Thank you very much Bert for sharing all your knowledge and advice.

I will indeed clean her up a bit, I will have to tighten the ladder sight a bit too. But unless I trip over an original stock I don’t think I’ll bother, I quite like it the way it is, and knowing it’s not historically valuable gives me a bit more comfort to be able to use it as it was always intended to be. I’m looking forward to spending some time working up some loads and enjoying this lil gun. 

as for the continued discussion about little guns and not so little piggies, I think as well as bullet placement the importance of projectile construction should not be forgotten either. Lever gun and black powder bullets are probably on average not only more limited in design options but also better constructed to penetrate, also the generally lower velocities would likely lead to less fragmentation, giving them a better chance of getting into the engine room.
 
the importance of bullet construction was something I had always read about and understood, but was really pointed out to me  one day with the .223 that I mentioned earlier and it’s 60gr nosler ballistic tip and 60gr nosler partitions that I put through it. I had run out of partitions due to a shortage, and had tended to leave the pigs alone knowing that the ballistic tips wouldn’t be ideal for the task. I only had the .223 with me and came across a pig at a water point one day that paid me no attention whatsoever when I pulled up, it was only about 50 yards away, grazing in a bit of a depression, I decided as it was side on and not going anywhere that I would take a chance and have a go with the ballistic tip, I aimed at the base of the ear and fired, the pig dropped, at the sound of the report another pig appeared from another depression and stood facing me looking at its buddy, needless to say I chambered another round and squeezed one off, this time aiming right between the eyes.

all that bloody pig did was shake its head for a second as if a bee had bitten it, then ran down into the depression to its buddy, nudged him a couple of times, up jumped the first pig and they both took off at a trot leaving me shaking my head too, but in disbelief. 
needless to say that was the last time I wasted a ballistic tip on a pig…

thanks again

Dave

Hi Michael,

that seems interesting, what would have had to go wrong with the original model 53 that donated my barrel to the 92 that they didn’t just swap the entire rifle? Especially if this was happening often, or did Winchester supply new model 53 barrels as replacement barrels at some stage to get rid of surplus stock?

and if your hypothesis is indeed accurate do I now have to pay a collector to take this rifle off my hands ?

thanks,

Dave