hot load and  and our custom 65gn FN-PB for the light load.  Well those didn't work out.  The Ranch Dog bullet shoots extremely well but because of its blunt ogive when crimped into the crimp groove it engraves heavily on chambering which requires more pressure on the lever than I regularly want to apply.  Even so it was so far the most accurate.

On the light end this rifle just refuses to like the very short bearing surface of our 65gn plain base bullet throwing shots other than where they are intended.  I like the 65gn bullet but the rifle does not.

So with those failures  moving on to other choices we went to our custom 85gn dual crimp gas check design.  A few different powders were tried in the magnum handgun burn rate range but as always with other 25-20 rifles the 680 powders weather Winchester, or Accurate Arms, or surplus WC worked best for magnum loads.  The universal load here is 13gn of 680 with standard bullet weight in any of the cartridges based on the 32-20 case being the 218 Bee, 25-20, and 32-20.  So it was for our magnum load we settled on 13gn WC-680 with the 85gn custom dual crimp gas checked bullet. This is a hard hitting load that will absolutely flatten coyotes.  At 100 yards it sinks quite a crater in our steel gong.  

So with the magnum load settled on I thought perhaps the same bullet without the gas check worth a try. In our previous testing of bullets designed for gas checks but without the check for low pressure loads we got very good results but not so this time.  This rifle wanted nothing to do with that bullet without a gas check and just refused to shoot it well with the usual line up of faster burning powders.    With that the next move was to our 80gn FN-PB. The final load with this bullet was with 3.7gn of IMR- SR 4756 powder with very respectable 50 yard grouping.  This will be a close range load for taking small game for the pot so 50 yards is all we need and most shots will be well under that.
So now as the new steward of an old rifle we have loads that will be kind to the rifle and keep it shooting a long time until someone else takes my place.  With the two loads developed this fine old rifle is ready to take on any conceivable job that can be asked of it and then some.   

The and then some I proved with another 25-20 rifle one rainy Alaska day when I grabbed it and headed out to hunt rabbits.  After a rain rabbits like to come out of the wet brush to dry off so evenings after a rain are good rabbit hunting.  On this little walk about I happened to spot a black bear out in the open feeding on oat sprouts.  I looked at the bear and then looked at the 25-20 rifle and decided this will have to do, and it did !