The .38 WCF Duke’s
“today’s favorite”

People sometimes ask, “What’s your favorite gun?” Or sometimes it’s, “What’s your favorite cartridge?” I always reply, “You mean today? I change my mind about it often.” Today, as I write this column my favorite cartridge is .38-40, actually introduced as .38 Winchester Centerfire (.38 WCF). The proper date was 1879, not 1874 as sometimes written. The introductory firearm was Winchester’s Model 1873 lever gun. Other rifle manufacturers followed, such as Marlin with their Model 1894 lever gun, Colt with their Lightning pump action and even Remington with a more modern pump-action named Model 14½ .

Counting the reasons

Why is SAA .38-40 so well esteemed by me currently? During this first half of 2020 not only have we been locked down here on “Rancho Venturino” due to the pandemic but I’ve suffered from some severe lower back troubles. The only shooting I’ve been able to do has been by sitting on a chair and firing out the window of my shooting shack. For recreation, I’ve been taking three Colt SAAs at a time and spending a few hours plinking at some steel plates at 25 yards. To make it interesting, I’ve fired a mix of chamberings — .38 Special, .38-40, .44 Special, .44-40 and .45 Colt — also with a variety of barrel lengths from 4 to 7½”.

The Answer Man

As much as I like SAA .38-40s (also .38-40 lever guns, but it’s for another column), there are two questions that deserve asking. One is: Why did Winchester introduce it in the first place? In actuality its case is merely the .44 WCF/.44-40 (introduced 1873) with its neck squeezed down from taking 0.425″ bullets to taking 0.400″ ones. (Diameters of factory-loaded lead bullets in the 1870s.) Original factory bullet weight for .44 was 200 grains and bullet weight for .38 was 180 grains.

My second question is: Why was this cartridge named .38? As said above, its bullets are true .40 calibers and Winchester’s black powder factory loads only carried 38 grains of powder instead of 40. Logically, it should have been named .40-38 WCF. Of course people in charge of naming metallic cartridges from the very beginning have seemed a half-bubble off normal.

Of the big three ammunition manufacturers today — Winchester, Remington and Federal — only the first makes .38-40 factory loads with 180-gr. jacketed soft-point bullets. Black Hills may be a smaller ammo manufacturer but their .38-40 factory loads with 180-gr. lead RN/FPs are exceptional. Now in my golden years I favor only one .38-40 handload — 175- to 180-gr. RN/FP cast lead bullets over 5.5 grains of Hornady’s Trail Boss powder. At 750 to 850 fps depending on barrel length it’s not very powerful but suits my needs completely.

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