Gentlemen, I have acquired a Remington Hepburn Rifle. It appears to be a Match Grade A but it is chambered for 30 WCF. This chambering seems to make it a Hi-Power. The serial number is 58** and the barrel is marked E.Remington & Sons. All the numbers match. What I'm trying to determine is if this is an antique (pre-1898) or a modern rifle. Anyone have any ideas on this dilemma of mine?

Easy XS wrote on Jun 11^th, 2014 at 11:49am:

Without seeing the barrel markings, we have to assume that the chambering you mention is "factory" and not a rebore or reline.
I believe the.30 WCF was introduced with the model 1894 Winchester, so your Hepburn had to be made sometime after that. That leaves a narrow window for it to be an antique.Hepburns were made up until 1908-1910 I believe.
And even though it MAY have been made before 1898, there is still the issue of it being chambered for currently produced ammunition .
Since you didn't mention why you wanted to determine whether it is antique, I'm not sure why it would matter unless you intend to sell it.Then you may need to run it through an FFL.
For shooting purposes,even though the round may be a smokeless loading and considered "high power" for the day, your gun apparently  uses an older E.Remington barrel; which for all intents and purposes, probably should NOT have jacketed bullets shot through it.
If your intention IS to shoot it,determine your bore/groove diameters, then get an old Lyman reloading manual and look up cast bullet loads.
Then start low and work up.

Quote:


An even narrower window, as the 1894 Win. was not introduced in .30WCF! I believe it was added to that model in 1896 or '97, and only .32-40 and .38-55 were available in 1894-95 years.

I have a Win. 1894 #5595 30 WCF shipped 9-3-1895, I'm sure it wasn't the first one.

Does not his serial number put it on the top end of production? Thus made in 1910 or so.
Don

It's always tough dating guns by barrel rollstamps. Especially when companies changed hands or go through bankruptcy. Generally the rollstamps were used during certain eras, but occasionally during a financial or ownership change, a major house keeping dug up older parts that were cycled into inventory. They sure couldn't afford to toss out good parts, just because they had an old rollstamp! This usually results in seeing rollstamps of an earlier era being assembled to guns of a later era. That creates all sorts of issues for collectors who like things orderly, and fitting the info we have for certain changes.

marlinguy wrote on Jul 19^th, 2014 at 10:44am:


Is there a possibility that that the roll stamp being used at that time became unserviceable? They would probably have just grabbed another roll stamp and continued on with production until they had a new one to replace it. It's just a guess, but it may explain the older roll stamp on a presumably newer gun.

Jesse