Winchester 94 --new owner questions

A friend just gifted me an old Winchester 94 30/30 carbine that dates to 1956. Aside from a little rust on the receiver and the exterior of the barrel, it looks pretty good. It does look like it needs to come apart and get a thorough cleaning and oiling, and there are some good youtube videos that demonstrate the disassembly/reassembly, but I still have a few questions.

I have yet to fire this rifle and I am concerned about what ammo to use or if it really matters-- I have never owned a lever action rifle before. From what I have read, I realize it is preferable to use round point bullets because of the possibility of recoil causing a round in the magazine to go off, , but other than that what are the limitations? I thought the pre-64 models were pretty robust, but a friend said that pressures in some modern ammo can be too high for this gun. Is there anything to this?

Also, anyone know where I could find a period specific manual on pdf? So far all of the ones I have found have the more modern hammer lock or tang safety.

If you are sure it is a .30 cal then any reputable brand of .30-30 Winchester center fire ammo (30WCF) will be fine (assuming the weapon has not had some other abuse). They made the Model 94 in several calibers --the correct one will be stamped on the barrel, next to the receiver.

Beware of reloads --reloads are fine, but it's really all about the reloader who did the reload. I use reloads, but either I did them myself, or they were done by someone I know very well, and have confidence in. There are also companies that sell reloads and if it's a reputable company then OK. Defining 'reputable' is an exercise I leave to the end user.

You probably should take the rife to a gunsmith (a good one) and have it cleaned professionally. This should not be very expensive.

While the collector value of a 1956 era weapon is not high it is still more then the 'shooting value', and well worth protecting. I'm not saying don't use the weapon, if fact using it is good for it (it will take a lot more then your shoulder will).

A good gunsmith will also be able to tell you if it is, in fact, all pre-64. Many pre-64's have been 'repaired' using Marlin or other post-64 parts (collectors have to watch for this sort of thing).

Please do not 'over clean' the weapon, or ruin a screw head with the wrong driver during assembly/dis-assembly --these and other things that may seem unimportant can really reduce the weapons collector value.

It is, of course, yours to do with as you please, but as a collector of pre-64 Model 94's (in a small way --they can get quite expensive), I urge you to have a professional go through the weapon at least the first time.

Don't worry about the chamber pressure --if the rifle is in good health any (good) ammo of the correct chamber/caliber will fire just fine. And don't let it sit around --go shooting!

Well, it is clearly a 30-30 and just going by the serial (begins with 215), it is pre-64. It has the dovetailed lyman sights front and rear, and it has the lyman tang sight as well(at least looks like a 1A, don't know if they are the same as the ones for the savage mod 99)

I plan to shoot it enought to get reasonably familiar with it and then occasionally bust coyotes with it.

Sounds like you know what your plan is, and that you're not unfamiliar with weapons --sorry if I sounded like I was talking 'down' at you. There just is no way of assessing someones level of experience on the net (You know what they say: On the Internet no one knows you're a dog).

I can't help all that much with web sites (beyond what a Google search has no doubt already shown you), as I've been at this longer then there has been an Internet, so most of my stuff is old fashion books.

Here is a date from serial no. site (you may have already run across this one or others), it differs slightly from some of my books, but not significantly, and for all I know the web site may be more up to date.

Winchester Model 1894/94 Dates of Manufacture

I really have not seen an owners manual (which I'm sure is what you'd like) on the net that covers the 'half cock' safety (i.e., early '94s). I'll wager they are out there if one searches enough, and there are without doubt some for sale.

Winchester is remarkably helpful, drop them a line, or use their contact web page --they may be able to fix you up with anything you're searching for.

But mostly, as I said before, Go shooting!

Good luck and have fun with your new (to you) rifle!

Round nose ammo is correct for the magazine on this rifle
due to contact with primer of proceeding cartridge.

Hornady does have some soft plastic pointed nose ammo
for this style magazine that might improve accuracy if you
can find it in 30-30.

SOunds like a nice gun, I love my Pre 64 94's.

As far a taking it apart, its not hard, but you need to take your time. Take some kroil and soak all the screws for a few days before trying to take it down and use good screwdrivers. Also for the rust, dont try to "touch up blue" just take some 0000 steel wool and some kroil and scrub it off. Dont go overboard with the cleaning trying to restore, youll kill the value.

As far as ammo, dont wast money on the "hot rod "ammo like Hornady leverlution. I dont really care for the leverloution ammo's performance in game anyway, they destroy too much meat and kick to much. Good old Winchester white box and Remington green box in 150 or 170gr sprn shoot as good as anything else and work well in game, and are cheaper.

