Typically, it begins with a phone call from an elderly female relative. "I found an old gun in the closet. I don't want to touch it. Can you…?"

Although the .32 Special is still loaded commercially, rifles chambered for it and for the older .32-40 present their own problems with bore and groove diameter. The .32-40 is ostensibly .319, the .32 Special .321; however, rifles in either cartridge can be found with either diameter, and some in between. This nice old Winchester 94 measures .3215.

Well, sure. And most times you end up bringing it home with you and then wondering what to do with it. Maybe it's a collector's item; maybe it's not. But usually, when it is a family heirloom, especially if it belonged to your father or grandfather, you want to keep it and, if possible, shoot it. The question is, how do you go about doing that?

In America, chances are that such a rifle will be a lever action, or possibly an old single-shot. Souvenir rifles from either of the world wars present their own problems, but they are generally easy to deal with. Old lever actions are considerably more of a challenge in several different ways.

The very first thing you do when confronted with such a situation is to make sure the rifle is unloaded. Maybe this goes without saying, but it never hurts to reiterate. This means ensuring not only that there is no cartridge in the chamber but none in the tubular magazine either. More than once, working the lever has produced nothing the first three or four times, then it has jarred a cartridge loose and suddenly an unloaded rifle has become a loaded one. Such are the surprises.

The second step is to take the rifle to a qualified gunsmith to ensure that it is safe to fire. Many old lever actions were made with relatively soft steel and subjected to overly powerful loads at some point in their careers. This can result in excessive headspace, making it unwise to shoot them. As well, being chambered for cartridges that were originally black-powder rounds, most have at least some degree of corrosion in the barrel, chamber or around the bolt face.

Slugs, before and after. These are .40 caliber. The slug on the left is new; the other one is pictured after being driven through the bore of a Winchester 1886 .40-65. Note the deformation at the nose, where lead has flowed back as it swages down to bore size, and the faint rifling marks.

Assuming the rifle gets a clean bill of health, what now? First, let's see what cartridge it's chambered for. Often the caliber designation on the barrel is unfamiliar. For example, the cartridge we know as the .30-30 was originally called the .30 WCF (for Winchester Center Fire). The .38-40 was .38 WCF, and so on. With older rifles--especially the Winchester Model 1886, which was chambered for about a dozen different cartridges, most of which are obsolete--determining the exact chambering may require a chamber casting. Again, this is best done by a gunsmith.

Once you know the caliber of the rifle, you will have several different problems to deal with. If you are lucky, it will be chambered for a cartridge for which loaded ammunition is still or once again available, although it may be hard to find. The Old Western Scrounger is a good place to start looking.

Most likely, though, you will need to handload ammunition, and the difficulties this will present may be daunting even to an experienced handloader. Today, we expect standardization in every aspect of our loads and components, but in the late 1800s when many of these rifles were made, standardization was unknown in caliber designations, brass dimensions, barrel and bullet diameters, and virtually anything else you can name. So we have to approach this step by step.