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I have a Takedown 30-40 Krag built on a original Takedown Winder Musket action. Have shot it extensively with stiff Jacketed bullet loads. No signs of any problems. The Barrel is an original Takedown that came to me with the Takedown ring with very good bore. I built it as a Deer Rifle and shot it quite a bit and have used it for hunting in Maine as a backup. So far no signs of trouble. Many Winder muskets were rebarreled to modern high pressure Woodchuck calibers. Regards, FITZ.

Fitz, a takedown .30-40 Hi-wall strikes me as an eminently practical hunting rifle. Not to mention an elegant solution to the deer/elk problem. Or is the Krag one of those "crazy modern calibers" that makes the wrong color of smoke and not enough of it? At least it's got a rim....

(Maybe you should rebore it to .40-70 for the sake of purism and auld lang syne....I call it the Garbe solution. Or just make a .40-70 barrel for those blackpowder moods that can come over one.)

I'm with Glenn. I shoot my Winder every week and I love it. You don't ordinarily do that with a big center fire conversion. I might treat it to a new barrel, but not before I'd tried the one already on the rifle with a couple of bricks of decent Shorts. They are very accurate rifles.

Richard

I resurrected a high wall Winder last year that I had found in a little tar paper gun shop outside Townsend, MA in the early '70s for $85. New liner, new butt stock and some judicious clean up on the receiver and it resulted in a very nice shooting rifle and attractive heirloom. I always thought it would be unique to convert a Winder, with an unusable barrel, to .22 Hornet or 218 Bee by relining and bushing the breach block to center fire. My question would be, can the automatic auto ejector be retained with a center fire cartridge like the Hornet or would it bind during extraction, or worse yet, leave the case unsupported? Terry H.

Terry, the answers are yes, the ejector feature can be retained; yes/no/maybe it may possibly bind enough to prevent full snappy ejection; and no it won't cause any lack-of-support problems unless an incompetent does the work.

However I figure that there's a reason why no one seems to have done this before, or at least I personally have not seen any evidence of it so far in examining many a Winder conversion. Sounds like A Good Idea however.
Regards, Joe

Mike it has made a nice light woods rifle. I also discovered that the Winder Musket shotgun butt style stock absorbs recoil much better than the standard crescent butt normally found on hunting Hiwalls. As to using the kicker feature on the extractor I am not sure. You would not however use the style of extractor that was a feature of the Winder Rifles. In my mind this was/is
one of Winchesters real screw ups. Now it may well have been that their mindset was that this was to be a training rifle and not a serious match rifle. I have worked on a few of these that started after much shooting started to misfire or not fire at
all. I have always liked the 30-40 Krag and have owned a few in the past but folishly parted with them when something else caught my attention and then regreted letting them go. My ultimate desire for this rifle is to find an original pistol grip, shotgun butt stock for it and then I will feel complete.
Well all for now. Regards, FITZ.

Thanks for the comment Joe. I think it would be the Bees Knees to set the Winder up to eject a Hornet case.

Fitz...I experience some misfire issues with my musket after I had it relined. Everything related to the fit of the extractor/ejector seemed normal. Finally, after I discussed the problem on the ASSRA forum, and posted a picture of the firing pin, Bert Hartman pointed out that I had an incorrect (flat tip) firing pin installed in it. I reshaped the tip to a chisel point and it all but totally cured the problem. Joe Steele helped me out with a replacement pin and it works fine now. According to Bert, Winchester changed out the flat tipped pin for a chisel point early in the production. Why it functioned fine for 30 years until I had it relined, I'll never know. Terry H.

THOP, thanks for that bit of info on the chisel point firing pin. I have noticed a few of them but never gave it much thought. Have a Buddy with a Lowall rebarreled and made up into a three position rifle. He has owned it for many years and it started misfiring. I have worked on it with little success. Now I have another route to try. Thx, FITZ.

I believe Winchester changed to the chisel point sometime between 1895 and 1900; I have owned several RF walls and several 1890 pumps with flat tips made before 1895.
Regards, Joe

THOP, I have a 3rd Model Winder that was converted to .25-20 WCF by relining the (rotted)bore and converting the block. I discarded the long forend and barrel band (both were in sad condition)and put a dovertail filler block in the vestigial mainspring dovetail and tapped the forend screw into it. Made a fair facsimile of a plain sporter forend out of the remains of the musket forend. Then replaced the musket stock (same condition as forend--"kindling grade") with a plain sporting stock and buttplate. What can I say--it shoots!