If you reload, cast bullets work well as well.

Hi.

I have a Marlin 30-30 I've owned since I was about 8. The safety drill is the same as for your Winchester.

Those guns didn't have much of a "safety". If you start with an empty chamber and load the magazine the chamber continues to be empty until you load it by cycling the lever. Once you do this the chamber is now loaded AND THE HAMMER IS COCKED! Assuming you don't want to proceed to fire the weapon the next steps are: 1) POINT IN A SAFE DIRECTION!!! 2) Firmly grasp the hammer with the thumb; 3) Pull the trigger while GENTLY but FIRMLY lowering the hammer all the way to the down position; 4) Pull BACK on the hammer (without your finger on the trigger) until you reach the "half-cock" position. This will provide some margin of safety if the rifle is dropped with a loaded chamber. In such event it could very well detonate a round. That is the purpose of the half-cock safety.

In most cases it is far far better not to chamber a round until you're ready to fire. In the case of deer hunting this is not practical. Hence, in that situation I would always climb into my tree, pull the EMPTY GUN into the tree, then load the magazine, lever a round, drop the hammer. Then back to half-cock. Then wait for the next dead deer. Out to about 150 yards - possibly a little better - a 30-30 is hard to beat.

One final thing about pointed bullets - and hunting generally with a 30-30. You CAN TREAT THEM AS A SINGLE SHOT RIFLE! In such case you can indeed fire a spitzer type bullet for even better accuracy and possibly slightly better range. However, to my knowledge such cartridges are not commercially available - only if you reload.

But loading only 1 - possibly 2 cartridges makes a lot of sense. When it's time to unload the only way to do so (to the best of my knowledge) is to cycle them through the gun. While this is going on it is indeed possible to have an accidental discharge. Hence, the fewer cartridges you have to clear the better off you are in my opinion. The huge advantage of a side loading lever action carbine is that you can fire one and load one. So you can indeed shoot pointed bullets if you do it that way.

V

There is one other safety feature. There is a small tab just a bit over a half inch behind the trigger that the lever must depress in order for the weapon to fire.

Where this gets really important is in unloading or going to half cock. If one is not familiar with the weapon it is easy to be pulling the trigger, holding the hammer with your thumb, and start getting frustrated when the hammer seems unwilling to release (this will not happen if you have the lever firmly pulled up to the stock).

The human mind is a funny thing and sometimes the thumb is not holding the hammer as tightly as one thinks, because it doesn't seem to be releasing anyway, because the trigger isn't releasing --then they 'accidentally' grip the lever a bit tighter, while still pulling on the trigger, and thinking they have the hammer held with their thumb --result is as though the lever cause the weapon to discharge, as the hammer slips away from their thumb.

Rare, yes, but I've seen it happen (thankfully the weapon was pointed in a safe manner and no one was hurt).

This is one reason (correct or not) that you sometimes will see someone with a '94 in a stand at full cock, but with the lever about a 1/4 inch or so from being fully closed --no need to disturb your aim just grip naturally with your hand and it's ready to fire. I'm not saying anything about the safety of using the weapon this way, simply observing that it is sometimes done.

We have an old Winchester 94 Sporting Takedown. After our greatgrandfather died the rifle was taken and put in storage in a sheepskin gun case. Upon looking at the rifle 5 years later, it was frozen with rust and was give up on. Got tossed to another family and after 35 years gone, made it's way back to the family. It was given to me and I sprayed it down every week or so with Zep45. The action freed up and it took more soaking to get the thing to break down. The bore looks ok for it's age and the chamber is good. The barrel where it screws into the reciever is on the loose side assembled. I'm not a gunsmith but it looks like a shim in the right place will solve this problem. The serial # is not legible due to the extent of the rust it had. It is a nice relic of the heritage of our family. It was built sometime in the early 1900's. The pre 64 Winchesters are a work of art and do have value. I don't know what the value is on our 94, but it is an Indian gun, of our Reservation so it is priceless to us none the less. Keep your Winchester! It's about all that is left of our old west!

I agree about keeping your '94, and any other '94 anyone has --or at least find someone that will appreciate it if you just do not (for whatever reason) want to keep it yourself. Odd as it may sound selling it will do the trick just as well as looking for someone to give it to. Because anyone willing to pay it's value will be very likely to be in the market because he knows it's 'real' value.

