38-56 winchester. Help with smokeless

[toby4570]

i lost my old data for reloading 38-56 in my 1886 win.lever action. i had reloaded with a lyman 264 gr. cast bullet. i also would like to try jacketed. i have a few original jacketed from the 1930's. i would also like any info on a duplex load. this cartridge is the baby brother of the 40-65 win.

[skeettx]

Toby
Welcome to the site on your first posting
Forget jacketed bullet in the soft steel barrels of the early 1886 rifles
By duplex, I think you mean a small bit of smokeless and the rest black powder??
Some folks load duplex SMOKELESS loads and I would NOT suggest that in the 1886.
Mike

p.s. I also would consider slugging the bore, I use .382 cast bullets in my old bore dimensions

see here

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?161398-New-to-Me-Winchester-38-56

http://forums.gunboards.com/showthread.php?263220-Anyone-reload-38-56

https://www.shootersforum.com/leverguns-their-cartridges-general/2323-38-56-winchester.html

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I wouldn't worry about moderate use of jacketed bullets, especially copper rather than cupro-nickel. It is smokeless powder that erodes barrels, and it escalates badly when large charges of fast powder are used at high pressures, which is unlikely to be the case with the .38-56. I don't think jacketed give any real advantage over gas-checked cast bullets, though.

It is an excellent cartridge for the 1886, and one of the best suited to smokeless, being a simple reforming job from durable, easily and cheaply available .45-70 brass. I wish the same was true of my .40-82. The Winchester is sensitive to cartridge overall length, so you don't get much chance to vary the bullet weight.

Clyde Williamson's "The Winchester Lever Legacy" is an incomparable book on the shooting of the Browning lever Winchesters, and its folksy style can lead you to overlook the exhaustive nature of his testing work. Loads he found to work well without excessive pressure indications, all with bullets of your weight and cast unless stated, were:

11gr. Unique 1390 ft./sec. (probably close to original black powder velocity.)
27.5gr. 4198 1650 ft./sec.
39.5gr. 3031 1830 ft./sec. (with jacketed Barnes bullet.)
37gr. 3031 1738ft./sec.
42gr. 4895 1980 ft./sec. (with Barnes bullet.)

For a brief period Winchester offered their own smokeless cartridges with velocities very close to these, and a cynic might think they were discontinued in a bid to sell more .30-30 rifles.

The rifle Williamson used had a bore slugged at .3745 grooves, and I wouldn't assume it to be more without checking.

[toby4570]

Skeettx and Ballistics in scotland; thank you so much for the help. This was my first post and i am so pleased with what i've learned. Ballistics in scotland; Did you mean 4198 powder instead of 4598, and the 4895 powder, was that H or IMR? I would like to hear about your 40-82 rifle and how it shoots. my brother found old brass for that near ghost towns in the nevada desert and asked me what it was. after i cleaned the headstamp i told him. but i had never heard of this caliber before and was so interested in it. to me it seemed like it would be a better long range cartridge than 45-70, 45-90 or 45-100 with a higher B.C. and less kick. thanks again

[Ballistics in Scotland]

You are right, and I apologise for mistyping 4598 for 4198. Also for only having time to edit the figure last night, which might have made people think your mind was wandering, rather than mine. Williamson gives only the numbers for the powders, and I don't know if the H or IMR mistake existed to be made when he wrote, in 1988.

My best load was 38gr. of Reloder 7, with which pressure signs were reassuring and the rifle was very comfortable to shoot. I really only played around with the rifle, as my groups were about 5in. with a Lyman tang sight, but I suppose that is good enough for a lot of hunting situations.

Incidentally you are nearly sure to find that with moderate loads the primers are extruded by the full headspace of the rifle, which in my case was a harmless .005in. This is safe and indeed reassuring, since it indicates that pressure and the strength of a modern case prevent it from exerting pressure on the bolt face at all.

The 1886 cartridges come, basically, in two groups, "70-length" and "90-length". The latter offer a useful performance gain with black powder, in exchange for more expensive dies and limited-production cases, but next to none when smokeless is kept within sensible pressures. The 1886 is not a weak action, but its greatest weakness is the ejector, which extends all the way to the firing-pin, a feature changed for the introduction of the 1892. Williamson describes shooting one with the ejector head broken off, with no ill effects.

You would be right about the advantages of the .40-82 if it were loaded to suit a strong, fast-twist single-shot rifle. The trouble is, the 1886 must be held strictly to cartridge overall length, and even with the reduced need for powder space with smokeless, I don't think it is a good idea to expose lube grooves further back than that very slight bottleneck. So it isn't possible to increase the bullet length by more than a trifle, or thus the sectional density. . being the case, the slow twist of 28in. was as good as anyone could use. The .40s and the 50s need much the same degree of flatness or roundness to avoid a magazine explosion, and it is more in proportion with the smaller diameter, so the ballistic coefficient is if anything worse than the .45s.

There is no doubt that you could load it in a way that would be better for the right sort of single shot, but I con't know if Winchester ever did. A cartridge which never gained much popularity in the 1886 was the .40-70. Cartridge books, even the normally excellent Barnes, parrot one another in giving this one a .496in. shoulder diameter, but Winchester's own drawings of the period make it .4482., i.e. .008in. smaller than the .40-82. It almost is the .40-82, renamed to stop customers complaining "My gun don't shoot", with the neck pushed slightly rearward to give a steeper shoulder, in ammto suit a heavier bullet of 330gr. The rifling twist was increased to 20in. too.

The .40-82 cartridge is of interest to me, because unless other people were doing the same, I believe I negotiated it onto our government's list of uncontrolled antique firearms, which depends on ammunition not commonly available, but is valid up to 1939 if that is the case. I don't believe they ever thought it was commercially available, when compiling the earlier editions, but were put off by not having a precise definition of what it was.

[Gunlaker]

Measuring the bore would be a good idea. Like the other fellow, mine is large and wants .381" or even .382" bullets.

I only load straight black powder in mine so don't have anything to say about smokeless or duplex.

Mike Venturino wrote a nice book on lever action rifles that has good information on this cartridge in the 1886.

Chris.

[Chill Wills]

28 grs of IMR-3031 is an accuracy load for me with Old West cast bullet I make at 0.381" 265grains.
Use it for 200 meter lever silhouette load.
Accurate and mild.

[EDG]

The .40-82 cartridge is of interest to me, because unless other people were doing the same, I believe I negotiated it onto our government's list of uncontrolled antique firearms, which depends on ammunition not commonly available, but is valid up to 1939 if that is the case. I don't believe they ever thought it was commercially available, when compiling the earlier editions, but were put off by not having a precise definition of what it was.

I find some of these discussions humorous when a government has had a long history of producing ammo with huge dimensional variations for chambers that do not resemble the ammo to be fired in them. Why would any government expect close tolerance standards from the civilian manufacturers when it can't always get its own ammo to function in its own rifles.
As we all know the minimum ammo in the maximum chamber is not a demanding fit condition. No one would care about a few thousandths other than some bureaucrat.