Model 94 32 Win Special hard to chamber

[barney67]

I have a great old late 40's Model 94 in 32 Special that I recently started casting for in Ranch Dog's 170 grain boolit. My reloads are hard to chamber, factory loads chamber easy. Cases are trimmed to 2.040 but the boolit's seem to engage the rifling too soon. Should I just trim the cases a few thousandths and reduce the over all length?

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[docone31]

You can easily see the diameter of the casting is wider than the jacketed load. That is why.
First off, six the crimp! Go with a FCD die. The crimp on a casting is not like a crimp on a jacketed load. The casting will trim down on firing and you will lose accuracy.
You can try seating the casting deeper into the case. Might work. Not much, just enough so it clears the entry into the rifleing.
Nice looking rifle.
You do not see those much anymore.

[TXGunNut]

My Winchester 32 is about 20 yrs newer than yours and seems to like the RD design. I do seat it a bit deeper than you and use a very slight roll crimp. Keep in mind that as a rule the RD boolits were designed with the Marlin barrel in mind and they typically have a more generous throat than Winchesters.

[Az Rick]

First, That's a beautiful rifle.

A little experimentation will have her working good.
Load three dummy rounds, lighten up the crimp and seat the bullet as deep as you can but still hitting the crimp groove. Crank them through, is it better? If not, knock the bullets out and look for marks, nicks. If you have some nicks, try shaving the case. Load three new bullets and crank those through. How do they look compared to the first three? If the marks are improving shave the case a little more and repeat comparing those bullets to the six other. If no improvement is found, the bullet is to fat or the wrong profile. It may not work in your rifle.

Remember, seating a bullet deeper and or making the case shorter raises pressure. Start low and work up.

In any repeating firearm the chamber and or function of the gun determines OAL most often.

[John Taylor]

May need to go with a different boolet. A bore riding nose should work, also the boolet in lever guns should be crimped to keep the boolet from being shoved back in the case while in the mag tube. Recoil makes things move in the tube.

[barney67]

Thanks for all the help. I'll experiment with seating depth and OAL, want to make this boolit work with this rifle. Point taken on the crimp, I'll go a little lighter with the roll for now and look at a FCD if I have accuracy issues.

[Az Rick]

Good luck on the Quest. To me these things make reloading fun and challenging. It's a good feeling to figure something out and end up with a fine shooter, it can take some patience though

Please remember to reduce your load some to compensate for the smaller case capacity.

Let us know when you find the perfect combo. It will help someone else.

Feel free to PM folks if you just want an opinion without posting.

Best, Rick

[runfiverun]

jaxketed for this round are 321.
if you are using a boolit designed to fill the cavernous ball area in front of a marlins chamber it looks like it is too big for the winchester.
you might be able to size it down to slip fit the win's bbl. with slight engraving.