32 Winchester Special

I recall a gunzine article about reloading the .32 Special with black.
Results with then standard Goex were not great.
But the author found a very old can of DuPont powder and tried it. Business picked up right away with higher velocity, better accuracy, and less fouling.
Even so, top velocity was little if any better than .32-40, it was still black powder. Seems like that would play hob with the "smokeless powder sights" offered on rifles of the day.

Somebody once advanced the idea that the "Special" calibers denoted rounds available with factory smokeless but to be reloaded with black. .32 Winchester Special, .38 Special, .44 Special.
 
"Somebody once advanced the idea that the "Special" calibers denoted rounds available with factory smokeless but to be reloaded with black. .32 Winchester Special, .38 Special, .44 Special."

Yeah, that was me. I've done so several times over the years.

Those are the only three production cartridges ever so named.

In the case of the .38 and the .44, both were S&W rounds. The .44 was the last commercial round ever introduced as a black powder round.

.38 Special black powder factory loads were available right up to before World War II; I don't know about the .44 Special.



"Results with then standard Goex were not great."

It's pretty much agreed by many sources that the black powder available today isn't even remotely close to the quality of the powder available in that propellant's heyday.

"Even so, top velocity was little if any better than .32-40"

The .32-40 and the .32 Winchester Special cases have similar capacity; I believe the .32 WS case will hold a bit more powder. But, with black powder, a little bit doesn't really make a different in the round's ballistics. It takes a lot to get an appreciable boost in performance.
 
Might not be what actually happened, but it makes a good story!
Click to expand...

Perhaps you're right, I certainly have nothing more than a hunch to go on. Perhaps is wasn't a stock of already cut .32 barrels they wanted to use, but an attempt to maximize the use of the tooling to cut .32 cal 1-16 twist barrels.

The need to use nickel steel, and the difficulties working it MIGHT have been an unforeseen complication that came up after the decision was made to go ahead with the .32 Special" project. I don't know, and unless we find someone's diary that explains what actually happened in detail, I doubt we ever will know, for certain.

As to the name "Special" added to a round, you might be right about that, too. What I've always heard only applies to the pistol rounds, that they were "Special" because the cases were longer than the "standard" previous rounds in those calibers. .38 S&W Special is longer than .38 S&W, and .44 Special is longer than .44 Russian...longer case, holds a little more powder, a little more "bang" for your buck, so, its ..."Special".

Longer case wouldn't apply to the .32 Special, but it was marketed as being more powerful than the .30-30, and perhaps that was what made it "Special"?

After H&H brought the term "Magnum" into the shooting world, it seems there were no more "Specials" but there were "Magnums".

And then there's the oddball, .38 Super. Couldn't properly be a Magnum, because there was no increase in the case size, only in the pressure of the loading. So it became "Super" instead of Magnum, or Special.

Any idea when the .38 Super became the .38 Super +P?? My Dad had a .38 Super in the 70s, and my (increasingly inaccurate) memory tells me the ammo boxes and cases said ".38 Super". I will admit to not paying any attention to that caliber for decades, so I was a bit surprised coming back to it, and finding the ammo marked .38 Super +P nowadays..

It is a little surprising to hear that results with today's black powder aren't "as good" as black powder once delivered.

I suppose I shouldn't be all that surprised, I've found a lot of things in my life that aren't as good today as they once were..:D:rolleyes:
 
"Perhaps is wasn't a stock of already cut .32 barrels they wanted to use, but an attempt to maximize the use of the tooling to cut .32 cal 1-16 twist barrels."

No. It's already been shown that Winchester was responding to customer requests. That's proven in their advertising of the day.




"The need to use nickel steel, and the difficulties working it MIGHT have been an unforeseen complication that came up after the decision was made to go ahead with the .32 Special" project."

No. It wasn't. By the time the .32 Special was first offered for sale, in late 1901, nickel steel barrels had been in production for almost 7 years.

Why would nickel steel barrels suddenly be a problem when literally tens of thousands of .30-30s and .25-35s were rolling off the production lines every year -- WITH nickel steel barrels?

Fact -- It wasn't.

Again, Winchester developed the .32 Special due to customer demand. The magazines of the time are literally full of debates over whether the new smokeless powder technology was going to last. A large enough number of people who wanted Winchester 1894s decided that they didn't want to find themselves with a suddenly obsolete rifle.


The earliest examples of barrel markings on a .32 Special that I've been able to find are from a rifle made in 1912. The barrel is plainly market Nickel Steel.

.32-40s and .38-55s from the same time frame are not marked nickel steel because they were never, as far as I can tell, made with nickel steel barrels.

The only change to the steel used in the .32-40 and .38-55 barrels came around 1932 when ALL Winchester barrel blanks -- lever action, bolt action, shotguns, etc., were switched to Winchester Proof Steel.

Winchester proof steel was the first of the chrome moly steel alloys. It was easier to work than nickel steel and, overall, proved to be more durable.

Just to be clear, here's the timeline

1894 -- Winchester introduces the Model 1894 in the blackpowder .38-55 and .32-40 cartridges. Although smokeless powder cartridges were advertised, there were problems with both obtain smokeless powder and with producing the new nickel steel barrels required for use with the new smokeless powder.

1895 -- Winchester introduces the smokeless powder .30-30 and .25-35 cartridges. 1894s chambered for those rounds have the new nickel steel barrels. Rifles chambered for the older, black powder .38-55 and .32-40 rounds retain the old Winchester barrel steel.

October 1901 -- In response to customer demands, Winchester introduces the .32 Special. The new cartridge was developed with smokeless powder, but the round can be, if the shooter desires, reloaded with cast bullets and black powder. .32 Specials are manufactured with nickel steel barrels.

1932 -- Winchester adopts the new chrome moly steel - known as Winchester Proof Steel - and replaces ALL previous barrel steels throughout the Winchester product line.
 
Regarding the three Special cartridges, I will admit, that is PURE speculation on my part, but it's speculation that fits the known facts -- sort of.

The fly in the ointment is that Winchester and S&W weren't connected in any appreciable way. They didn't, as far as I know, have any development projects, so it would be odd, but not impossible, for the companies to have come up with the Special nomenclature all on their own.

But, Special makes more sense for Winchester's use with the .32 than S&W's, because the .32 WS WAS a special purpose round.

The .38 Special was originally developed with black powder, and as far as I know, didn't fulfill the same sort of requirement (a round for shooters who wanted the option of using either black or smokeless).

In the case of the .38 & .44 Specials, from this distant view it even appears that S&W as a corporation wasn't all that sure that smokeless powder was going to stick around. That could explain why the .44 was developed as a black powder round in 1907 (the last round to be commercially developed with sacred black).

Again, as I said, all of this is speculation on my part, but it's speculation that fits at least the larger pattern of known facts.




".38 S&W Special is longer than .38 S&W"

The .38 Special was never based on the .38 S&W. The .38 S&W was a developmental dead end. S&W based the .38 Special on a lengthened .38 Long Colt round to give it greater powder capacity -- 21.5 grains as opposed to 18 grains.

That said, I don't believe that the special nomenclature as used by S&W had anything to do with a lengthened case.
 
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