...1895 Winchester...

ParadiseRoad

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...Osa Johnson in Africa...

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Thanks to the OP for starting this thread and posting that photo. The 1895 is my favorite centerfire lever gun, in this case a 30.06 take down model with case colored receiver.

...I have become a fan of the 1895 myself...beautiful example that you have there...

...Osa applying a little makeup...with her 1895 near by...

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...Osa And Martin...Martin with the 1895 and a cheroot cigar...

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...Martin with 1895 and Rhino...

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Teddy Roosevelt was a famous promoter of the Winchester Model 1895 in caliber .405 for big game. This picture of him with that gun and a rhino that he shot was taken while he was on safari in Africa in 1909.

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The .405 Winchester cartridge is pretty impressive. Here it is compared with other popular cartridges. The Model 1895 could also be ordered in caliber .30-06.

John

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I once had a Winchester 1895 which had been re-barreled to .30-'06. I don't know what its original caliber was. The problem with that was that the .30-'06 bullets had to be very deeply seated to fit into the magazine. Factory-length loads were too long to go into it. I fired only lighter reloads with deep bullets because it has been stated that the 1895 action is too springy to use full-power .30-'06 loads. I sold that gun over 30 years ago, sort of wish that I hadn't.
 
Osa Johnson was along on George Eastman's (Eastman Kodak Co) African Safari in 1926..'Chronicles of an African Trip'
Don't know if she made the second trip a few years later.

Eastman wrote, and photographed much of the long safari and then self published it. The book is a very interesting read w/ many pics (yes ,, of Osa as well).
Reprints of the orig are very fairly priced.
Original copys are kind of rare. Probably not a lot of them printed. It doesn't mean they are necessarily valuable though.

(FWIW....Also along on the trip was Eastman's personal physician, Dr Audley D, Stewart.
He is of course shown in the book and was quite a story in himself.

The party bought 3 Model 1910 Mannlicher Schoenauer 9.5mm rifles in NYC before leaving for Africa.
Dr Stewart is shown posing with one in the book with a trophy animal.
I bought Dr Stewart's M/S rifle from his son A.D.Stewart, Jr. in 1992 when the latter brought it and a Marlin .22 rifle into a gunshop I worked in to sell both. The rifle was sold to the shop on paper, I bought it thru the shop as an employee before it could be put out for sale.
I still have the M/S.
There was supposed to be a leather 5 rd cartridge belt pk w/ Kynoch ammunition still in place in it to go with the rifle. But that never materialized. I was never able to re-establish connection to Mr Stewart Jr...)



My own '95 is in 30-06 and mfg in 1915 or 16.
It loads, feeds and functions with WW2 GI ammo fine.
I limit it's diet somewhat to that stuff. The '06 version has a track record of headspace problems developing.
What occurs is the face of the bolt itself sets back,,an imprint of the casing head of the 30-06 round.
Not seen as insufficient lock-up strength in the 95 action itself but rather the bolt face is either too thin or soft,,or both in some of the rifles.

It doesn't seem to happen with every 30-06 chambered orig '95 ever made and even though many of them have most likely fired a share of Milsurp GI ammo. The factory stuff is no fluff ball in the pressure dept either.

A fix used to be to plunge mill the face of the set back bolt out and solder in a new blank of steel. Then face that off to reset the headspace back where you need it using a Hd/Sp gauge.
Rarely done anymore I'd guess, liability, lawyers and lawsuits scare people away from doing stuff like this anymore.

The repro 95 is/was chambered in 270Win,,maybe other similar pressure rounds and with more modern steel and heat treat, the action is more than up to the challenge.

My '95 was restocked and marked as such by John Oberlies, Dayton, Ohio. Most likely in the 1930's.
 
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"The '06 version has a track record of headspace problems developing. What occurs is the face of the bolt itself sets back,,an imprint of the casing head of the 30-06 round. Not seen as insufficient lock-up strength in the 95 action itself but rather the bolt face is either too thin or soft,,or both in some of the rifles."

That is the first time I have seen what the nature of the 1895 .30-'06 headspace problem was, although its existence seems well known. As I said earlier, I always used lighter handloads, also usually lighter bullets (130 grain) due to the magazine length problem, and additionally I don't think I had fired more than several hundred rounds through it. So I had no headspace issues. It was in pretty good condition except for the replaced barrel, and as I remember I didn't pay very much for it back in the early 1970s, maybe $150. I do remember thinking about having that barrel set back and rechambered to .308 Win, but I never did it. I was also thinking about having it rebarreled to .444 Marlin. I didn't do that either. At the time I would have had financial problems in doing anything like that.
 
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