It's not a single shot so will take my answer off the forum.

I had been looking for a 38/55 levergun.  Shop out in SW Virginia has several yards of Winchesters racked with the occasional Marlin mixed in.

Looking through today saw one that was a bit unusual. Like a Marlin but not. Turned out to be a Stevens High Power in 35 Remington 3 digit serial number.   Nice shape bore and all but two extra holes on the receiver top.  It was priced way less than the Winchesters and Marlins so I bought it without checking things our first.

Seems very few were made not that it makes it valuable but it is a nice looking lever gun with smooth as silk action.  Looking at the cartridge if I can get some brass seems I can shoot 357 mag lead bullets or cast some up from a heavy bullet 357 mold.  I would like to get 1500 fps with a plain base for lever gun matches short range.

Anybody have any advice give me a PM

Boats

Thks

Got it home and ran a tight patch through the bore, it's slick as can be.

Have not slugged it yet but 158 gr 38 spl factory cast bullets look like they are going to fit pretty good. Nose pushes in the muzzle down to the driving band and base won't go in the muzzle.

Ideal would be a 200 gr bullet cast to fit the bore, however the 38's I have on hand will do to get things started.

I don't plan to load anything but cast target loads, doubt if it's a strong action.

Boats

Thanks Screwloose

2400 does sound like a good choice, If you are looking for velocity in a 357 mag it's the powder to use and more predictable than Unique, This 35 Rem may well show the same tendency.

I have been pulling old loading manuals out, Mattens has quite a few loads for the 35 Remington.  Has a number for recipes for SR#80 which is very similar in performance to 4759 He tends to go for the 80 with heavy bullets Unique with light.   Has a load specifically for Revolver bullets at 900 fps too.  That's what I am going to go for first. His preference seems to be a 200 gr plain base cast bullet at about 1500 fps

Of course Mattens book was written before 2400 was on the market.  Looking at Sharp's Complete Guide to Handloading now.

My 1911 Stevens Catalog shows not only the rifle but exploded diagrams of how the action works.  I thought the action had been drilled for a mount but see it came that way from the factory.  One hole is empty the other has a buggered up screw that's going to need to be pulled

Also it's not a 3 digit number, thats the model number 425 serial number is 31XX  Lots of stuff on the Lever Gun boards about the serial numbers.   Some gun book years ago said 25,000 were made, latest opinion is less than 1000, so much for gun experts. & books.  Internet is about 50% true no different than the mass gun press.

Must have been a real expensive rifle to make and in small quanities no doubt a big money loser for Stevens.   

Boats

Flayderman is the source of the number made error, or so the lever gun forum says.  They speculate 1000 max. This model was made from 1911 to 1917 only  Could not compete with Winchester and Marlin.

Gun Shop had at least a Hundred Winchesters all over 1000 bucks 1500 dollars in the condition of the Stevens,  400 on a cash offer, it had sat unsold for a long time. I was pretty happy about it.  If it shoots will be real happy

I ought to leave the non single shot banter alone on this forum, but it is a Stevens.

Boats

6 plus one, 22 inch barrel 7 Lbs half magazine curved rifle buttplate.  best description of the rifle is in Sharpes book, The Rifle in American published in 1938.   It was chambered in all the Remmington Rimless cartridges 25 30 32 & 35 All on the same case. It's almost the same head size as the 30/1906 but much shorter

They made 4 grades,  425 like mine is plan, 430 fancy wood 435 light engraving 440 heavily engraved.  Sharpe said 1910 to 1918

Keep you guys posted as it develops

Boats

     Boats - - -

                 Sounds like a windfall to me.  If it can be fired one cartridge thru the loading gate at a time, doesn't the qualify it for discussion @ ASSRA ?  I would think so !

           Is it tube fed with the tubular magazine under the full length of the barrel ? (e.g. Win. M-94 )

           Any chance you can bootstrap a photo up on the site for us to enjoy ?  After all, it's Friday !

          Creedmoormatch

Podufa

Brophy's comment is the one quoted on the Lever gun forums.  Having a copy of Brophy's 03 book and from it realising he was a true authority I tend to believe him rather than Flayderman who was fixing values on thousands of guns.  Add the facts that production was less than 10 years and you almost never see one I think 1000 is correct.  I don't have his Marlin book but ought to buy one.

I have been looking at guns like it fairly serious for a very long time and this is the first one I have seen.  Fellow on the Lever forum is collecting serial numbers and only has a couple of dozen listed from Stevens collectors.

Creedmore will see if I can take a photo.

Boats

What are the survival rates for any unusual CF hunting rifle made in the US & sold in limited numbers (<25,000) only in the years before WW1?  1 in 10? 1 in 100? 1 in 500?  I have been chasing odd lever actions for more than 50 years and I have seen 3 Stevens 425 rifles; 2 in upstate NY years ago (1958 & 1968) and 1 in CA that I played with about 10 years back.  All 3 I have seen were in 35 Rem.  I had a Standard Autoloading rifle, also in 35 Rem, back when I was in high school in upstate NY in 1958.  How many of those do you see today?  And for many of you, have you ever seen one?

