This "Speaking Frankly" article appeared in the July/Aug 2013, #224 issue of the Fouling Shot.

(Editor’s Note: Frank  Washam has graciously agreed to come out of retirement and edit these newly acquired “Franklys.”  Thanks Frank!)

One negative among the native Turkey Shoot regu-lars was; that if you had an other than routine type and caliber of rifle, sooner or later they’d think you had an advantage.  My favorite Turkey Shoot which had also turned into a trading mart for that added attraction to gun buffs, got a lot of my intense attention. 

One day a native, well regarded “cracked shot” Turkey Shoot winner unsheathed a Model 94 Winchester real clunker in 38-55 cal. “for smokeless cartridges.” This one looked like it had been drug around behind a plough in a rocky field, bounced around in the bed of a pickup in company with broken bootleg quart jars, then did at least one free fall down the steep side of Franconia Notch, then laid in the Lost River for at least one summer and winter.  (Ed. Note: “like new”) 

This junk dealer solemnly assured me that “It shot a lot better than it looked” which was a true Yankee state-ment since “better than it looked” wouldn’t take a heluva lot even if it had a smooth bore 38 cal. gas pipe. “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” he says “Besides that,” the eager seller added, “Only the front six or so inches of this barrel was bad and this was a tight barrel and I put on a carbine stock with the carbine steel butt plate instead of that sharp hay fork and that nice new front blade sight is centered up nice since I sliced the barrel off to about 18 inches or so and made it into a half magazine light, stiff carbine, which is the style now.”

I didn’t ask him how come it had a carbine saddle ring and one solid open wide “V” rear sight in the dove slot, but a good look thru the barrel was a pleasant sur-prise, so I says, “What kinda ammo have you tried in this relic that some basement butcher stuck you with that shoots way high I’ll bet?” He says, “They’s 16 rounds left, goes with the gun, I’ll get ‘em.” It was scruffy HV Winchester ammo, but a fired case looked like the old chamber was smooth and close with a tight action.  An unfired load (not a handload) snugged up nice when the lever was up tight.  Although half carbine and three quar-ters rifle, if this gun had nothing else, it had character. I knew the guy was no relation to Rockafella so I gave him his first asking price of seven bucks.

Hope springs eternal with casters, so bright and early I’m bellied up to Ma & Pa’s Truck Stop Food Bar the next A.M. contemplating what fools these mortals be putting out seven big bucks for that mongrel dog of all dogs Mod. 94 .38-55 and Will had said, “Don’t bring it in the house.” But I was coops bound with my hand tong tools, assorted primers, a hundred match grade standard .38-55 soft alloy bullets at 258 grains, and enough #80 and Unique for a day.

Just to be sure my day would be made I also had the nifty Swede, scoped 25” barrel 9.5X57 with a beltfull of my standard 375296 wood’s loads.  This throat fit tapered load at 1800MV was one of the most consistent cast loads of medium bore class I had for full confidence, and I kept it ready.  There were 9.5X57 Swede Sporters. This was a custom 9.5X57 Mannlicher-Schoenauer cal-iber, very nicely done that was a prima cast loader.  That rifle and the 9.5X57 Mannlicher-Schoenauer 20 inch car-bine were my show off pair, one scoped or irons and the M.S. with only iron sights. These two class act guns had been the ones that the turkey shooters feared.

Although I had not won anymore than the other fair shots with their Plain Jane common popular caliber rifles, my fancy fusils were noticed, thus the notion that those rifles were the edge for my “consistent good luck.”  Will and Gramps both, when they finally let me bring the .38-55 dog of mongrel dogs into the warm shop decided that the carbine receiver with saddle ring was original along with the carbine buttstock, but the heavy octagonal 18” barrel, fore end, and half magazine were salvaged from a long tom rifle and cut to keep the best part of the rear 18” of barrel with old sights such as some one had laying around.  Although no doubt this was a bottom line base-ment butcher job I argued that fundamentally it was func-tionally quite practical. 

