Winchester low wall with cracked receier

[Bad Ass Wallace]

I have a low wall with original 22WCF chambering. On examining the action there is a fine hairline crack about 8mm long to the left side of the receiver. I would like to restore to original as a small cast boolit shooter but in 22 Hornet.

The rifle itself was made in 1886 and has a highwall breechblock in a low wall receiver. (See pic)

Could this crack be TIG'ed up or should I look for another receiver?

[Reg]

That is a most certainly a strange place for a crack to show up. Have you had it checked with some form of NDT? Even a simple dye penetrant would tell you a lot. Receivers can be welded and the TIG process is the best but I would find out exactly what you have first.

[john.k]

It may be a lap in the forging ,and only a surface defect .If its not in a stressed area,Id leave it .

[Iowa Fox]

I have a low wall that was manufactured in 1886 with a 22 barrel chambered in 22 K Hornet top of with a 12x Unertle.
If it was me I would forget the old original Winny low wall as they just can't take much. I would buy a modern 1885 Winny copy from Miroku . It's modern steel and a much stronger action. With the advent of Little gun and the good 35-40 grain bullets I'll never do another K. Things might be much different for you in your country.

[Winger Ed.]

I'd try to find a career machinist about our age to look at it.
It probably could be welded, but you also might get off into needing to heat treat it or something like that.

If it is really a crack, I sure wouldn't trust fixing it in a home sort of shop.
That's a job for a old geezer that's done a bunch of that sort of work.
There's too much to loose compared with too little to gain to let someone go hacking around on it.

[john.k]

These guns were made of soft metal,case hardened to around 040 deep.........the case was generally left full hard ........so any crack is only in the hard case .........and may well have been considered a hardening crack when the gun was made,and no reason to reject the reciever.

[Chill Wills]

Can you provide a better picture? This era 1885 has visible forging lines, very common. Not saying it is not cracked.

With the Highwall BB in it, this suggests a parts gun. That may be how the seller passed the cracked action too. Some people are not above putting together a bunch of lesser parts to make a complete action. Often these rifles have take off barrels and wood. That is not saying your is fits that description, but I am always on the lookout for old SS rifles and these come up all the time.
You just have to make a choice if the work involved is worth it on a "each rifle" bases.

[uscra112]

There is a school of thought that holds that even the little Hornet is too much for an original Low Wall action.

[gnoahhh]

I'm darned if I can see a crack in the presented picture. Can a better pic of the crack be done?

Generally speaking I wouldn't weld any receiver in an area that is the recipient of stress from cartridge discharge, no matter who did it. I value my vision and body integrity too much to take fool risks like that. An un-stressed spot like a tang, yeah probably.

I seriously doubt that a crack induced when the receiver was case hardened would've made it out Winchester's door. If it's truly cracked now (and not a weird scratch), and the crack emanates out from the corner of the breech block mortise for example, it's because some fool hot rodded it at some point.

I agree with Phil, re: putting a Hornet in a vintage Low Wall. If I did I would short chamber it so special ammo only could be fired in it, and said ammo kept to a low roar for safety's sake. More than a few LW's were converted to Hornet, and most have survived just fine, but there's some floating around that haven't too. Chambering for a relatively high pressure round is all fine and dandy as long the original savvy owner loads for it - but what about when the next owner decides to fire some hot stuff in it? (And there will be a next owner at some point....)

[gnoahhh]

These guns were made of soft metal,case hardened to around 040 deep.........the case was generally left full hard ........so any crack is only in the hard case .........and may well have been considered a hardening crack when the gun was made,and no reason to reject the reciever.

A crack in a receiver, no matter the extent of it, wouldn't have passed inspection and used.

I'm not sure I understand your statements. "Full hard?" "Cracks only in the case?" ".040" deep?" Carburizing (case hardening) is rarely if ever induced to that much depth. .010-.015" is a lot. More than that and you're seriously intruding on the integrity of the soft steel core which in the end is what actually gives the part its strength. Witness the "burnt receiver" fiasco at Springfield Armory in 1917 where over-treated case hardened receivers were brittle and resulted in more than a couple catastrophic failures.

[Bent Ramrod]

The crack is in the left side of the receiver and the picture is of the right side; hard to judge the extent to which it might affect the use of the rifle.

Doesn't look like a parts gun; it’s a very early original. The original Low Walls were High Wall paneled receivers with the rear shoulders milled down and the rear of the High Wall breech blocks rounded off. Later ones were made as a separate production, with flat sided receivers and the more scalloped rear ends of the blocks that we normally see.

And then, towards the end of production, the remaining paneled High Wall receivers in stock were again cut down and fitted with the later Low Wall breechblocks to make the Winder .22 trainer muskets.

I shot a Low Wall Hornet for years with no untoward results. It was a Mashburn Bee with a 1/8” neck and all the powder room possible when I got it, and had apparently stood up to those loadings, but I had the chamber cut off, the barrel rethreaded and chambered for the Hornet. I think it was originally in .32 Rim Fire. Had another one for a while in .218 Bee that might have had the block mortise stretched by “hot loads” by the original owner. Somebody had welded beads down the rear of the breechblock legs and dressed them down to tighten the headspace. It shot fine, but didn’t do anything for me that the Hornet couldn’t, so down the road it went.

The crack could be checked by Magnafluxing at an auto repair shop. If it isn’t in a stressed area like the receiver ring or rear of block mortise, it might be OK for a Hornet, or, worst case, .22 WCF cast-boolit loadings. Or it could be spot-welded with inert gas by an expert. Of course, this is a judgement call the owner must make for himself.

[Chill Wills]

Bent Ramrod wrote: "Doesn't look like a parts gun; it’s a very early original. The original Low Walls were High Wall paneled receivers with the rear shoulders milled down and the rear of the High Wall breech blocks rounded off. Later ones were made as a separate production, with flat sided receivers and the more scalloped rear ends of the blocks that we normally see."

You make an interesting point. You sure could be right. The BB and the nose of the hammer in relation to the BB was what tipped me off. The earliest Highwalls were thick-side octagon tops. So, where in the early production do you think this fits? I would really enjoy holding the rifle to get a closer look at it.

Hopefully we can see some more pictures.

[Bent Ramrod]

According to John Campbell’s books, the Low Wall configuration was made at least as a tool room model, in 1885, indicating that the Company had a lighter version for smaller cartridges in mind almost from the beginning. Mass production of this variant had undoubtedly started by 1886.

Unfortunately, the exact date for the transition from milled down paneled High Walls with rounded rear breechblocks to the thinner, lighter “flatside” Low Walls with the scalloped breechblock, isn’t available. Campbell only uses the words “very soon after.” And if he doesn’t know the date, don’t nobody know the date!

The randomness induced by assemblers groping for parts in bins limits the use of serial numbers to figure out this transition time, and, of course, this is notoriously true as well with features like thickside vs paneled receiver High Walls, and octagon vs round tops, which pop up on occasion with much later shipping dates than the design feature in question might imply.

A friend has a rebarreled Low Wall of the original type, with a single set-trigger, which he uses for .22 BPCR Silhouette. It really is kind of distinctive.

[405grain]

To me it would look like a costs vs reward scenario. A skilled smith could grind out and TIG that crack back up. Then the receiver would need to be re-case hardened. The expenditures for this would have to be balanced against the cost and availability of a replacement receiver (or new gun). As for how the crack got there in the first place, it looks a little obvious. The rifle was chambered for 22 Winchester Center Fire, which is a black powder cartridge. Someone, somewhere, was shooting smokeless 22 Hornet loads in this rifle. If this is the case, even if this receiver is repaired it still might not be a good choice for 22 Hornet.