That said, I have seen only 2 original 44 1/2 rifles on gunshop racks and I have looked all over the country.  To me, they seemed pretty scarce until the Internet sites appeared.  We seem to be in agreement that Stevens made about 12,000 44 1/2 actions.  Yet Winchester made about the same number of 3rd Model Winders and those are not at all uncommon, at least among those of us in the single shot set.

My approach to the odd-ball pre-WW1 rifles is to think about who sold them (and where) and who bought them.  I think there are definite socio-economic & geographic patterns to the original pre-WW1 distribution.  How many of you have heard stories about "hunting uncles"?  Guys who were unmarried, who had relatively good jobs that gave them free time & $, who enjoyed hunting, fishing & maybe fancy ladies.  Guys who might have had a hunting cabin off somewhere in Maine or Michigan or Minnesota.  Those guys bought the rifles, used them (more or less), cared for them (more or less), lost them when the boat sank or the car crashed or the cabin burned, gave them to girl friends, left them in the attic or cellar or out in the garage, lost or won them in card games.  When the hunting uncle passed away, there was no memory of where the rifle went and no immediate family to squabble over the estate.  Did single shots go to more stable homes?

waterman

I find it pretty amazing that the fellow has been able to record 98 serial #s for SHPs.  Almost certainly, he has not been able to record the #s of all the surviving SHPs, but I find myself wondering what % he has recorded.   

I agree that a #s range from 1000 to 5000 indicates about 4000 were made.  If the fellow has been able to record almost all of the survivors (unlikely), the survival rate is about 1 in 40.  If he has been able to record half of the survivors, the rate is about 1 in 20, or about 5 %.   

Awhile back, I provided some #s and descriptions to a collector assembling a data base on Winchester Single Shots.  We know how many were made, but how many have survived?  Can anyone make a guess?  If Winchesters had a survival rate of 5 %, there would only be about 7,000 around today.  I am pretty sure that a far greater % have survived.  In 50+ years of looking at used guns, I think I have looked closely at somewhere around 600 Winchester Single Shots, and maybe more, with condition ranging from rusty relic 32 RFs to some incredible specimens (and I have never been to Cody).  That's less than 0.5 % of all the Winchester Single Shots.   

I can't remember all the Winchesters I have seen & inspected, but I remember all 3 SHPs.   

The old Stevens adverts and Sharpe (Rifle in America) show artist's renditions of fancy engraving on SHPs.  Were any SHP rifles really engraved like that?

Did Marlin make the SHP?   

Waterman,

Now I am guessing, not speaking with any authority.   

I suspect Stevens made up actions and if receiving an order for one of the higher grades, fancy wood, checkering or two grades of engraving, finished the rifle fitted to the owners requirement.  I would bet they did not keep high grade rifles on hand.  I am to get a copy of his list of rifles will check for high grades.

I have a reproduction 1911 Stevens Cataloge and Sharpe's Rifle in American too, have seen the illustrations.  Pretty rifles for sure.

On the Survival rate,  Agree your comments 98 rifles is not the survival rate just the recorded collector's list.   Must be plenty of them out there not on this list.  Internet will bulk things up though. I found this from a quick search only, Think about getting such a list together years ago from dedicated collector organizations only. People that are not enthusiast can research obscure collector guns easily now. Does that factor into the recorded survival rate?  Does the fact the guns were produced in small volume affect the actual survival rate, compared to something in larger production ?  who knows.

Am not sure how the Stevens High Power comment came to be in Brophy's Marlin book, I don't think there was any Marlin involvement,  Will have to look around and see. I would also like to compare the drawings of Stevens High Power lock up vs Marlin. Might have been some patent exchange or purchase.  Marlins had solid top receivers and actions built for high pressure cartridges much earlier than the Stevens Lever Guns . Perhaps Stevens bought some patent rights from Marlin

More Questions than answers I am afraid

Boats

I am under the impression that the Stevens was designed such that the rear of the bolt locked into the top of receiver similar to their shotguns where as the Marlins have a plate that engages the lower portion of the bolt. The Winchester 94 has a plate that extends across rear of bolt requiring a transfer pin to strike firing pin

     Boats;

          Will the newly acquired Stevens High Powder rifle be traveling with you to the Froggie Shoot ?  My Stevens catalogs are not newer than 1906, so I've never seen one of these new fangled repeaters.

         Bring it along for show and tell, why not ?             

     Webb

Yes, the Marlin 336 has a slide that moves up into a mortice in the bottom of the bolt to lock, at the back end, pushed by the lever.  I have never seen the Stevens, but it sounds very much like.  The Marlin also interlocks so that the firing pin cannot fall if the locking slide is not fully home.

