In the case of a Ballard in .38 Long with a shootable barrel, it would be easy enough to flip the firing pin from rimfire to centerfire, trim .38 Special cases down, buy a heeled-bullet mould and go shooting. That’s what I did with my Ballard in .32 Long, only in that case, I was able to scrounge up .32 Long Colt shells, moulds and reloading dies. The rifle was in usable, but by no means pristine collectible shape, and it was much more interesting, and much less work, to shoot it in its original condition. I found another Ballard in .38 Long, with bore and chamber hideously rusted, brown and pitted outside, the buttstock repaired in antiquity but by then with finish oxidized nearly black. I had no qualms about converting this to centerfire, restocking and getting it relined to .32-20. I even drilled and tapped the barrel and put a scope on it; one of the outside-adjustment types that look “period.” Never lost any sleep about “originality” on that one; it shoots nicely with blackpowder loads. A third Ballard was originally in .22 Long, was shot-out and sent to Stevens to be rebored and rechambered to .25 Stevens, and then was shot-out again. I relined it back to .22 caliber and chambered it to .22 LR. I tightened the linkage with new screws and pins but otherwise have left it alone. The gun is a uniform brown patina with no pits, as is the original stock, and it says “Rebored and Rerifled by J. Stevens Arms Co” on the barrel. A fun and interesting shooter. If the .25 barrel had still been good, I’d have done some soul-searching about the reline, and might not have had the heart to do so. But I was spared that crisis of the soul. Another was a Stevens 44-1/2 barrel in .25-20 SS, in perfect shape inside except for bad pitting ahead of the chamber, probably from corrosive/erosive primers. I did everything I could to get that to shoot, but nothing worked; not lapping, oversized bullets, nothing. I sent it to Redman for a .25 caliber liner and chambered it to the original caliber. But not without pains in my heart. It shoots nicely now, so the pains have pretty much been forgotten. The only way to have saved the original barrel (and I am usually at pains to save original Stevens barrels, as they were very well done and set many records) would have been to rechamber to a longer shell, like the .25-35, and that would have been an even worse compromise in originality.
|