I have this fascination with take down rifles. So when I was offered a 92 Winchester 25/20 take down in trade I went for it. The price was right. Thats the good news. The take down plate was peened and shimmed with paper and the bore is about a 5/6, that is the bad news.
The barrel is just a tad over 23" and does not appear to be cut off and the magazine tube is the proper length. The cut for the take down lever has original bluing in the bottom of the slot.
My question is would this be correct?


Thanks for Any help
Exblaster

Would what be correct ? You covered several points in your post.

FWIW, peening/shimming is a shade tree repair IMHO

Barrels could be ordered to any length a buyer wanted, between 15" & 30" for $1 per inch variance from the "standard" carbine or rifle bbl lengths.

AFAIK, Winchester never just blued the bottom of the takedown slot, so bluing there (being residual) would indicate the original finish was blue, and the condition would be based on the remaining % or original bluing remaining.

I, for one, would like to see some pics..........

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I would also like some pics!

Assuming this gun is to be a shooter and isn't in pristine collector's condition, I'd consider getting the barrel relined. Few .25-20s have decent bores, in my experience, and thus can't take advantage of cast bullets, which are one of the main reasons to own one, IMO.

I have had three relined (actually one of them was a Ruger #3 in .45-70 until I relined it). The relines restored their excellent accuracy. I have one .25-20 that had an excellent bore, a Savage 23B that apparently had been a closet queen from about 1939 when it was made til 1982 when I bought it. Lucky because 23s are a pain to reline!

Takedown guns tend to loosen up from being taken down too often, more than any other cause, I think.

Thank you for your response to my question. I should have ask if the even length of the barrel was correct, it is my experience that Winchester lever gun barrels did not measure out to full inch increment. Usually thy are like an eighth or more longer than the stated length IE 23 and 1/8 or 23 and 3/8 not a full inch increments.

As to pictures I will post them when my post count meets the required 25 posts.

I do agree that the peening or shimming of the take down joint is a pore way to tighten up a rifle on this example the adjusting screws were not turned in to take up the slop as is proper.



Exblaster

I agree that original Winchester barrels, especially on rifles that don't have a barrel band at the muzzle, are often an "odd" length--somewhat over or under an even inch measurement. 23" or 17" barrels are very unusual; the usual length for a "shorty" is 20," just like the common carbine. But as noted, you could get ANY length from 14" up (never heard of a 13", which doesn't mean they don't exist). You need to get a verification letter to find out if yours was custom-ordered, or just "customized" by hacksaw.

.25-20 '92s are slick little rifles and saw a lot of use out on the rough edges of civilization after the "real" frontier was gone. Anybody could shoot them well and they would kill just about anything if you shot well and weren't far away. When I was 11 I killed a 180# feral boar (weighed with the guts and blood out) with a .25-20 '92 rifle that had been my grandfather's "issue" rifle to his vaqueros back in the 1920s when he was running a small cattle outfit just above the Mexican border in Southern CA. Took a few shots, tho.

I often wonder if this little rifle ever traded shots with any people. Suspect it did; the border was almost as nasty then as it is now. (My other grandfather used to say the CA/MX border was the nearest you could get to **** without a shovel....he was one of Old Man Diaz' "scientificos," and would have known what he was talking about.).

slightly off topic, but.....

the other really great rifle that is almost gone now is the 25-35... probably one of the MOST under-rated cartridges ever, they could be made to do really well, and it's rated by most as the most improved of the P.O. Ackley "Improved" cartridges...on the order of a 35% improvement, which would literally blow quite a few of the varmint rounds outta the water today. (In a good BOLT rifle) ....and in a lever, they are just PURE fun, and in the right hands, very capable of shooting a deer in the head at 200 yards .....(not that I'm advocating that, I just knew a old gentleman that shot ALL his game in the head,..... was a legend in the area, nobody had ever seen him miss...... he told me once that he didn't like chasing the animals around the brush.....

sorry about the highJack....thot it was worth saying.....

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