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mosinmaster

mosinmaster

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Hi,

What kind of rifles, pistols, shotguns should I get that are reliable and in good calibers that are easy to reload. Do you have to shoot cast lead?

I'm picking up a Rossi 92 in 357/38 and down the road a Ruger New Vaquero in the same calibers. Can I shoot 38 special only?

Do I need a 22 lever action as well? Would the Browning BL-22 or Henry 22 qualify, or does it have to be a Marlin 39a or Winchester 9422?

With regards to shotguns, it can only be a 1897, 1887, or coach gun right? Which is considered the best all round performer?
 
1; .38 sp will be the easiest and cheapest to get into the sport.
yes, only cast (or swaged) lead aloy boolits allowed.

2; "92's" and "reliable" do not belong in the same sentence if you will be a serious competitor. It will be adequate for you if you just want to enjoy the sport for what it is and won't mind the ocasional jam or "stove piped round". Don't get me wrong, other ,way more expensive guns will jam as well but far less frequently.

3; a .22 will be of no use to you in the cowboy sport unless you are in the "Bucaroo" class (under 14 yrs of age).

4; 20 ga, 12ga 10ga in 1897 or 1887 or any double shotgun (not just a coach gun) new or old manufacture, hammered or not, as long as the ejectors have been de-activated ( extractors are ok as long as they don't fully eject the case.
 
Are you saying that Winchester 92's aren't reliable, or just the reproductions by Rossi?

Are the 1873 options better?
 
The smartest advice you can get on this forum about choosing guns for Cowboy action, is go to the SASS website, download the shooters manual decide which category you want to be in then buy accordingly. While not all clubs are not SASS affiliated the vast majority pay lip service to the SASS rulebook.

I have a Rossi 92, a Browning B92 and an original 1904 Winchester 92, all excellent guns but they are very sensitive about cartridge overall length. My Rossi feed .357 brass flawlessly but when I use .38 brass sometimes it stove pipes or ejects a live round. The best competitors these days are using a Uberti M73. Yes they are worth the money, you'll never have to buy another Cowboy main match gun.
 
I'm just recreational and want to be a cowboy haha. Mainly plinking and getting up to speed with the lever gun.

When reloading 357/38 for both a rifle and handgun, can you seat them the same or do you need to separate the brass and seat at different depths?
 
With all my 92's I only load with .357 brass to ensure flawless performance, otherwise when using shorter brass I have problems. I use .38 spl in my Vaqueros though. If the marking on the barrel say .357, believe it!
 
Now, I've never shot cast lead before, can you buy them pre-cast or do you have to melt your own and cast them your own?

And what kind of accuracy differences do you get between lead cast vs factory jacketed?

And what does Keith SWC and WC style bullets do? Do you shoot these out of rifles or revolvers or both?
 
mosinmaster said:
Are you saying that Winchester 92's aren't reliable, or just the reproductions by Rossi?

Are the 1873 options better?
Click to expand...

a 92 is a 92. And Garand is right, they do work adequately for a lot of people, just be forewarned of their idiosincrasies.

Yes 1873's are a much better choise. just to be totaly honest tho, they rarely come out of the box as a competition ready gun (minimum of $60 comp. spring kit and $7 trigger block spring chang-over, all from Pioneer Gun works). The difference between the 92 and 73 tho is that the 73 can be made to work flawlessly with a few changes, not so much with the 92's. Don't overlook a Marlin 94 if you come across one, they are probably the cheapest and easiest to make work consistently.
Again, Garand is right when he says cartridge length is crucial (althogh I disagree on the ".357 only" coment)...in all of them...92"s,73"s and Marlins. The 73's and Marlins will work very well with .38 sp or .357. When the wife bought her second Marlin, it was a bear to get to function properly with .38's so I did a considerably lot of testing with it. I started loading at .38 sujested max length and increased by .005 " until I found the lenght it liked, that being 1.515 total lenght (both swc and rnfp, do not use wc). These rounds also worked flawlessly in my 73's as well. I have tested these rounds in a lot of other Marins that give trouble feeding and have not found one yet that doesn't eat them like candy. At this lenght the case crimps the boollit half way between the crimp groove and the first lube groove, I've loaded tens of thousands of round like this with no ill effect to case life or accuracy.
So, the short answer is yes you will need to sort brass. Yes you can buy store-bought boolit in bulk packs of 500 or 1000. Again you won't have any need for full WC in cowboy.
 
For Cowboy Action shooting one of the better choices is a Round Nose Flat Point (RNFP) bullet, they generally feed through everything smoothly. If you have a tight chamber, you can get a hangup at times with LSWC bullets. The vast majority of Cowboy Action main matches have the targets placed anywhere from 7 yds out to a maximum of 35 yds, you're not engaging in long range.

I used a Marlin M1894S for 14 years and highly recommend the gun in either .357 or .44. I have found that during matches with a '92 or clone when using shorter brass the faster I try to cycle the action, thats when I've run into problems. When I use longer brass my problems completely disappear.

As for bullets, I generally get mine from one of 2 sources, either the Bullet Barn in BC or Cactus Plains Ammunition in Gull Lake Saskatchewan.
 
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Okay thanks for the heads up on the 92. Is it a design problem for the 92? Or was it meant to work reliably with older cartridges like the 44-40 and 45 LC?

Or is it just a matter of quality control of modern manufacturers?

I was planning to do the spring kit, but what else can I do to make the gun feed 38 special more reliably?
 
The Winchester M92 was never designed to run at speeds that modern Cowboy Action shooters ask their guns to, simple as that. I recently decided to change rifles and shoot the same caliber as my wife does, and purchased a Uberti M73 and had a .38 Spl brass elevator installed. For those that want to shoot Cowboy Action and be a speed demon, that is the rifle to buy.

