This gun was a impulse buy, pure and simple. I and my friends were
out deer hunting in 1999 in Ross Co. Ohio, and took a day trip to
a place called Adrian's Gun Shop in Londonderry, OH. Adrian was
quite a character, and spun a long tail about this rifle and its
'history' (It belongs to the cousin of a famous gangster, etc...)
. I'd always wanted one, so despite the lack of bluing and the
rough wood, I paid way too much for it ($275) and took it and a
box of shells. The gun was marked .25-35 and Adrian sold me a box
of .25-35 Winchester.
Later I was to discover that
.25-35 Win was a rimmed cartridge, and that this gun took the
discontinued round of .25 Remington (similar dimensions, w/out the
rim!). It took me 3 months of searching to turn up some ammo for
this. I finally found 4 boxes at different vendors at an
OGCA
show. Luckily, I bought the ammo for $10-15 a box!
The ammo was old, but clean in appearance. I
decided to shoot it all up and use the brass for some new reloads.
I bought dies from CH4D and set
off to burn up all the ammo.
Unfortunately,
the ammo had a fair number of non-fires. The groups below were
intended to be 10 round groups, but some are 8 or 7 rounds. Still,
what did fire was amazingly accurate for the age of ammo, the
condition of the gun and the poor quality of the sites. The target
below were shot at 75 feet standing.
I am anxious to try this
with handloads, a solid bench rest and a good bore cleaning/crown
job!
The safety looks
strangely similar to the
Kalishnikov AK-47. It is said this design inspired it.
This unit also has a
stripper clip feed in the top, and a 5 round magazine. Law
Enforcement also had access to extended magazines.
A pair of Model 8's played a
role in the demise of the famed gangsters, Bonnie & Clyde (Click
Here), in fact, many Model 8's were used by police all over
the country (Click
Here)
Another cool feature of this gun is the fact that is is a
takedown model. It is easy to disassemble and move. I use it when
I am backpacking on occasion.
A little research and a free manual from Remington pointed to
1910 as the year of production for this specific Model 8.
Note:
I had the opportunity to examine another collectors selection
of Model 8 rifles. I was curious to see the two that he had in .25
Remington were labeled as such on the barrel, and not as ".25-35
Rem" as mine was. I wondered why until I found the following link
at Armory
Publications. It seems that Remington did develop an
experimental .25-35 rimless round with different dimensions than
the final .25 Rem. round. To quote that publication:
"Since there is at least one headstamped .25-35 REM
cartridge, are there very early Remington Autoloading rifles
chambered for it? Probably not. If any were so chambered,
they could have been reamed out to accept the final
cartridge design."
Update #1: (Or:
How to kill a gun through ignorance & stupidity.)
I
had shot this gun before. I used 4 older boxes of factory ammo,
not reloads, and had never had a problem. I reloaded all my cases,
using data from a Ken Waters article in Handloader magazine. I
used starting loads, CCI milspec primers and set off to the range
to try my handloads.
At the range I loaded
3 rounds into the magazine. Round 1 (below) fired w/out incident.
When round 2 was fired, all heck broke loose. A cloud of hot gas
hit my face, something nicked my safety glasses and I sat there
stunned.
I
re-gained my composure and found the ass-end of case #2 sticking
out of the chamber with a massive hole in it. Round 3 was bent up
and forced to the bottom of the magazine, the lead tip of the
bullet sheared off.
The extractor that
rides along the top of the bolt had raised up and backwards,
allowing the bolt itself to move too far forward. The gun was
jammed (and I later noticed, the extractor hook was torn off.)
At home I embarked upon
an examination of the rifle. I noticed that the action seemed to
have bulged, as did the magazine. Disgusted I put the rifle away
for over a year.
I decided to discover the reason for the
catastrophic case failure. While most of my ammo for this rifle
was Winchester or Peters, in boxes that indicated 1930's or 40's
production, the box pictured above was from the very early days of
this rifle design (mine was 1910) and I lated discovered that
though this ammo was boxer primed and non-corrosive, the primers
were mercuric based. Upon the firing, the mercuric primers render
the brass irrevocably weakened and not fit for reloading. This is
factor #1 in the sudden disassembly of my rifle.
After a year or so, I found the remainder of the
50 rounds I had handloaded for this rifle and decided to dismantle
them for component parts. I pulled the bullets and put them back
in the box, took all the suspect cases and threw them away. I took
out my reloading log book (I meticulously record all my
handloading, don't you?) and figured what powder I had recorded,
intending to return the salvaged powder to the proper container. I
found the powder can and on a hunch poured some out to compare
with the salvaged powder. No match, not even close.
So it looks like Factor #2 is I may have used the
wrong powder. It's possible I used a proper powder in the proper
quantity while working from Handloader magazine article and then
wrote down the wrong powder in my log. Or, I could have used the
wrong powder and wrote down the right one. It's too late to tell
what the salvaged mystery powder is, so out it goes into the
garden for fertilizer!
The moral? Keep meticulous reloading records. Keep
a clean reloading bench with only one powder type open and at
hand. Check, double check and re-check your loads to ensure
accuracy. It could cost you your eyes.
Update #2: Resurrected!
Since the above debacle, I bought a second Model
8, this time in the obsolete .32 Remington. I'm
happy to say that
the undamaged .25 Remington barrel fits and functions on the new
receiver without issue. So now I have a Model 8 with two barrels
and calibres. I'm careful now to use good new production .30
Remington cases, which I can neck up for .32 and neck down for .25
without any problems.
The new Model 8 also has a Weaver Sidemount scope
base and with it the .25 is still a tackdriver. I've not tackled
loading .32 Rem yet, but have tested the rifle with 3 boxes of
non-mercuric primed factory ammo.
