It's been a very long time since I've been on this forum. Hope all are doing well. I've been on a 12 step program to sell off a bunch of guns and not buy any more. But then a real nice Hepburn in my favorite caliber, 38-55, popped up on the internet. I couldn't resist! A reasonable price was settled on and I bought it. When it arrived it was WAY better condition than the pictures revealed. But upon inspection, the first inch of the muzzle had no rifling and a .379 bullet would drop down until it hit good rifling. The bore looked great with a scope and it slugged beautifully. The front sight dovetail was a horror show. Way too large and crooked! I cut the offending section of the barrel off, recrowned it and cut a new dovetail on the milling machine. I finally had time to get the range and see what it could do. Before I went to the range, I had to drill and tap another hole in the tang as the tang sight I wanted to use had closer hole spacing.  Interesting to note that whomever did the first tang mounting used  8-32 screws which aren't  gunsmith threads. I used the same tap to keep everything the same. I had to make two bolts to attach a much better tang sight that I had on hand. And I made a plug for the extra hole. The tang sight it was wearing was mid range and offered no windage adjustment. This replaced sight will easily allow out to 500 - 600 yds. Once this was done I headed to the range with my GoTo 38-55 cartridges. 8g of Unique with a piece of toilet paper to hold the powder against the primer and a LEE cast 250g lead bullet...lubed with whatever I had in the lube-sizer. This load shoots amazingly well through six 38-55 rifles I have. I simply looked through the bore at a target at 100 yds and moved the sight to be SOMEWHERE on the paper. Blew my mind that with a center hold, the first bullet impacted about an inch above the bullseye! No windage adjustment! With a 6-Oclock hold the next 4 rounds went into an amazing tight group. Four shots with three holes! No windage adjustment! Moving the rear sight up two clicks and I was spot on at 200yds....and three more clicks up and the gong at 300 yards was singing! Past that and I would need a spotter on a scope to see the hits as that little 250g bullet at around 1200FPS doesn't make enough noise to hear the hits. I need to go buy a lottery ticket. Things almost never go this easy with a new to me rifle. Not bad for a rifle that is over 140 years old! (BTW, serial number 8338....)

Roy, very nice looking Hepburn.  They are a unique rifle!

marlinguy wrote on Oct 1^st, 2024 at 6:20pm:

Agreed, it is unique. But it is mentioned in Tom's book on the Hepburns. I believe it might be a "hunting" version. I have no idea if the wood is original. A lot of changes can happen in 140+ years!

Thank You! I'll check that out.

It really is a great cartridge. I have a 44 1/2 with a number of barrels, a 219 zipper, a 3030, and a 3855. It’s an original 44 1/2 that was done over by Shuttleworth. it’s a shooter. I just sold a good friend of mine a C sharps model 75 and 3855. He just had to have it and I have plenty of 3855 firearms. All of them are great shooters. Those green mountain barrels that I used on the Ballard is an amazingly accurate Rifle.