Stevens 44 What To Do

[gnoahhh]

Ignore uscra112's advice about Stevens 44's at your peril.

I have a 44 chambered for .22WCF and even though a .22 Hornet round will chamber and fire I refuse to do so. I feed it soft 45 and 40 grain plain base bullets and either 2.0 or 2.5 grains Bullseye respectively. A fine backyard plinking/squirrel hunting load. There's simply no need to hotrod these rifles IMO.

Last month I acquired a dandy early 7 o'clock extractor Stevens 44. The only rub: it's a .32 Long rimfire. If y'all think scrounging .25-20SS and WCF brass is a pain, try locating .32 rimfire ammo! I solved the problem by swapping in a same vintage centerfire breech block (and dutifully tagged and stashed the original breech block for posterity).

Since a .32 Long rimfire chamber is dimensionaly the same as .32 Long Colt (not .32 Colt New Police) I thought I had half the battle won. Not even close. .32 Colt brass is the kissing cousin of .25-20SS brass in terms of obtainability. Aha! I'll just make it says I. Man plans and God laughs.

After several aborted tries by swaging .32 S&W Long brass in home made dies via my 5-ton arbor press I was about ready to go have a beer. The trouble lies in centering the cases in the die for the squeeze. Then a light bulb went on in my head and I tried to swage in a .25-20SS sizing die (very close to correct diameter). Still no go, too small actually, in my case. So I tried the .25-20SS seating die as a swaging die instead and voila, almost there but still not quite. I then made a screw-in swaging die for my loading press that takes the case down that last little bit to final diameter (.001" smaller than chamber diameter determined by chamber cast). The two die swaging process leaves a small belt of squeezed material at the base of the brass which disappears after a trip through my Unimat lathe. Done. Load with a 77 grain heeled bullet by thumb seating over 1.5gr. Bullseye for initial testing. Successful discharge, noiseless, and knocks an empty beer can for a loop. Lots of room to increase powder charge but I'm not comfy exploring how hard I can charge it, maybe 2.0 grains Bullseye and call it a day.

The rifle:



The fixin's:



Please ignore the glare from the flash. Left to right: .32 S&W Long, .25-20SS seater die, homemade swaging die, swaged case (note belt of squeezed material at bottom), swaged case after lathe trimming, loaded round.

One last note. These home made .32 Longs are a bit longer than standard dimensions but they work fine by putting the bullet firmly into the leade of the rifling. .32 Long rimfire chambers were evidently cut long so as to support a heeled bullet in the front end of the cylindrical chamber without touching the rifling.

[history@mts.net]

I sort of did the same thing with a Stevens I picked up at auction a couple of years ago. Someone down the line had changed the rim-fire breech-block to a centre-fire one. The rifle came with 2 barrels; one chambered for .32 Colt, the other for .32 Long Colt. Considering that the stocks had been refinished, both barrels re-blued & the Long barrel had been D&T'ed for a Redfield cantilever scope base, I figured there was no collector value to be ruined by reaming the chambers [all I had to do was run a PT&G .30 throat reamer in the required amount & Voila, a perfect .32 S&W chamber appeared] for .32 S&W and .32 S&W Long, given that both of the Colt cases are unobtanium up here North of The Medicine Line. I had attempted to follow Gnoahhh's path, but decided against that after trying to swage down .32 S&W brass.
The moulds I had Tom at Accurate make up for them work quite well, as do all of the moulds I've had him make for me. I designed the moulds for each to mimic the original weights of the .32 Stevens RF cartridges, Short & Long, albeit without the original heeled bullet design, I design all of my bullets to have a 70% meplat to use for hunting & I am partial to Tumble-Lube grooves as I exclusively use White Label X-Lox as my lube. I load to the sights for each barrel / cartridge, as I do for my 44 1/2 with matching .32-40 & .38-55 barrels.