A Vetterli and a Remington pump in 32 Rem

[Lionel]

A friend bought a collection of guns and there were a couple of surprises. A Vetterli and a Remington pump action rifle
in 32 Remington. The Remington came with 7 rounds of ammo, the Vetterli didn't come with any ammo and it is still a
.41 rimfire as best my friend can figure out.

I saw one Vetterli on the EE that had been converted to centerfire and it had a decent price for a milsurp that hadn't been
made since the 1880's
There was a model 14 1/2 that is similar, but not quite the same as the 32 Remington, I beleive, also on the EE.
I googled a quick article about converting the Vetterli by drilling the bolt and making cases from 348 Winchester, which I
have quite a few of.

Does anybody have any experience with these guns?
Ideas?

 

[Arwho]

I am fascinated by 41 Swiss Vetterli and it is now my favorite rifle. For the brass，the base diameter of 348 Win. is too big for 41 Swiss Vetterli，try one converted empty brass and you will see that it is almost unable to close the bolt and won't be able to extract，you will need a rod to punch it out，the best is form the brass from 50-110 Win.，50 Alaskan which could be formed by full length sizing directly，and 8 mm lebel which when full length sizing die formed，should be fired once to expand the body to the chamber dimension，so should trimmed around 0.008” longer to compensate first time firing shrinkage due to body expansion. Check out my ad：https://www.canadiangunnutz.com/for...fire-brass-cases-and-customized-cast-bullets， quite a bit of information I gained for your reference.

 

[Lionel]

Thank you Arwho for the info!
I will pass along the info to my friend about this.
I love that some people are taking the interest in old guns like this and keeping them up and running.
It is too bad that Bob Haylee out of Texas passed away and nobody was able to take over his business and keep supplying brass to gunnuts
2200 fps is a pretty hot little number for a 150 year old designed rifle.
I have some TrailBoss so loading up a few rounds shouldn't be too difficult to try a few shots out of the old girl and maybe take it out deer
hunting some day.

 

[geotndtwine]

I shoot my vetterli often, brass made from 8mm lebel, annel, size with lee 41swiss dies without expander plug, trim 100-200 thou over length, fire form, trim to length, load with 50gr ffg, and paper patched lee 430-310. It's fairly easy cartridge to make, but 8mm lebel is pricey.

Save the 348 for 8x60 kropatschek or 12mm swedish

 

[mooncoon]

the Vetterli didn't come with any ammo and it is still a
.41 rimfire as best my friend can figure out.

I saw one Vetterli on the EE that had been converted to centerfire and it had a decent price for a milsurp that hadn't been
made since the 1880's

Just a note re the centerfire conversion of the Vetterli. A Swiss friend of mine told me that quite a few rimfire Vetterlis were converted to centerfire by the Swiss government. I can't remember when the conversion took place but it would have been in the late 1870s to mid 1880s

cheers mooncoon

 

[Arwho]

With my home made high front sight, my M78 shooting a little bit left (picture 1), so I filed some metal off the right side of the sight post and the front sight post became thinner inevitably, then went to the range (20 minutes away) with 10 rounds, and come back home with a big smile on my face in one hour: the Vetterli is so incredibly accurate! Shot a 1.1 MOA 5-shot grouping at 40 meters!

 

[Lionel]

Thank-you Arwho. I just got the gun in my grubby little mitts tonight.
The bore appears to be in very good shape for a gun that is 140 ish years old.
It needs a good cleaning and lubing, and I will run some cerrosafe in the chamber to see what kind of
dimensions I have to work with.
It goes without saying that I will slug the bore and see what size it runs at, too.