Howdy
Nice '73.
The 'case colors' on yours look much better than the colors on mine. I have always felt the colors on mine look kind of blotchy, not at all like a good bone Case Hardening job.
I bought this one used about 15 years ago when I decided to go over to the Dark Side in CAS. It was made sometime in the 1980s, I forget exactly when. I wanted a rifle with a shiny bore, rather than the pitted bore of the original Model 1892 I had been shooting. I had read that it would be a lot more work cleaning all the fouling out of thousands of tiny pits, so I wanted a shiny bore. Which incidentally, turns out not to be necessary, but that's a tale for another day. You can see how much wear and tear I put on this one over the years shooting it in CAS, that's bare wood on the forend where I have worn away the varnish.
Although Uberti seems to have settled on .429 for the rifling groove diameter for all their 44-40 rifles today, this one is actually .427. I have slugged it a few times to make sure. Originally I was shooting .427 bullets in it. It would feed and shoot .428 fine, but it was not crazy about .429 bullets. The problem was not the bullets, but the tight chamber. Even with really thin Winchester 44-40 brass, a .429 bullet would bump up the diameter of the case mouth enough to make chambering the rounds a little bit stubborn. At this point I have a bunch of 44-40 rifles, and I have compromised on .428 for all of them, because of differences in groove diameters,. .428 is working fine for everything.
Your brass carrier looks nice and shiny now, but if you keep shooting it with Black Powder, even in 44-40, eventually the carrier will become stained from the little bit of fouling that makes it past the case and onto the carrier. The only way to keep the carrier looking shiny yellow is to remove it and polish it. Not worth the effort in my humble opinion.
Regarding Jimmy Stewart's Winchester 73 movie, I have watched it so many times Mrs Johnson refuses to watch it with me anymore because I usually speak all the lines as the characters speak them. I can't quite figure out why she finds that annoying.
Sometimes at a match my Pard Wild Bill Blackerby and I will goof on the movie doing that thing Stewart and Dutch Henry do every time they shoulder a rifle. It has nothing to do with ejecting rounds, they only do it as they shoulder the rifle, not while levering it. It is pure Hollywood baloney. The story is Lin McAdam and Dutch Henry Brown are brothers, and that is the way their father taught them to shoot. They do this dumb sideways tilt of the rifle for a second or two just before they shoulder the rifle. Then they start blasting away as fast as they can, with no tilting and the empties eject just fine. As they do with any Winchester. Of course Mathew (Dutch Henry's real name) went bad and killed their father, then became an outlaw and changed his name to Dutch Henry Brown. That's why Lin wants to kill him. Don't miss the brief appearance of a young Tony Curtis as a soldier, and the great Jay C. Flippen as the Sargent. And the great Will Geer (Grandpa in The Waltons) as Wyatt Earp. And of course the then unknown Rock Hudson as Chief Young Bull.
Don't waste your time watching the remake that was made in 1967. Complete junk.
Just picked this sweet thang up tonight. I’ve always wanted one of these and it goes well with my Uberti 1860 Henry. The action is smooth as butter and the trigger seems pretty nice. The barrel is 24” but looks longer in the photo. 44WCF of course.
