Winchester 59

[Hardcase]

A guy in my neck of the woods has a Winchester 59 for sale for $225. It's in pretty good shape with a few scratches like you'd expect from a 45 or 50 year old gun. I've heard that these had a problem with the aluminum receivers cracking, but I didn't see any evidence of that. It uses the screw in chokes, but only has the full choke, although I see that Numrich has all of them in stock.

Does this seem like a reasonable price?

 

[lead head]

I have one that has been well used for most of its long life and have never had any problems with it. Not sure about the price I guess it's in the ball park.

 

[dgludwig]

I think that's a pretty good price for a Model 59 in the condition as you described. They are nice handling (albeit, due, at least in part, to the fiber-glass-wrapped steel barrel, I find them to be a little "butt-heavy") upland shotguns and make for good grouse and woodcock guns. For what it's worth, I have seen a couple Model 59s with cracked receivers (occurring right where the bolt handle meets the receiver in its rear-most position) over the past several decades. I don't know if this failure is symptomatic of the gun in terms of design or if I just happened across a couple of aberrations.

 

[kirbythegunsmith]

Details

Frame defects such as cracking occur infrequently to the lightweight Model-50 and the 59.
Cracks in the bolt handle slot are the most recognized, but the magazine tube hole in the lower frame front leaves a thin wall that can split through the serial number (I have one here if anybody doubts the fact).

The action spring tube may come loose from the frame threads at the rear and allow the threads to pull out of the alloy frame, and I have had to renew the threads in the frame to permanently fix that condition.
When the steel tube comes loose from the frame, the aluminum extension is typically tightened to make the buttstock snug again rather than completely disassembling the mechanism to allow a proper tightening of the parts.
A quickie fix comes back to bite every now and then, and this is not a simple repair once a thread shred happens.

The barrel lug may pop off of the Model 59 barrel fiberglass surface every now and then. That is a minor weakness of what was supposed to be the highest strength barrel ever made for a commercial shotgun, at the time.
It was claimed to be able to withstand the 20 gauge shell drop-in with a 12 gauge shell fired after, and not swell the barrel. Care to try that with any other barrel and see the results?

Kirby