after years of dreaming and drooling, the gunshow gods smiled upon me last saturday and i now own not one, but two low wall winchesters.

the story: (skip this paragraph if you don't care.)
two low walls on a table $750 for the pair with a sticky on the stock the one had issues; inquire for details. i was super excited but the vendor wasn't at his table.. i waited for a while but still seeing noone i went to check out some more tables. i checked back several times every 5 minutes or so and when i finally saw he was back (4th or 5th time) there was already an older gentleman ther fondling MY rifles and scratching his chin. grr. we glared amicably at eachother for a minute until we realized that we were each interested in different ones; he wanted only the good rifle and i was more interested in the one that needed work ( extractor needs work, the breach block was improperly converted from centerfire to rimfire and and some rattle. recently relined octagonal 26" barrel in .22 short.) we set about negotiating how much we would each pay for our respective rifles to meet the sellers asking price. the my fellow buyer commented that he wanted the rifle to replace one he already owned that a gunsmith had ruined when rebarreling for him.. he gave a very dire description of its state.. even more interesting. i volunteered to pay the greater half ($400) if he would give me his parts gun; the he copuld have his new LW for $350.  after hmming for a minute, he agreed. we payed up, grabbed our guns and i jumped in his pickup to retrieve the parts gun from his house. i was expecting a box of parts from his description so i was amazed when he pulled out a nice, complete .22 wmr from his safe and handed it to me!

gundata places the serial #156x as 1886 manufacture. completely funtional and very tight. there is a crack, int the front flange (barrel was not turned down enough apushed it out when torquing the new barrel in.) and the reciever has been poorly welded.  supposedly the smith sho put the new barrel on, fired a greased proof load and the grease caused a pressure spike whick cracked the saide of the reciever. the smith welded it up, (wasn't the best welder tho) refinished it and charged extra for his "services". the owner, outraged, didn't trust the repair job and only fired it a couple of times before laying it aside in the safewhere it has sat ever since.
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Did all right there, didn't ya? Even got a free ride in his truck.

thanks guys, i'm certainly happy with them.
this isn't my first single shot (several contenders and other break actions) but its my first winchester and first FB.

can anyone tell me core about greased loads? i'd never heard of that until now. i've done some searching and all i've found is a couple of references to the military armouries testing with one dry and one greased proof round... the greased giving  greater rear-ward thrust