.35 Rem was the first cartridge I reloaded, the first one I ever used cast bullets in, and is still one of my all-time favorites.   Can be made to knock over rabbits with light loads behind soft cast .38 Special bullets, flatten coyotes with harder .357 Keith bullets at 1850fps, or knock down moose or elk at reasonable ranges with a full load of 3031 and 200gr. JSPs.    And brass is not at all hard to find.  I just wish it had a longer neck.

My best results for midrange loads (1850 fps with hard .357 Keith semiwadcutters) have come from using XMP5744.  For my really mild loads (900-1000 fps with soft pistol bullets), I had some luck with Unique, but 5744 does as well, so 5744 is the only powder I would use for cast bullets now.   

If you really cannot find any .35 Rem brass, P/M me and I'll sell you some.

The Standards are interesting, if not particularly reliable rifles.  I got a decent Model M (pump only) in .25 Rem. from a pawnshop ten or more years ago,and a junker Model G (gas or pump, with selector ) in .30 Rem. from an auction site.  Total production (1909 - 1912) less than 10,000, probably about 4000.  The pumps were numbered in the 1 - 5000 range, and the gas-operated ones 5000+.  The earliest M's - at least - were made with slightly longer barrels, 25 in. vs. later 22-1/2".  They were also made in .32 and .35 Rem. rimless./  Confusingly, the rimless cartridges were advertised and boxed as ".25-35 Remington" and ".30-30 Remington", and Flayderman and others still list these along with the rimless versions, though the feed mechanism would never have worked with the rimmed cases.  I have an original 1910 catalog (Cornell Publications offers reprints of this as well as the 1909 and 1912 issues).  Best of all, a cartridge collector friend found me one of the neat little takedown tools,disguised as a .35 Remington round: the bullet pokes into the action behind the trigger guard, to separate the upper and lower receivers for takedown, and pulls out of the dummy case to reveal a little square wrench that operates the gas shutoff on the G and the forend bracket on the M.  The ASSRA Archives have articles on the Standards from the PAGCA "Monthly Bugle", March and October 1984.  And why post this on a single-shot forum?  Because that's about all you got out of them at a time, especially the G, whose closely-fitted parts were seriously liable to jamming.

Boats, I was the one who twisted the thread around to the Standard.  It has been more than 50 years since I decided someone else should own mine.  Doug is correct.  The Standard is mostly a single shot with a bunch of extra parts.  It was not intended that way, but that is how mine worked.  Even opening the action was a challenge.

This is far away from single shots, but since you brought it up I will comment on blowback Winchesters.  I have not yet reloaded cases for the 351, but Sharpe said it could be done with regular dies for the 357 revolver cartridge.  I know that one will function with regular .357 factory loads if the rims are turned down.  Chuck them up in a drill press & use a file. It ain't safe, but it works.  I'm pretty sure your Schuetzen shooter's 351 solution will be either jacketed or hard cast bullets and a case full of 4227, maybe even a compressed load. 

I have loaded for the 401 autoloader.  The only load that will function the action properly is a maximum load of 4227.  Sharpe wrote that 2400 worked, but our modern 2400 is too fast and the action does not have time to function.  Cases will get caught and the action will be sprinkled with unburned powder.  The Russian 7.62x39 cartridge is just a necked-down 401 WSL.  If you run a tapered expander into the Russian cases, you get cases that function properly in the old blowback.  Maybe a proper 401 WSL autoloader is an SKS.

Working for the State?  Brings back lots of memories.   

waterman

Some years ago, a friend & I were prowling the back country with a 351 and 401.  We found a burned down cabin with about half of the brick chimney still standing.  The rest of the bricks were scattered around.  We found that we could hit bricks at 35 to 50 yards, most of the time.  That level of "accuracy" even worked when shooting factory 357s with the rim turned down in a drill press.  The 351 shattered the bricks.  It is a more powerful cartridge than the 357.  The 401 absolutely vaporized the bricks.  But I don't think either rifle is capable of accuracy better than "bricks at 50 yards".

When I was in high school back in upstate NY, I saw more than a few of the M-1905 blowbacks converted from 32 WSL to .30 Carbine.  That gave you a rifle that was about the same size as the GI Carbine but one that weighed twice as much.  Anyhow, you could get ammo for it, which is more than you can say for the rest of the WSL series.

Campbell's Winchester Single Shot book shows a High Wall chambered for .351 and another in .401.

Quote:


This is excellent advice. I have most of the Ideal manuals and the old books written about reloading. With pre-war loads you have the dual problem of changes in the burning rate of powder plus larger capacity balloon head shells. Post war powders have also changed. Now that Hodgdon has bought most of the powder companies, I would suggest sticking to their suggested loads that are offered free of charge on their website.