.41 rimfire?

[KiltedClaymore]

anyone ever shoot this caliber? i know its antique, but i was curious if anyone has fires a gun in this caliber. does anyone make this caliber? like the other "obsolete" caliber manufaturers?

[Coyote3855]

There used to be an outfit called Old West Scrounger that carried all kinds of obsolete cartridges. I know the .41 rmfire was chambered in Remington double derringers and Colt single barrels. Not sure what else. Never fired it. In "Sixguns" Elmer Keith says the old time gunfighters would rather be hit by a .45 than the .41 because the outside lubricated bullet carried nasties into the wound and usually stayed in the body. Velocity was too low for a shoot-through.

[SaxonPig]

I had my grandfather's Remington O/U in 41 RF until it was stolen.

The caliber is very weak. Skeeter Skelton wrote of firing at a dried up old board and bullets couldn't even bury themselves. Ammo is a very pricey collectible.

[rcmodel]

http://www.ammo-one.com/41-SHORT-R-F.html

Even if ammo was not $3.50 a shot, the old Remington Derringers without cracked frames are too valuable to shoot anymore.

Old Western Scrounger had a small run of ammo made many years ago, but it was way overloaded and damaged some guns if I remember correctly.

rcmodel

[jkingrph]

I have a 1871Swiss Vetterli military rifle chambered for the "41 Swiss Rimfire".. A simple coversion to centerfire and make cases from cut down 348 win or 8mm Lebel brass.

[mainmech48]

Many years ago, when I was about 12 my best friend's grandfather kept an old Remington and what remained of a box of Peters cartridges in a cigar box in his dresser.

On one occasion he took us out back and allowed each of us to fire it once. Our target was a telephone pole at about 10 feet. One bullet penetrated up to a bit past the base and the other bounced off. IIRC, they were loaded with BP and had to have been at least 30-35 yrs old at the time.

[Snow Dog]

I believe Navy Arms made up a batch of both .32 and .41 rimfire ammo a few years ago. It turns up at gun shows every once in a while.

[dogrunner]

I picked one up in the early '60's from a pawn shop. Disremember precisely which model of production it was, it'd been nickled & that was flaking. As is usual with those guns that saw any use the hinge was lightly cracked on one side. Bore wasn't too bad and managed to scrounge several boxes of fireable ammo for it. Cases were all copper with the radically truncated bullet but I don't recall the manufacturer. Carried and shot that gun a lot, but mostly for the novelty of it..........even then, you just never saw one and I'm the only person that I personally know of that actually used one!

Insofar as shooting went, the foregoing comments about it being 'weak' reflect my opinion too. I remember tho that the gun was acceptably accurate and it was no real problem to hit an upright phone pole section from about 30 to 40 feet......you'd hear the report and about a full second plus you'd hear the impact, kinda like "bam...thunk". Always reliable and I don't recall it ever misfiring. Mostly the bullets stuck in the creosoted wood, but only penetrated about half an inch....Still, at the ranges these guns were intended for I'm very sure they'd do the job.....Darn sure I wouldn't want to catch one of those greasy, outside lubed slow moving slugs in my liver!.......

The original Remington design though was a neat, balanced and attractive package. Most every reproduction I've ever seen was oversized, had a grossly enlarged hinge, and every single one lacked the balance of my original.......wish I still had it!!!!!!!!!!!!

[mainmech48]

Old West Scrounger was bought by Navy Arms a year or two back. If anyone has a supply of modern-made obsolete RF cartridges, it'd be Navy.

My semi-educated guess as to why the modern 'repros' of the little Remmie are the way they are have to do with both weaknesses inherent in the design and the radically higher operating pressures generated by virtually all of the modern smokeless cartridges for which they're chambered these days compared to the peedunkling little RF round they were designed for.

I mean, Geez! Even the HS .22 RF operates at well over 4X the average peak pressure! Modern steels and heat treating can only make up for so much, and defending against tort litigation has killed off more than a few of the grand old names in the last couple of decades.