Mod 1866 safety notice

[Boerrancher]

I posted something similar to this on the shooters.com section called A Few Cuts and Burns. I know I don't look through each and every section so I thought I would post this here for those of you who own a Mod 66 or a replica.

I am sure that most of you already know this as I did as well but forgot in the heat of the moment. The Mod 66 Winchester Yellow boy will fire with the bolt partially open and the cartridge partially hanging out of the chamber.

To make a long story short I was deer hunting and shot a big doe. The other doe that was with her run a small circle and came back. I worked the lever and the fresh round wouldn't chamber. It would only go in about half way. Being in a hurry and trying to get the second deer, and trying to get the cartridge to either chamber or eject, I must have bumped the trigger because the rifle discharged. The part of the casing that was out of the chamber ruptured sending burning powder and pieces of brass into my face, because I was looking down at it at the time. :oops:

When I had healed up enough to figure out what had happened this is what I discovered. On the first round I fired the case broke right at the shoulder. I have since read that on the 44-40 and 38-40 that breakage at the neck is quite common for work hardened brass. The shoulder and neck portion of the first round stayed in the chamber, thus preventing the second round from chamberinig.

The two lessons that I learned the hard way:
1: never go to the field with brass that has been reloaded 20+ times, save it for the range, and...
2: be careful with the old guns as they don't have the modern safety mechanisms built in to them that the modern ones do.

Best wishes from the Boer Ranch,

Joe

[cowboy]

Howdy-
Was unaware of this possibility; have a 66 I use in CAS; though .38 special, still wouldnt want to have this happen.

[KirkD]

Thanks for posting this. Hopefully you've healed up well from the incident. Heavily reloaded brass can be given a new lease on life if it is annealed from time to time.

[August]

Yup, this problem affected the first owner of a '66 a century and a half ago. In original form, the 66 only had to contend with low pressure, black powder loads. So, firing out of battery usually had little, if any consequence. In fact, really fast cowboy action shooters of today regularly operate their 66 so as to fire out of battery -- again, with low pressure loads and without negative consequence. They have developed a technique for "welding" their trigger finger to the lever in such a way as to cam the trigger at just the right point of closing the action. I've tried to learn to do this without success. You can feel such an OOB ignition as a "hardness" in closing the lever.

Anywho, soon after the release of the 66, winchester redesigned the toggle link action, producing the model of 1873 -- the best pistol caliber lever rifle ever made. Not the strongest, but the best! The '73 has a safety cam that prevents pulling the trigger unless the lever loop is completely in contact with the frame. Therefore, and theoretically, one cannot fire a '73 out of battery. Of course, competitive cowboy action shooters have taken to removing the safety interlock from their '73's so they can fire them out of battery and (potentially) go faster. This is a very controversial approach to the '73 and, again, didn't work for me. I like the trigger interlock on the '73 -- it has saved me lots of headaches.

BTW - I've never had, nor have I seen, a WCF cartridge break off at the shoulder and remain in the action. I've had this happen on my black rifles, where high pressure stretches the brass just below the shoulder. But, I've never experienced case separation in these low pressure calibers. I do get cracks in my 38-40 cases, but A) They are Starline, and B) I use them a LOT. I have been meaning to get around to annealing them, but haven't yet done so.