Any of you fellas messed around with the 25-20. I've had a long affair started when I was 14 a friend of my dad gave me a win. 92, later one with the nickel steel barrel. I made a set of dies from old railroad spikes bought a pound of 2400, primers and a box of 60 gr. pills and was in business. Sadly the winny was traded off with a few bucks to buy an old AB Farquar steam boiler to run my sawmill. I had withdrawal pains and rebarreled a Ruger #1 to 25-20 which is probably the strongest 25-20 in existence. I can't find my old notebook but the Ruger is very accurate. I fit and chambered the heavy barrel myself, breech is so tite the block moves easily but it scraped off the Dykem metal blue I put on the back. The 25-20 is a dream with lead, they will do anything jacketed will do. 800X powder won't meter easily but a modest charge with lead is one large hole. Please share your loads. Frank C.
25-20 win.
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- Last Post 11 November 2014
target pics please i need a fix.
do you use 25-20 brass ... does 32-20 make longer brass .. ?
ken
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Ken I'am not up to speed on the picture thing, sorry. I use 25-20 brass, box of 100 from Midway. I have a box of 32-20 brass I'll have to try necking them down, why? do you have an old original 25-20 that uses the longer case.? Frank C.
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don't have a 25-20 ... it is on my bucket list !!
the thought about longer brass is .. one of the subjects here ... how about the little open space between the front of the neck and the start of the throat ? in soft lead rimfires, a little ring of lead collected there .. seems untidy ( g ) ... does it matter in harder castings ...?
so a longer neck would mean less * ring around the collar * ... do the targets care ?
heh, maybe it is good ...a good 22 rimfire will shoot 0.6 moa for a thousand shot group ... hmmm .
ken
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Ken, just for chuckles went down to the bench and took a couple of new 32-20 cases and a new 25-20 case sized them in RCBS die they were all exactly the same length. Its been years since I shot the 25-20, discovered I have 200 new cases. Frank C.
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I don't recall having a ring “O” lead ahead of the case neck, I borrowed the chambering reamer and it had a short abrupt lead if I recall. Frank C.
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I have been afflicted with 25-20itus since a kid. I have a 92 round barreled rifle that somebody cut off to 20 inches and put on a short Williams front sight ramp and installed a receiver sight. Ruined it for collectors but makes a neat short rifle and shoots better that it ought to. I have some five shot jacketed groups of 1MOA somewhere but it wouldn't quite average that. Just shot the CBA lever, pump, auto postal match with it a couple of weeks ago averaged a little under 2” for 4 5-shot groups -- almost. One shot of the twenty flew out and enlarged one group to 5"and raised the agg to 2.7” I never said that there were never real fliers. 83 grain LBT flat nose over 7grains of 4227. John
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That's good “shooten” John its one thing to shoot an occasional bragging group and another to include everything. I favor lever actions above all others and have always had accuracy nipping at the heels of bolt guns. The Savage 99 is a favorite. Frank C.
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The 25/20 is my favorite cartridge for edible small game. My modern Marlin is considered a strong gun.
I worked up three classes of loads.
My squirrel load is 4.0 grs of Unique behind a Lyman 257420 cast bullet sized .258 with Hornady gas checks. One shot in head or body will take them out of the tallest trees.
A midrange load is 11.5 grs of RL-7 behind the same bullet.
My heavy load (which was intended to duplicate the high speed factory load) is 14.5 grs of RL-7 (same bullet). This load is to be used in strong actions, only. It is a compressed load. However, I took five cases and loaded and fired them twenty times without a case loss. Primers are still tight and cases are still in service.
All three of these loads will stay in the small bore target ten ring at fifty yards. The “X” count will be low but all tens. A few years ago, my club ran lever action matches. The matches consisted of game targets at various ranges from 25 yards to 100 yards. Some were speed matches, some slow fire. My rifle and heavy load won every match for two years amongst some pretty dern good rifles and shooters. Yeah, I LIKE the 25/20!
FWIW Dale53
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Dale, the little 25-20 seems to punch above its weight class. I knuckled a bean eating chuck with the high speed load, instant lights out. Its too usefull a round to let go extinct. Frank C.
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Like many the 25-20 in on my bucket list I am curious as the what twist that you used in your 25-20?
RB
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Nimrod, I believe my 25-20 is 1-14. Heaviest I've fired are the 86 gr. bullets designed for the 25-20 although it really likes the pointed 75 gr. pills not sure how well they would expand at such sedate velocities. Frank C.
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