1876 Winchester

Am Shooting Journal ^ | 11/27/2018 | M Nesbitt

[w1n1]

Testing the new .50-95 1876 Winchester manufactured by Uberti.
One big difference between the old and new .50-95-caliber rifles is that the original Winchesters from 1879 had a rate of twist in their barrels of one turn in 60 inches.
That was for the very short 300- or 312-grain .50-caliber bullets. Today's copies of those guns, namely the Uberti version of the old Winchester Model 1876, have barrels with one turn in 48 inches.
That simply means the new .50-95s will perform with slightly heavier bullets.

When it was introduced, the .50-95 Winchester was the largest member in the line-up of cartridges for the repeating Model 1876. All of the cartridges chambered in the 1876 Winchester were considered short-range rounds when comparing them to the midrange and long range cartridges that were available only in single-shot rifles at that time.
And the .50-95 was an express cartridge, shooting a rather lightweight bullet at a high velocity, listed at 1,556.8 feet per second, making it a powerful hunting rifle for thin-skinned game within, let's say, 200 yards.

Mike Venturino included the .50-95 cartridge in Shooting Lever Guns of the Old West (2010), which is an excellent book. In the section on cartridge reloading, he gave the specs for loads with both Goex FFg powder and the fine Cartridge powder, which is no longer available.
We might say that Mike wrote about the .50-95 almost a decade too soon, because there are now some important new “ingredients” that were not previously available.

THE UBERTI 1876 IN .50-95 has a 28-inch barrel, the same length as their other 1876 calibers. Along with a different twist rate, the groove diameter of the barrels on the new guns is a touch wider than the old Winchesters.
The rifle shot for this update had a barrel with a .514-inch groove diameter, and Mike said the original he shot with had a .509-inch groove diameter. These are simply little differences we should know about in advance of preparing any “special diet” for the newer .50-95. Read the rest of 1876 Winchester.

[Vaquero]

I love the 73 on steroids. But both the 73 and 76 use toggle link bolt lockup. Very weak. I would not load these very hot at all.
I own a 1882 vintage 73 winchester in 44-40. I load it with very light smokeless loads. Nice little plinker.

[Rio]

I would love to shoot this with real black powder cartridges.

BOOM!