Shooting .264 dia (6.5mm) bullet through 25-20 Winchester.

S

Smoke & Recoil

New member
I have an old (5) digit serial number 25-20 model 92 Winchester with a really bad bore...long throat and measures out .260 at the muzzle. Has anyone tried
shooting cast .264 bullets before ?
 
Have you slugged the barrel? Wear at the muzzle is not uncommon. In any case, I would not try bullets that much over nominal. If the bore is that bad, they probably won't shoot accurately anyway. My brother has an old one that was tumbling 0.258 cast bullets. He basically made it a wall hanger. You can swage bullets to a specific diameter; try 0.259 or slightly larger. But if it's really that bad, either get it lined and rerifled, or hang it up. The 92 is strong, but too large a bullet is going to act like a barrel obstruction. Plus they may not chamber. Good luck.
 
You usually can't swage a bullet down more than about 0.002" before accuracy starts to worsen significantly because you can't narrow the bullet too much and have its weight distribution remain perfectly symmetrical. So, even if the gun handled the pressure OK, the results would be unsatisfactory.

I think the suggestion to slug the barrel is right. Pure lead slugs. Micrometer with tenths of a thousandth of an inch scale, and not just a caliper should be used. If you haven't done it before, Meister Bullets makes kits and has the instructions available at the bottom of this page to read to get some idea what to do.
 
Something else to try. I was reading Mike Venturino's Shooting Buffalo Rifles of the Old West, and he was discussing the problem of oversize bores in some originals. I think he was shooting a 44-77 with a nominal bullet of 0.446. The bore was larger, but the chamber would not allow him to load larger bullets. His solution was to go to softer bullets, tin-lead 1-40 rather than the common 1-20. If you can find some soft alloy bullets for your 25-20, it might be worth a try.

By the way, I learned a lot from Venturino's book, and I recommend it.
 
try a jacketed bullet, i had a 32 special with a very bad bore that would not shoot cast bullets worth a damn 10-12" groups at 50 yards. 165 gr .321 bullets shot into 3-4" groups at a 100 yards.
 
That won't help if the bore is too different in size from the bullet.


Smoke & Recoil,

If a slug pushed all the way down the bore is as big as you measured at the muzzle, in addition to Ligonier Bill's idea, you may find some molds for .257 bullets will come out of the mold as big as 0.260". You can beagle the mold (add some shims between the blocks) to achieve that if you have on that doesn't.
 
Update
I fabricated a bullet mold to drop a .263 bullet, filled mold with Doe Run pure lead, pushed though the bore all the way through...it came out at .257 with no
sign of rifling although I can see rough rifling in the barrel...um.

I turned an aluminum bullet at .264 dia., seated bullet in case...case mouth expended to .282 dia. and chambers just fine...again um.

Now looking at the link that Unclenick posted regarding shimming molds, looks interesting.

This is only a project that I am enjoying...I do have 700 Speer 75 grain jacket bullets on hand and they shoot 3" groups off hand at 25 yards. Meister 85 grain lead bullets keyhole real nice at that distant.
 
Smoke and Recoil,

A .263 came out at .257 with no rifling marks? The 5-digit serial number says it was made between 1892 and 1895. The rifling may have been corroded badly at some point, as it is certain to have been fired with corrosive priming back the day. I would be inclined to run a borescope through it and see what you can.

If it is worthwhile to you, you can get it relined and keep the chambering for less than you can get it rebored and cut rifled to a larger chambering. This outfit makes the liners that Brownells sells and will do the drilling and installation and rechambering for $375. Their 25-20 liners are patterned after the original Winchester rifling, so it will be a restoration of the original configuration, except for being lined, of course.

If you have a lathe, you can get the parts and do it yourself, but it may not be worth it. The liner is $125 from Brownells, but if you don't already own an appropriate piloted drill and don't have a 25-20 chamber reamer, and a barrel vice with an insert for '92 barrel, it's less expensive to pay people familiar with the job to do it.

If you decide to go ahead with it, one thing you can do in advance of the work is apply penetrating oil to the barrel at the receiver shoulder and inside to get it ready for removal. There is a YouTube video that showed good old Liquid Wrench actually outperformed Kroil and all the fancy and expensive penetrating oil sprays, so I would just get a can of it and apply it once a day for a week and let it soak in.
 
25-20 bullets smaller.jpg
Left is a Speer 75 gr spfn #1237, it shows no sign of rifling. Middle is a home brew .263 slug, it also shows no sign of rifling. Right is a 86 gr bullet from my Ideal #4 reloading tool, it drops out at .260. I'll try these Ideal bullets as dropped and play around with paper patching too.

Unclenick...I already removed the barrel once and it was very easy. The serial
number is 41XXX. I will have the barrel relined after I get done messing around, I'm just have fun right now. Thank you for the links you post. I'll be researching the relining soon. I'm retired and only staying busy with a fun hobby. Side note of interest...the barrel on this model 92 is 22" long.

I do thank everyone for their input thus far.
 
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Update,
I loaded 20 shells using pure lead 86 grain, .260 diameter bullets as dropped from the Ideal #4 tool...punched very pretty keyholes within a 24" square cardboard at 25 yards. Gonna check on the relining job tomorrow.
 
Just as a side note to this thread, there is a company that sells liners for several different calibers (but not .257) for very reasonable. CHASZEL.com. I bought a .357 liner to reline an old Winchester 1885 to 38 Special, for less than $90 including shipping. I need to buy or make a pilot drill to drill out the old 22 Long Rifle barrel. It is an upcoming winter project. Grant.
 
The only size Chaszel has in stock, currently, is for .22 LR.

Your drill project should be fun. It looks to me like the closest size to the 0.560" liner OD is 14mm (0.5512). You could get a step ground in one to ride the existring bore, then ream it to final size, maybe in a couple of steps. I don't know how much over they recommend for the liner to slide in, but a thousandth or two, I would suppose. I've never installed one myself.
 
Well, my Model 1892 Winchester, 25-20 WCF is home now after a (6) month
absent. The work looks to be top notch and
a fella really has to look for the seam at the muzzle...virtually unnoticeable.
Total price tag for the round trip came to $484.00

A test report will follow when I get out this week, weather permitting.
 
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