Will ran a .379” diameter round ball thru the barrel a few times and says, “This barrel ain’t awful bad for a fact and might surprise yah.”  I didn’t know which way Will meant and Gramps opined, “It might at least shoot a round ball for barn plinking.” 

About then I made up my mind I’d get that thing to shoot lead if I had to make it into a straight case .40-55. This was not an original brainstorm.  One of our coop’s maestros had a Ballard .38-55 with a clunker barrel and had bored it out, re-rifled it for the .403” cal. popular match bullets which, when rechambered to use a .38-55 solid head case, was then a no taper straight case for easy to get brass and accurate.  For smokeless powder utility he used a 16” twist and grooves .004” deep rather than the usual .003” of .38-55 and other popular lead loaders.  This rejuvenated .40-55 wild cat Ballard made the .32-40 and .38-55 S.S. buffs sit up and take notice quite often.

Be that as it was, first things first.  As a 38-55 was that day’s workout with the first pleasant surprise, the one stiff fixed open rear sight looked like it was supposed to be on with the old standard 38-55 load at maybe 1200 M.V. from this bob tail 18” stiff barrel.  Some prior fondler of this ruffian must have had some ideas about rifle shooting at wood’s range for a good sign and this was with standard velocity jacketed factory 255 grain Winchesters for openers.  If cast didn’t do it I could always go with Jacs.  A few H.V. loads didn’t shoot but a couple inches higher at maybe 1500 M.V. Almost always we could beat the undersize 38-55 jacketed loads with cast in generous cut 38-55 factory pipes and my cast bullets were .380” diameter for this .379” groove diameter which also created a very nice neck fit.

Using #80 for what we knew did 1350 from a 26” rifle with the #375248, inside the coops, where this power was legal versus the slanted armor plate backstop. I held hard with bead centered in the 100 yd. bull at 50 yards. As the bonyfied castaballers know, this first shot is a very hopeful moment that may linger in your memories if right, but mostly that second shot is the main thrill if close to that first one.  From my long experience my first cast bul-let shot that memorably pleasant day with the mongrel Mod. 94 I still well recall as being about four inches over the fairly centered standard factory load large group. Not unusual with a lubed lead bullet at about a velocity equal to the jacketed.  

Lighting a Lucky Strike whose green had not yet gone to war and hoping for my luck to hold out, I fired #2.(Not #2 as with cannon but my second shot.) My fondest hopes were not fulfilled and I’d rather say, wow, I was in business.  But, this shot was in the top half of the jack-eted group, then three more strung in about five inches, but hope unfaded, only about two inches wide.  This had to be ignition, not uncommon with old hammer guns and the sear let off was easy, typical of a weak mainspring.

I didn’t fool around.  The next five loads differed only via a large pistol cap which lit off #80 and Unique O.K. for such loads at wide low pressure. A two inch group at 50 yards is a 4 M.O.A. act not uncommon to light pipe carbines, but this was a stiff solid octagon barrel that I knew by then wanted to shoot maybe a two minute group if cool like all shots are in the woods or at Turkey Shoots, which was my number one concern. 

Unique didn’t solve this one, so with my muzzle pro-tector on the 38 cal. brush and rod with fine steel wool and lap paste, I did 100 more full length passes added to the 100 I’d done priorly which had made the barrel look good although very faint, dark places still showed.  Doing this lap job carefully to make sure the brush was turning with the rifling and thinking also about various accuracy cast loading tricks, I suddenly realized a couple of things I’d been doing wrong that day. Gramps had said, “If you’re gonna shoot this contraption single shot only, as yah gotta do at a Turkey Shoot, then load it like a single shot match rifle.” Of course, but in the nonadjustable old nut cracker tool, with mould attached, I’d been seating the standard #375248 with a full close of the handles which seated the bullet to work thru magazines while at the same time put on a crimp very firmly, all O.K. for hunting loads. 

