Originally Posted by
Bent Ramrod
I have one in .35 Winchester. Not a target rifle, but accurate enough. It’s more accurate than the pristine .405 I helped an acquaintance shoot up some old factory ammo in so he could reload the shells, and about as powerful, truth be told. A slightly smaller bullet going slightly faster, and (at the time) the rifles were much less expensive since the .35 didn’t have the cachet of the .405 nor the ready ammo supply of the .30-40. I got it figuring I could use .38 and .357 jacketed pistol bullets as inexpensive subloads, but found an Ideal 358318 hollow-point mould that makes for even cheaper shooting.
The full-house loadings just shade the .358 Winchester, as the .30-40 does the .308. The rifle is more closely fitted than some of the other Winchester lever guns, in keeping with the more powerful smokeless loadings they used. Loading is kind of slow and finicky; you have to insert the round almost vertically, and tilt it down as you push it back. The Russian contract rifles had clip guides that made loading much faster, but most of the examples of those I’ve seen are shot-out, loosey-goosey wrecks. A friend had a sporterized one that would pop the lever open to the extent your fingers would let it at every shot. The .30-06 and 7.62x54 cartridges appear to be right on the edge of what the gun will handle as a steady diet. If you get a .30-06, I would shun the new heavy loadings and load back to the old 150-gr/2700ft/sec standard.
Also, I was amazed to find, they are not legal for Lever Action Silhouette. Even though they have the exposed hammer, they have a box magazine, rather than a tube, and so are out. So is my Savage 99 in .25-35.