The proof law may have changed later on.

 

The 1895 Winchester in military trim was available in .30-40 Krag, .303, 7.82X54R ,and later on in .30-06.

 

The .30-06 95 had a rep for developing excessive headspace if M2 ball or sporting rounds loaded to 50,000 CUP or higher were used on a regular basis, but had no apparent problem with the WW1 era .30-06 ball or similar power commercial loads.

I suspect it was not due to the 50,000 CUP working pressure but rather increased maximum deviation pressures.

Some reproduction 1985 rifles in .30-06 have also shown a tendency to shoot loose with modern high pressure rounds, despite supposedly superior metalurgy.

 

Since the .30-06 ball of that era generated 48,000 CUP the .303 version might hold up to Mk8z but I would not want to find out by shooting the old girl loose.

MkVII and MkVIIz should work fine, and almost every commercial load should work fine.

I suspect these .303 rifles were intended for MkVI and earlier loads, so if these or an equivalent were available those might be the best choice. Lever actions can sometimes be finicky in what they will feed reliably.

A 200+ gr round nose would certainly handle any North American game.

 

A loose lever action can usually be repaired, but finding a smith that knows how could be a problem, and replacement parts made for the repros may not fit.

 

I agree with Rhino I bet it would knock the fool out of you... I would like to see one as well

 

The main reasons the Lee Enfields seem to kick as hard as they do is the "Musket Breech" style of the butt plate.

The rounded buttplate doesn't distribute the recoil as well as the flatter buttplates such as that of the Garand. A Garand with a Musket butt plate would really mess up your shooting day, but the flat butt plate makes its perceived recoil rather mild, though the effect on the flesh is cumlative.

 

I remember old ads for Winchester lever actions that gave the option of the standard rifle butt or a "shotgun" butt.

The old style rifle butt plate had a half moon curve and was meant to rest on the upper arm at the shoulder joint rather than directly on the shoulder itself.

The deeply curved butt won't rest on my shoulder at all, and it would probably cut the shoulder and chest if you did manage to hold it the way we normally hold a more modern rifle.

That sort of hold was okay for the lighter cartridges of the 73 and earlier, but the heavy recoiling cartridges of some later models were best mated with a shotgun butt.

 

this advert

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Win1895advert.jpg" rel="nofollow - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Win1895advert.jpg

Shows the classic rifle butt style and the shotgun butt style

The military butt plate was somewhere in between.

If unaltered collector value will continue to climb, and even if altered to some extent value should remain high.

Depends on what you'll have to shell out for it of course.

 

This is the rifle at the top of my bucket list.

Also a great rifle, and in one of the less common chamberings. I've heard the .38-40 has greater inherent accuracy than the .44-40.

Recoil can drive the primer of a cartridge in the magazine against the bullet of the cartridge behind it, causing a chain fire of all rounds in the magazine.

I've seen photos of the results and its not pretty.

 

I had considered the idea of a standard winchester type lever action in .303 long ago, and found that some had rechambered Winchester 94 rifles for the .308 with mixed results.

So long as a medium pressure .308 load with flat nose bullet was used the rifles worked okay but things went south quick if a regular .308 load was used.

Not long afterwards the .307 cartridge was developed to give .308 type balistics from traditional tube magazine leveractions. It is a rimmed cartridge that resembles the .303 but dimensions are close to those of the .308.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.307_Winchester" rel="nofollow - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.307_Winchester

 

Could be the rifle in question is a .307.

If not the .303 Savage is a possibility.

The .303 Savage was developed for the rotary magazine Savage lever action, so some bullet types used with the Savage cartridge may not be suited to the tublar magazine. 

 

I was wondering why all the ammo for my 38-40 was flat nosed learn something new everyday

My extending of warning to use of round nose bullets is based on the rare but not impossible ignition of an overly sensitive primer by a round nose bullet. Far less likely when factory loaded ammunition is used. The factory would use primers they knew to be suited to the purpose, but not all handloaders would be as wary.

Some European tublar magazine bolt action rifles had the problem of ignition by round nose bullets contacting the primer, and ammunition for these had a sort of shield added around the primer pocket to prevent anything larger than the firing pin from contacting the primer. 

I've heard of early .30-30 ammo found with a "shrouded primer", and even the flat point 8mm Lebel BalleM used a similar primer shield to prevent chainfire.

The larger the diameter of the primer the more likely a chainfire might be. A bullet nose profile safe enough when a small diameter primer is used may not be safe when a larger diameter primer is used.

A number of .45-70 (round nose military bullet ) bolt action rifles suffered disasterous chain fires during USN and US Army testing. These were made worse by the magazine being in the butt stock.

