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Practically Shooting

Looking for a Browning B-92


Pablo

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Thanks!

As I dry cycled the gun I found the action to be solid, but a little tight compared other levers. It looked a bit dry, so the good news is a little MP made it smoother with a little notchiness. After I shoot it a few times I will explore this further.

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  • 1 month later...

Update: The Rossi R92 in 454 I ordered came in, what a disappointment! I cycled the action a few times and man that thing was rough, I told them they could keep it. I did fondle a Blackhawk that cought my eye though!

The Rossi can be slicked up. Most of 'em are rough out of the box, but you can tear 'em down and polish and hone and transform the action.

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I heard the Rossis can be a bit rough. I've handled a couple that were OK- not terrible, not great, but OK- so they must vary.

I cannot explain it, but I want one of the Rossi Ranch Hands. I make fun of the .410 revolver craze, yet I want a Ranch Hand- go figure.

I had a Browning B-92 for a while. Mine was a .357 Mag. Now that was a slick operating rifle. I bought it at the Lafayette Louisiana gun show in the winter of 1985-86 for $280. I shot it a few years, made one of the more spectacular rabbit kills I've ever made with it (125 jhp that sent him straight up about eight feet high) then eventually traded it off. When I traded it, they weren't bringing much. This was about a year before Cowboy Action Shooting took off and people were going nuts over them for a while. Sigh.

I never was overly thrilled with it's accuracy. It was OK but not great. It didn't like cast bullets much, as it had pretty shallow rifling. I wasn't shooting a lot of cast then, but I wanted the alternative.

The front sight had to be filed down a little to raise the POI enough. I hear that's common on the Brownings.

About two years later I bought an old Winchester 92 that had been rebored/converted to .357 many moons ago. It is also pretty smooth, but I don't know how much of that is from plain old wear!

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The Rossi can be slicked up. Most of 'em are rough out of the box, but you can tear 'em down and polish and hone and transform the action.

I saw a guy in Cowboy Action newspaper who does this - but I'm thinking I will do it myself. Have you run across any articles on this very subject?

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Originally Posted By: G-MAN

The Rossi can be slicked up. Most of 'em are rough out of the box, but you can tear 'em down and polish and hone and transform the action.

I saw a guy in Cowboy Action newspaper who does this - but I'm thinking I will do it myself. Have you run across any articles on this very subject?

http://www.gunblast.com/SteveYoung.htm

http://www.stevesgunz.com/

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  • 2 weeks later...

Believe it or not. Shannow from BITOG, or rather in AUS, has one a .44 Mag for sale but we concluded just too much hassle and expense to ship.

Yep, way too hard to get it over there I reckon. Still for sale, I can't shoot it at our local range anymore.

Does yours have microgroove type rifling ?

Mine does, and is pretty erratic with plain lead bullets (admittedly, the commercial ones are a tad on the small size 0.427-0.428). Pretty good with brazilian factory stuff....50 shots in a singlet top one afternoon leaves a nice bruise.

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The problem with most big bore plain lead is they don't wax them like they do 22's.

All my 44 mags have some type of copper jackets - and that's our only restriction. Outdoors anything goes, indoors we can't shoot plain lead for health reasons, even though the air circulation is fantastic. It's a little more difficult to get jacketed 44 specials (but not impossible), but most 44 mags are jacketed.

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The main problem when using cast bullets in any caliber is fit.

A jacketed bullet is fairly forgiving of small differences between it's diameter and the bore diameter.

Lead bullets...not so much. Not if the bullet is too small. And most are.

The lead bullet absolutely has to fit the barrel. Usually, that means at least bore diameter. That's where you start, because a particular rifle might need a bullet well over the "accepted standard" size. This might be from variations in bore sizes from gun to gun that cause some to have slightly oversize bores, or it could be from the type of rifling used having a preference for larger bullets.

Examples of each: I have a Ruger .44 Magnum rifle that prefers bullets .432" dia (.429 is std; it slugged at .431"). My Marlin 45-70 measures .458 (std) but needs at least .460 because their Micro-Groove rifling seems to prefer bullets big. May Marlin .41 Mag (Micro-Groove) is the same way, requiring cast bullets of .412 as bare minimum.

Most commercial cast bullets are undersized. Or rather, they are the size they are supposed to be, but gun barrel will usually be oversize (At least, based on my measuring and from talking to other casters, bores tend to be big). Order cast .44 bullets and they will be probably be .429. Odds are, your barrel will be at least .430, if not .431, and might even be larger.

