I’d be interested to find out how that old ’73 shot. What sort of ammo did you use, and what range and what size were your groups? I have an old ’73 in 44 WCF as well and very much enjoy shooting it. I plan to hunt Whitetail deer with it this fall.

Finding a forearm that matches finish , color and grain is very hard to do unless your taking the a set of wood off another gun. Most forearms that you see for sale will have some problems and then they may not match physically since barrels vary in size even on guns from the same era.

Bob

78CJ said
I was using OLD Remington ammo. … I only shot 14 rounds because the first ten were fine but the last four split the case.

Odd that the first 10 worked fine but the next 4 were splitting the case. You have to be careful of old 44-40 ammo. Winchester and other companies produced a ‘Winchester High Velocity’ (W.H.V.) version of 44 WCF to be used only in the Model 92. It fired a 200 grain bullet out the barrel at 1,565 fps. The standard load was 200 grains at 1,300 fps. the W.H.V. load has a much higher pressure and could possibly bulge the chamber of a Model 1873 and the cases would start splitting. They might be more difficult to extract as a result. Hopefully, this was not the case with your old Remington ammo. Have you examined the cases carefully to see if their dimensions are different from the non-split ones? It might be just that the brass has become very brittle.

The other thing you have to be careful of is a box of old ammo might actually be reloads that look like factory, or Remington ‘Hi Speed’ ammo that has wound up in an old Remington box that was not marked ‘Hi Speed’. A fellow gave me an old Remington Box of 32 W.C.F. (32-20) that was marked ‘Hi Speed’ (115 grain bullet out the barrel at 1,635 fps as opposed to the normal 115 grain bullet at 1,225 fps). Curious to test the advertised velocity, I fired several over the chronograph and found they had an average muzzle velocity of around 1,150 fps …… obviously they were not the ‘Hi Speed’ version but reloads or maybe the standard loads in a ‘Hi Speed’ box. So it could be possible that an old box of Remington ammo for the 44-40 might not be labelled ‘Hi Speed’ but contain some ‘Hi Speed’ ammo that someone put there. Either way, the Remington ‘Hi Speed’ or the Winchester ‘W.H.V.’ ammo for the 44 WCF should never be used in a ’73.