Now about that barrel being loose; If I am understanding you correctly shimming it would likely be a bad idea because it would probably screw up the head space, and that can have some very bad results when fired --as can the barrel being loose. I'd say that need the attention of a gunsmith.

The serial number can probably be retrieved, if you want to invest in the project, by any of several methods (infrared, ultra sound, and other somewhat expensive non destructive ways), or "1 part nitric acid, 1 part 15% acetic acid, and 2 parts Isopropyl alcohol" which would probably remove the rust to the point of allowing one to read the number, but might also devalue the weapon... it's a tough call.

But I personally would think, from your post, that the monetary value is not important to you, in which case I'd just hang it in a place of honor and allow it live it's days out in the glory it no doubt deserves.

The half cock hammer slip issue described by + or - zero is something I have also experianced. Almost shot my twin brother one morning when we were loading up for deer season.

Dad saw to it that one of those little hammer extention spurs showed up under the Christmas tree.

Mom still does not know.


I highly reccomend the hammer spur extention, especialy if your wearing gloves when you hunt with it. They clamp on dont perminately alter the gun. You used to be able to get them at Walmart.

"But loading only 1 - possibly 2 cartridges makes a lot of sense. When it's time to unload the only way to do so (to the best of my knowledge) is to cycle them through the gun. While this is going on it is indeed possible to have an accidental discharge. Hence, the fewer cartridges you have to clear the better off you are in my opinion"

DO NOT UNLOAD A 94 WINCHESTER BY CYCLING THE ROUNDS THROUGH THE CHAMBER.

A much safer way is to take them back out through the loading gate. Depress the loading gate with your thumb and with an extra round lift up on the base of the cartridge in the magazine and it will come out. Repeat until the magazine is empty.

An added advantage to doing it this way is that the cartridges do not end up on the ground or lost. Gary P. Hansen

Gary --that is a method OK, but it has two problems one should be aware of.

1. Unless you have fired the weapon and intentionally left the spent brass in the chamber you will have a live round in the weapon while unloading it through the loading gate.

2. You can not use this method if the lever is in the 'open' position, because the loading gate is locked unless the lever is in the 'almost closed' position. And that means there is no way to get a live round out of the weapon without cycling it at least once. Possibly you could remove the next round from the carrier up through the breach.

The point is simply that there is more to unloading a '94 then emptying the magazine.

I agree that the magizine system of the 94 is a bit out of date by modern standards.
Cycling rounds through the gun seems to be the standard technique.
Fiddling and fishing around to get rounds out of the gun in the dark with gloves on sounds like trouble to me.

What does Winchester recomend in their owners manual?

Another consideration - when reloading for tublar magizines, the bullets need to be well crimped, or the spring force + recoil can push the bullet into the case.

I should just stick with my single shot 45/70 and stay out of the fray.

The manual for a pre-'64 '94 says to eject the round in the chamber, then, with the action still in the open position, roll the round that is in the carrier out into your hand by rotating the weapon to the right until the round falls into your hand. Then close the action, which will now be on an empty chamber, open the action, roll the next cartridge out, lather, rinse, repeat, until empty. Then work the action at least twice more being sure each time that there is no cartridge in the carrier. Carefully lower the hammer with your thumb, then pull it back to half cock.

Obviously I paraphrased that, but you get the idea.

Later '94s have a easily removable tube that you pull up and then dump the bullets out, after cycling out the first round, and 'rolling' out the next round, as described above + using the new safety cross bolt or tang, as the case may be. Still with the check twice admonition.

And while I'm thinking about it, the newer weapons come/came (new) with the hammer extension --for exactly the reasons you stated, ahall.

The marlin 336 lever gun I have did come with a hammer extension, and with good reason.
It is VERY VERY easy to have the hammer on that gun in particular slip off a thumb,
even one with excellent grip.

Because it seemed to be a bit mickey-mouse, being held on only with one small allen
head screw, I removed it, and vowed to adhere to the range rules where I shoot, which
is one round loaded at a time.

Well range rules --rule. But I have, on several occasions, at the owners request, simply drilled a small relief --about a quarter of the hammer thickness, then used a longer allen head set screw to hold the hammer extension (lots of people seem to find the simple factory set screw a bit doubtful).

I would have to talk long and hard with an owner of a pre-64 '94 before doing that --and even then I probably wouldn't do it.

But if he was insistent, I might try to get him to buy a marlin (or any post 64, '94) hammer and I'd drill and install that hammer so he could have the best of both worlds, should he ever want to sell it as collectable the original hammer could be reinstalled.