A .429 bullet shot down a .431 barrel will slide, skip, strip...anything but fit.

It's worse with 9mm bullets, because you will probably get .355 diameter and most guns I've checked were .357-.358. Only one was .355 diameter.

At 750 fps, you might get away with it, but at 1200 or more you probably won't. Slowing down isn't needed because the bullets are cast lead. It's because they don't fit. Slowing down is a band-aid that reduces the effects of that.

Buying cast bullets at a gun show or online and getting "the standard size" for your caliber might work, but it's because of luck. You get lucky sometimes and those bullets and your barrel match. Ordinarily however, if you slug your bore to see what diameter bullet to start with, you will do a lot better.

Once I learned this, it changed everything with me and cast bullets. I've since used them in rifles up to 2400 fps (a .223) but try to keep them around 1800 fps because, well, there isn't much point in going faster unless I could go a lot faster. But the bullets have to fit.

I also learned that harder didn't mean better. If the bullet fits, it won't need to be so hard you can't scratch it with a thumbnail (often suggested as a gauge). Harder might even be a negative thing after a point.

The lube doesn't need to be hard like a crayon either. In fact, it's often better if it's softer, and a lot of people use the softest that will stay in place in the temps they shoot. The reason most commercially cast bullets use such a hard lube is because it holds up in shipping when the bullets might see high temps and/or rattling around. It looks sharp, too.

Bullet lubes have advanced a lot in the past 50-60 years, btw, much like shotgun shell wads.

There are exceptions to all of the above, as with most things. A rough bore will probably never shoot cast bullets well no matter what you do.

Black powder cartridge guns will often (if not usually or even always) do better with a bullet at bore size or even under, because the rear will obturate (bump up) from the quick jolt BP gives it. You use a softer bullet to facilitate this. The base end will fit while the nose remains small enough to pass over/through the fouling from previous shots without deforming terribly. It becomes sort of a fireformed-to-fit-the-need bullet.

And the .22 rimfires seem to be an anomaly. You can buy almost any ammo made, shoot a case of it through almost any gun, and when you clean the barrel the most lead you might see is a little gray-silver mark on the first patch. And only then if your solvent was really good. I've seen and heard a lot of speculation on why this is. It may not be such an anomaly because I think it's still mostly from bullet fit. The .22 bore has been standardized at .222" for well over a 130 years and makers do a good job holding to that measurement from what I can see (a lot are more like .221").

Search for cast bullet forums. I bet you will find the most common topic is bullet fit. (And by far the most common solution to problems.)

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Yep, I missed an ebay .432 Oz made mold that I was going to play with.

Range rules meant that I couldn't have dialed it in 'though, so wasn't worth pursuing.

Double coating of liquid alox made an improvement, so I think diameter would have fixed it.

Thinking of getting an ex-mil (I shoot on the range for the Oz made Lee Enfields, so would like one of those), or a Finish Nagant. Mate has a few good molds for the threeoh, and regular 7.62 with paper is another experiment.

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Thinking of getting an ex-mil (I shoot on the range for the Oz made Lee Enfields, so would like one of those), or a Finish Nagant. Mate has a few good molds for the threeoh, and regular 7.62 with paper is another experiment.

I love the Lee-Enfield. I only have one (a Fazakerly No. 4) but wouldn't mind having a few dozen more.

There was a saying about WWI rifles that the Americans had the best target rifle (Springfield), the Germans the best hunting rifle (Mauser 98), but the UK, they had the best battle rifle (L-E). I think that's about right.

If I was heading off to war and limited to a bolt action, that would be my first choice. With the finer milled rear sight used on some No. 4s (or even better- a Parker Hale sight) and some bedding tuning, they are no slouch on the target range either.

I've never shot cast through either of my .303s (I have a Pattern 14 also) since I bought a bunch of 123 grain bullets for the 7.62x39. Those work well as an economical paper poking bullet that shoots pretty well, at least to 100 yards.

What's the name of that bullet mould company in Australia? Cast Bullet Engineering? I hear they make great moulds, and quite a variety for the .303.

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And yes, range rules can be odd. I once belonged to a range where you could shoot any handgun on earth, but no rifle other than .22 rimfire or black powder/muzzleloaders.

I could shoot a Contender in .223 or 45-70, or a muzzleloader with the ballistics of a 45-70, but couldn't dare bring a .22 Hornet rifle.

Velocity limits in indoor ranges I can understand, because velocity is the enemy of the armor backstop, but limits like that are pretty arbitrary.

Yet I also understand they needed something clear and simple to follow.

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