.25-25 Stevens

[Mgderf]

I ran across an auction the other day and they were offering a Stevens (pre-Savage) rifle chambered for .25-25 Stevens.
Having never heard of the round, I Googled it, and what I found was interesting, to say the least.

Seems the .25-25 Stevens round didn't catch on, so the number of guns chambered for the cartridge are few.
The cartridge CASE for the .25-25 Stevens appears to be roughly 10 inches long!

It was originally a black powder round, firing a .25 caliber bullet over 25 grains of black powder, but offered nothing extra over the then popular .25-21,. so sales lagged.
From Wikipedia it says that when smokeless powder came into favor, the .25-25 Stevens quickly fell out of grace and mostly disappeared.
People still wanting to shoot theirs and lacking a commercially available ammo, went to some pretty extreme measures in my humble opinion.
Since the guns weren't made to take the smokeless pressures, it seems hand loaders mixed 3-5 grains of modern smokeless shotgun powder with 20 grains of black powder!
I've always heard it's a VERY bad idea to mix powders. I'll leave that to those with more testicular fortitude than I possess.

I have very limited search fu, and even less picture posting.
I would appreciate it if someone could find a picture of a .25-25 Stevens cartridge and post it in this thread.
It looks cartoonish.

 

[Mgderf]

Here we go,

.25-25 Stevens - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[mkgr22]

I ran across an auction the other day and they were offering a Stevens (pre-Savage) rifle chambered for .25-25 Stevens.
Having never heard of the round, I Googled it, and what I found was interesting, to say the least.

Seems the .25-25 Stevens round didn't catch on, so the number of guns chambered for the cartridge are few.
The cartridge CASE for the .25-25 Stevens appears to be roughly 10 inches long!

It was originally a black powder round, firing a .25 caliber bullet over 25 grains of black powder, but offered nothing extra over the then popular .25-21,. so sales lagged.
From Wikipedia it says that when smokeless powder came into favor, the .25-25 Stevens quickly fell out of grace and mostly disappeared.
People still wanting to shoot theirs and lacking a commercially available ammo, went to some pretty extreme measures in my humble opinion.
Since the guns weren't made to take the smokeless pressures, it seems hand loaders mixed 3-5 grains of modern smokeless shotgun powder with 20 grains of black powder!
I've always heard it's a VERY bad idea to mix powders. I'll leave that to those with more testicular fortitude than I possess.

I have very limited search fu, and even less picture posting.
I would appreciate it if someone could find a picture of a .25-25 Stevens cartridge and post it in this thread.
It looks cartoonish.

That's 10 CENTIMETERS, a little under 4 inches. Still rather long.

 

[smittygj]

Interesting round, though not 10 inches long. They appear to be showing it on a centimetre ruler, and even then, it's too long. Actual round dimensions:

Case length: 2.37 in (60 mm)
Overall length: 2.63 in (67 mm)

 

[Mongo59]

Why did we never see Mexicans in the movies with bandoliers of those across their chest?

 

[Bigtanker]

 

[Leadeye]

Loading with black powder in cartridges is just as easy as smokeless, like the guns, wash BP cartridges with plenty of hot soapy water first after use. A long narrow cartridge like that probably will benefit from using a drop tube to get a maximum uniform charge. I would check the chamber before purchase as I would imagine there's a good chance the rifle was rechambered when ammo stopped being manufactured. You see a lot of 32-40s rechambered to 32 WS. It's possible this was modified to take 25-20. Cast Boolits would be a good place to start for info on the ammo.