[notbubba]

A guy I work with has an old rifle.
It's 25-36.
I've never heard of that caliber.

He would like to find ammo for it.
I told him to have the gun looked at by a gunsmith to make sure it's safe to shoot.

I don't know how old of a gun it is, so I don't know if I was being overly carefull in telling him to check and see if the gun is safe for modern powder.

Anybody have any info about this caliber?
Where he could get ammo?

[Mike Irwin]

Your friend probably has an old Marlin lever-action rifle.

The .25-36 Marlin was apparently their answer to Winchester's .25-35, and was introduced around 1897.

It finally became obsolete in the 1920s when it was dropped by Marlin and most ammo makers.

While the case is a little larger than the Winchester round, it's not nearly as powerful, and isn't by any stretch of the imagination much of a deer cartridge.

Quite frankly, you can shoot .25-35 Winchester ammo in the .25-36 chamber, but depending on the age of the rifle isn't not wise to do so. Some of the older Marlins weren't know for their great strength.

Ammo is in the realm of the collector now days. You're not going to find it anywhere you might find newer ammo, and if you do find a box at a gun show it's probably going to have a pretty stiff price on it for collector purposes.

You MIGHT be able to find a box through Old Western Scrounger, or possibly brass from Bertram.

Really, though, this rifle might best be left as a wall hanger/curiosity.

[Stickjockey]

Sure it's not .25-35? I think this is also known as .25 WCF. My Dad's got a Winchester Model 94 in that caliber. Handy little rifle. Kinda like .30-30's little brother.

Edited to say that Mike sounds like he knows more about it than I do, and beat me to the post by about 1/2 a second.

[Mike Irwin]

Stick,

The .25-20, a much smaller round originally chambered in the Model 1892, is known as the .25 WCF.

Had the .25-35 come out a few years earlier, it probably would have been known as the .25 WCF.

[Stickjockey]

I stand corrected, sir. Thank you for the education!:D