By Duane Thomas
“Old West” lever action long guns chambered for pistol cartridges operated through two basic systems: the elevator/push rod system, with the latter piece sometimes called a follower rod though not by me (Henry, Winchester Models 1866 and 1873) and the shell lifter, sometimes called a shell carrier though also not by me (Winchester Model 1892). While the elevator/push rod guns are, I think, fascinating, in this article I’m going to discuss the importance of bullet shape and its impact on feed reliability in the shell lifter system Winchester Model 92 and the numerous copies based on its design.
These days, we most-closely associate the shell lifter system with shotguns, but it was introduced in the Winchester Model 92, a lever action long gun that was, over the course of its production, chambered in four different pistol cartridges: .44-40, .38-40, .32-20 and .25-20.
It’s important to note, all these cartridges were bottlenecked, meaning the cartridge has a tapered shape, considerably wider at the base than the case mouth. Thing is, the Winchester Model 92 shell lifter system is a gravity feed, i.e. the cartridge just lies on the lifter, it’s not a controlled feed, which means, depending on the orientation of the rifle, and how fast and hard the lever is cycled, there can be small differences in how the front of the cartridge orients itself with the chamber mouth as it moves toward insertion. Bottleneck cartridges mean the front of the cartridge is significantly smaller than the rear of the chamber into which it must insert, so there’s some built-in “slop” to the system. This is a Good Thing.
In the modern era, however, people want to fire their Model 92s and clones thereof with commonly available modern cartridges, for instance .357 Magnum/.38 Special, .44 Magnum/.44 Special, and .45 Colt.
In another Reloader.com article I discuss the importance of cartridge overall length to reliability in a Winchester Model 92. I will not be recapping that here, instead I’m going to focus on another factor influencing feed reliability in the Model 92: bullet shape. This is important in the elevator/push rod systems, as well, but as I said before, we’ll leave addressing them for another time.
Okay, we have several basic choices here: wadcutter, semi-wadcutter, truncated cone, roundnose, roundnose flatpoint, and jacketed hollowpoint. Let’s address them all:
Wadcutters: Forgeddaboudit. While the Winchester Model 92 can, in fact, feed smoothly and reliably with non-bottlenecked cartridges, for that to happen the front of the cartridge still needs to be shaped such that it’s considerably smaller than the chamber opening. A wadcutter cartridge, with the bullet loaded completely down into the casing, is an extremely sharp-edged cartridge barely smaller than the chamber, and a total no-go. The sharp edge of the cartridge casing mouth will frequently hang up on the bottom edge of the chamber mouth. At best, this leads to a significant hitch in the lever stroke, at worst it will fail to feed completely.
Semi-Wadcutter: Same problem as with the wadcutter, only now it’s not the case mouth hanging up, it’s the shoulder of the bullet, the flat edge that cuts those nice, sharp-edged, full-caliber holes in paper targets we all love so much, that can hang up on the chamber mouth. Again, this leads to, at best, at hitch in the lever stroke, at worst a feed to feed.
Also, of significant note, when the front of the cartridge enters the chamber, it comes in at an upward angle, then the top of the cartridge, the exposed side of the bullet, has to bounce off the top of the chamber in order for the cartridge to straighten out, and come in-line with the chamber. With a semi-wadcutter, instead of bouncing, the area between the bullet tip and shoulder kind of “bridges,” in other words, though there’s nothing in-between the two points of contact, the shoulder and the edge of the bullet tip, it’s just air, in effect the gun acts like that’s a solid, straight piece of metal. When “flat” bullet side meets flat chamber top, sometimes, instead of bouncing off, as flat meets flat, the cartridge just stops, leading to a “low angle jam” with the cartridge partway-in and partway-out of the chamber.
Truncated cone: Feeds better than semi-wadcutters in the sense we now have a small bullet tip to insert into the chamber, and no shoulder to hang up, but shares the tendency for the “flat-meets-flat” feedway stoppage issue of semi-wadcutters. Only now instead of giving up the effect of “solid straight metal meets solid straight metal” we actually HAVE “solid straight metal meets solid straight metal.”
Roundnose: Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. The roundnose bullet gets around all the feed reliability problems. We now have a bullet tip considerably smaller than the chamber opening, and a nice, rounded ogive for the bullet to bounce off the top of the chamber.
Roundnose Flatpoint: When cartridges ride inside a tubular magazine, as in the Winchester Model 92, the front of the next cartridge in-line has its bullet tip butted up against the base of the cartridge ahead of it. This is why we never load pointy-nosed bullets into tubular magazines. Under recoil the cartridges can “bounce” in the mag tube, at which point a pointy bullet tip can do a wonderful impersonation of a firing pin, leading to at least one, and possibly more, cartridges detonating in the magazine, with possibly resultant damage to the firearm, and the shooter. This is a Bad Thing.
While it’s true that roundnose bullets generally cause no problems in tubular magazines, especially if the ogive of the bullet nose is fairly blunt, still I think we can all agree we’d feel better if that bullet nose was flat, therefore it’s not really touching the primer (especially if we’ve seated the primers below flush) and the only contact point of flatnose to cartridge base is literally to either side of the primer.
Thus, by far my favorite bullet shape to load into a Winchester Model 92, or any pistol cartridge lever gun for that matter, is the roundnose flatpoint. The “roundnose” part of the description means a nice, round bullet to bounce off the chamber during feeding, the “flatpoint” means absolutely no worries of cartridge detonation in the magazine tube.
Jacketed hollowpoints: It’s worth noting, there are quite a few hollowpoints in the world where the overall bullet shape mimics roundnose flatpoint, it’s just the “flatpoint” isn’t actually flat, it’s hollow. But in a Winchester Model 92, the overall effect is the same as roundnose flatpoint: round bullet shape means feed reliability and smooth lever movement, and the sides of the bullet tip around the hollow cavity are all that touches the base of the cartridge in front of it. The wider the hollow cavity, obviously the more true this will be.
Thus, my advice, when choosing ammunition for a Winchester 92 or clone thereof: Limit your bullet choices to roundnose, roundnose flatpoint, or a jacketed hollowpoint with rounded sides and a wide hollow cavity.