Which ever rifle you choose, just ensure that it will hold 10 rounds in the tubular magazine as the rifle staged in Cowboy action alway starts with an empty chamber and generally 10 rds in the tube.
 
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My Rossi 92 would eat 38 specials all day if I did my part right. I sold it and bought a used 1866 Uberti and I really miss the reliability of the 92. I'd say buy a 92 and go to Steve's Guns and order the slick up DVD and the stainless magazine follower and lighter ejector spring.

I will certainly buy a Rossi 92 again one day.
 
Lots of places in the states that sell it or I have had great luck with a guy here in Canada that makes custom rigs and anything leather for that mater. Laroche Leather is the name of the company Joe and his wife are the ones that own it, google will get you to their web site.
 
mosinmaster said:
Okay thanks for the heads up on the 92. Is it a design problem for the 92? Or was it meant to work reliably with older cartridges like the 44-40 and 45 LC?

Or is it just a matter of quality control of modern manufacturers?

I was planning to do the spring kit, but what else can I do to make the gun feed 38 special more reliably?
Click to expand...

1; The 92 works very well for what it was designed for..a medium sized game hunting rifle with a stronger action than the 73's. Would I use one as a bear defence/saddle gun, not a chance. As Garand says, they work until you ramp up the speed as you would in a cowboy match or a defensive situation. In a bear charge I can see the bear and the sights dissapearing and all I would be able to see is that short stubby cartrdge sticking strait up, jamed between the bolt and breech.
2; It doesn't seem to matter what age or make from what i've seen.

3; The spring kit changes I sugested are for a 73, if you are still talking about the 92, the only thing I can sugest is to send it to Rusty Woods a gunsmith in Mission BC. He will slick it up and make the action as smooth as silk..but will it work any more reliable at speed, probably not.
If you are talking 73 now, the sky is the limit with those guns. just to set the feed parameters you can either set the cartridge length to fit the gun or modify the front of the feed elevator to fit your cartridge (easiest to fit the cartridge, but its your choise). After that to increase speed potential, tune the main spring and short stroke it with a kit from Pioneer (
$160 for parts). Now you have the gun Garand was talking about in his first post. Run it as fast as you can and it will feed flawlessly.
 
What about the Winchester 94? How does it differ from the 92 in terms of design? All I know is the 92 is a scaled down version of the 1886, which is stronger than the 94. But a 94 chambered in a pistol cartridge, will it jam up too?
 
Virtually everyone has a horror story about 1 or more firearms that they have owned. Here's my lever horror story;

In '94 I was looking for a lever in .357 because I was doing alot of .357 shooting out of my M66 and wanted a cheap and easy round that I could reload in abundance. After looking around for about 6-8 months I couldn't find one, I even phoned Winchester! The nice lady said that they didn't have enough calls to start manufacturing them again. Remember this was before Cowboy Action got bigger.

I finally gave up on .357 and found a Winchester Wrangler in .44 Magnum. Shades of John Wayne that large loop lever was kewl! Little did I realize that with 2 years, I'd start shooting Cowboy Action. I did lots of testing and came up 7.2 grains of Unique pushing a 240 grain LSWC bullet as an accurate target load.

Within the first 20 rds down range, the pot metal feed ramp broke. Off for warranty work! Eight months later I get the rifle back. After every 50 rds the rear sight elevator would fall off. So we have to install a Williams rear sight! Shooting again after every 50 rds the screws in the receiver would work loose. Locktite!! After 1,500 rds the tubular magazine spring gave up the ghost! Wolfe Gunsprings to the rescue. After this the Lever Link broke, 3 months and 5 nasty letters later, Winchester told me they would sell me the part but without warranty! They wanted me to send the gun to the warranty centre again!

That was the last straw, I found a sucker to buy the Winchester and bought a Marlin M1894S, after 8,000 rds through it, it broke a firing pin. 20 minutes after I got a new front firing pin, good to go again. 1,500 rds later the back portion of the firing pin broke and I replaced it with a one piece firing pin. No problems since. The last good 94 Winchester built was in 1924, just my humble opinion. I love the quality Marlin builds in.

P.S. My Wrangler was one of 4 Wranglers in town with the same problems.
 
The 94, with the short rounds used in 92's act basically the same as the 92's. The 94's were brought out to use long rifle cartridges (30-30,32sp,35-55) and they work very well with these. would i carry a 94 for bear defence/saddle gun, you bet with an original issue cartridge, not a chance with a short cartridge. Like Garand, I owned a 94 in pistol caliber...never again.
I do own 2 92's, both early 1890's circ.( 25-20 & 32-20) and my wife and I each have a 94 in 30-30, all work very well for what they were intended for... they just will never be good cowboy guns. Unless your John Wayne (he used a 92 in 32-20 in most of his movies) where you get the luxury of as many "takes" as you need if a round stovepipes. In cowboy'n you only get one chance and if your gun hangs up... your done.
 
Speed shooting aside, is the Rossi version of the 92 made of decent parts and metal? Or is it all MIM parts? Investment casting? Any forgings?
 
My main match rig is "The Morgan" from Black Hills Leather in Texas (5 months delivery), For Wild Bunch I use the Kirkpatrick Leather Wild Bunch Rig (2 months delivery) and my wifes uses a Mexican cheapy from Western Emporium. At the beginning don't spend a lot for leather as with experience you will probably have different requirements. Again, before you spend any money down load the SASS Shooters Manual, decide which category you are interested in and choose accordingly. It is better to spend your money only once. Both my wife and I have web shotgun belts from Western Star Leather, the one with a strip of leather under the loops to hold all the shells at the same height.
 
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