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I am married to a smart woman! When I showed her this group she said, "You're never going to sell that rifle are you?"
When I bought it I told her that it is an investment. I was just going to keep it a few years and sell it for profit. She has my number!
Anyway, the top hole is the fouler. This rifle, a Winchester 73 made in 1916, needs a fouler. The next five went into that cluster at the center. Those five went into 3/4" center to center at 50 yards. The bullet is a Keith style semi-wadcutter crimped in the crimping groove. They are to long to feed from the magazine. The bullets cast small from wheelweight so I bumped them up in a .431" die which is a little to large. Some chamber with resistance. A .430" die would be good but my .430" die is really .429". It looks like it shoots well enough to invest in a proper mold and to hone the die out. This rifle shoots far better than I dared to hope!
I also tried 10.8 grains 2400 with the same bullet. Group size was double and the bore was full of unburned powder.
I would like to get a set trigger for it. The trigger isn't horrible but it has a lot of creep and it is a little heavy for off hand shooting. Those are probably expensive if you can find them. In the meantime I am going to load ammo for our club levergun silhouette match on Saturday. I think this rifle is very competitive. Now if I can just tighten the nut behind the butt!
Marc, you shot a group to be proud of, that's for certain. Your 10.8/2400 is a little on the stout side for a '73, isn't it? Try 8/Unique, my favorite 44 WCF load for both SAs and '73s
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Thanks guys! The sights on that rifle work for me. But what I am really happy about is how well the rifle shoots the cast bullets. Rough red bore and all.
Mike, the 2400 load was weaker than the Unique load. It had several feet more drop at 200 meters. 8 Unique is what I used with 205 grain bullets. These are 256 grains so I lightened the charge.
I took the 73 to shoot silhouette this morning. They only had small bore targets up and the big bore targets were not set. I did succeed in badgering them into putting the swingers out. I had ammo so a couple of us shot the course using the swingers. Since it wasn't a real match I didn't bother with sighters and just shot the 40 rounds. I got 9 chickens and only 4 pigs. I outsmarted myself on the missed chicken. I was hitting them high on the back so I tried holding a little lower and shot under it. Decided that was a bad idea and went back to hitting them in the top. Trying to hold center pig did not work because I blackened the front sight and it got lost on the black targets. I figured out later I needed the rear sight in one higher notch and then I could hold 6 o'clock on the pig. Turkeys were mine! I got 7 turkeys in spite of throwing one shot away. Perfect 6 o'clock hold with the rear sight in the top notch. I never did figure out a good sight picture on rams. I ran out of elevation on the rear sight and had to hold way above the ram. Managed to hit it 2 or 3 times.
So anyway it was fun and the old rifle is certainly up to the task. One thing I did not find out is whether this load would knock the rams over. Maybe next time if we have a real match.
No danger of scaring the competition with a score of 22 or 23! I will scare them when I get my sight settings worked out.
I just can't get over how well this rifle shoots given the condition of the bore. I don't know what it is. Maybe the slow twist makes it more forgiving and I am sure the low velocities help. Whatever it is it works. I guess they knew what they were doing when they developed these rifles. I am also impressed by the quality of this rifle. Wood to metal fit is very tight. It makes our standard factory offerings of today look pathetic.
Nice shooting! You should put that on a Ranch Dog Postal target and send it in to Micheal. Us Winny shooters need all the help we can get to beat those Marlin dudes.
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