You can bet as soon as I did those 100 strokes lap job I’d seat bullets to touch the well rounded over leade and omit the crimp at the same time.  To do this uniformly required only the right screw driver shaft from my kit box held between the handles of the tool. Later Will drilled a hole in the handles for a screw adjustable to hold han-dles apart the desired amount with a lock nut.  Later I got a Lyman Double Adjustable seater. Following this sec-ond lap treatment nothing but gleam could be seen and the corners where lands joined grooves were as sharp in the angle as the day that this barrel was made.  The top edges of the lands weren’t sharp when I got the gun nor was the steep leade, typical of a much shot rifle, so back confidently with five more.

Although I had no index mark on these bullets, a slight mark on one part line side did allow index loading and by then a coopy regular was training his scope on my clean D.S.B. target at 50 yards.  I wanted to show him something and at the first shot holding at six-o-clock on the black bull from a dry barrel he says, “X at 12-o-clock.”  This was routine with a stiff 38-55 lever gun. Four more fired slow for cool weren’t all X’s but one was and three close.  The old coopy says.” Duke, wassa mat-ter?  You losing your fine touch suddenly?”  He never knew how good I felt about that 1-1/2” center group at fifty yards, holding at bottom of that same size black that the Turkey Shoot used. I don’t know if it was the match loading or the lapping or both, but I am saying to myself, “Turkey Shoot here I come.” 

While the old fellah was asking, “What unhel kind of a junk heap this odd looking thing was to get Duke so interested?”  Compared to my exotic stuff I usually had, I was loading ten more and I just said, “Special project, sort of a joke thing.”  I had to make up my mind then on; should I fool around filing down that rear sight to hold center or go with the six-o-clock hold which I seemed to see pretty good and this gun was to be a surprise joker winner for the Turkey Shoot exclusively, I hoped. 

It started out on that winning course right away when the sharpshooter coopy ace says, “Put two targets up at 50 yards Duke, I wanna check my 44-40 Marlin Long Tom with factories, so while I’m at it I’ll give yah a chance ta win a couple of bucks off me with that 38-55.”

This guy kept his sights checked all the time and I knew that Marlin did it good even with “factories” but also I had taken a few bucks from him when he misjudged how that 9.5X57 scoped Swede could do it at 200 yards, not to mention 300 yards with scopes and that had been versus his hot high repute Winchester High wall 40-90 Sharps Straight with a new 5X target scope from bench rest. One thing this good shot never did learn about repeating lever guns was to not shoot fast for money, so I’m only up to my third shot when he’s by then watching my target and hoping like hell I’ll blow one. 

“So far we are tied now if you let one shot out of the 10 ring of the next two,” he says in his strange way of try-ing to bug me a bit.  That was old time religion around the coop’s contestants so I says, “Wanna count just the best three shots and I know what you did wrong already, so I can save two very accurate rounds of match 38-55’s?”  He says, “Shoot, will yah for kryze sake, I’ll be late for dinner the way you’re foolin’ around feeling up that barrel and sippin’ coffee.” I didn’t blow one, he was-n’t late for dinner, but I was and with two bucks in pock-et back at Mom & Pop’s Diner, a big steak and fries then was only 55¢ with no charge for smothered in onions. This included coffee and one piece of pie.  In those daze, 2 was like 20 these idiot daze.

That Saturday among the natives at the Turkey Shoot around the fire barrel, I had the most neglected looking old “scrap parts smoker” probably ever drug out around those parts and I hadn’t even done this openly displayed piece the honor of wiping off the last of the rust or re-oiled the dry, dented wood.  

The guy that had “dumped that one on Duke” I was sure was then telling his pals also that, “He knew that lemon hit high as hell most of the time and never very close together” and had his same H.V. dull, weather beaten cartridges out in front of my belt easy for all to see with my mackinaw unbuttoned.