 

The heavier the recoil to more the danger. A .30-30 factory round with round nose may be no problem, but a .303 with 215 grain rnd nose would have a great deal more recoil impulse. A MkVI FMJ would also be much harder on a primer than a soft lead nose bullet of the same shape.

 

So unless you can garantee that every type of round bullet ammunition that might be used in a tublar magazine rifle rechambered for a much more powerful cartridge never intended for use in a tublar magazine would be perfectly safe from chainfire I'd prefer to err on the side of caution.

 

PS

One of my books has a photo of a Ruger semi auto .44 magnum carbine that had been fired using round nosed bullets.

The ammunition being more commonly used by revolvers was not restricted to flat nosed bullets as the .44-40 had been.

The chain fire destroyed the carbine in a spectacular fashion.

 

Better to use flat points than to take any such risks.

I'd hate to give a blanket recommendation of roundnose bullets being perfectly safe, then hear of a serious accident due to a overly sensitive primer.

We know that. The discussion had drifted to the supposed rechambered 94 Winchester.

The 1895 and the Savage 99 with its rotary magazine were well suited to spire point and round nose bullets.

Some Remington pump action rifles with tublar magazines have spiral ferrules that guide the cartridges so the bullet tip can't touch the primer, these were suited to spire point bullets as well.

Some European bolt action tube feed rifles used ammo with a deep annular groove in the casehead to hold the tip of a bullet away from the primer. The taper of the case helps keep the bullet tip tilted away from the primer.

This sort of safety factor is not fool proof because under heavy recoil or shock of being dropped cartridges don't always stay in the orientation they should be, and a weak spring can let the case shift position and bullet nose jump out of the groove.

 

If a Winchester 1894 is rechambered to .303 Savage one might never run across a factory load that had a bullet entirely unsuited to use in a tube magazine, then again since the cartridge was not designed with a tube magazine in mind some manufacturers may well have used bullets entirely unsuited for that purpose. German commercial ammo with the wire insert is an example. The wire insert was used by some U S manufacturers as well. It was intended to allow an extremely soft exposed lead nose that would not be easily deformed by hard contact with a feed ramp, and give good initial penetration on thick skinned game before rapid expansion on further penetration.

A wire point round or blunt nose would be very dangerous in a tube magazine even with light recoil.

 

With the ridiculously high number of ammunition manufacturers recalls in recent decades I no longer automatically trust them to use due caution in chosing components.

I've had Winchester factory loaded .303 cases split lengthwise on first firing in several Enfields that have tight chambers and headspace within SAAMI limitations.  Those cartridges were fresh and straight from the factory in the mid 90's. Years later I compared some of those cases to mid 80's HXP milspec .303 and found that from boxes of each several cases had the exact same overly wide relief groove just above the rim. To the eye these cases almost certainly came from the same source, and the case drawing equipment was begining to get long in the tooth.

I found that The U S had supplied Greece with ammunition manufacturing machinery after Britain cut off all post war aid in 1948, so its likely the equipment was WW2 surplus Winchester/Olin machinery.

 

Anyway, I don't trust recently manufactured factory ammo, so any recommendation I make will be tainted by that distrust.

With a flat point chain fire is almost impossible, with a roundnose chainfire may be unlikely, or even highly unlikely, but I'll stick with the reasoning of those who originally designed the Winchesters and use flat point bullets only when the cartridge is a centerfire.

I can't see that there would be any real advantage in a round nose over a flat point in cartridges of this class, and flat points are considered to increase knock down power and bone breaking ability.

 

Some like to use spire point bullets with one round in the chamber and one round in the magazine, which sounds safe enough.

 

Like i said I may be in error, but if so I would prefer to err on the side of caution.

I don't trust the quality control or decisions on components, often from subcontractors, of modern factory ammo, so those who have more faith in the manufacturers than I do can give their own recommendations based on that faith.

 

Marlin has issued similar warnings on availability of unsuitable bullets, both pointed and round nosed, for their pistol caliber leveractions, which can be expected to have much less recoil than a .30-30.

 

They wouldn't be making factory ammo with a round nose bullet for the 30-30 if it was an issue.

At It's most basic it has been and remains an issue to be taken into consideration, those manufacturers you mention may have complete faith in the measures they have taken to eliminate the risk, but if there was never any risk they would not have taken measures to reduce that risk.

Since I have no reason to have faith in the manufacturers I can not recommend any round nose bullet based on their faith in their product.

A primer normally must be deeply indented by a firing pin to ignite, but a loose fitting primer need only be pushed deeper into the primer pocket for the anvil to compress the priming compound and detonate.

Even a soft exposed lead round nose can exert that amount of compression, it need not be a hard pointed bullet.