32-20 w/ Unique Powder

[rufus]

Being fairly new to the 32-20 cartridge myself, can anyone advise any loads using Unique? This would be in a Ruger Buckeye gun. Do y’all think 6.5 grains of Unique with a 95-100gr bullet, cast or HP/XTP would be too much for this setup. Apologies but there is not much load data in my manuals and i have between 10-15 manuals from old to new.
Been loading since 1992 so not a beginner but just need a little help with this one.
Thanks yall

[taffin]

Reloading the .32-20
Handloading by John Taffin
For two very important reasons I grew up in a house without guns. My father was killed in an accident before I was a year old and even though he did have guns they disappeared and his teenaged widow, my mom, did not know who got them. She remarried when I was four and then my stepdad went off to WWII and after what he had seen in Europe he did not want any guns around. To his credit he changed completely after I graduated from high school and started shooting and buying my own guns. During my growing up years I only got to shoot when I went to my uncle’s farm. However, I could read about guns and I did so voraciously.
It took a lot of effort to find anything about guns such as books at the library and trying to come up with the money each month to buy the latest copy of Outdoor Life, Sports Afield, and Field & Stream. When I got to high school I found all of these in the school library as well as many of Theodore Roosevelt’s books; in all of these sources the spotlight was always on rifles not handguns. What I read certainly affected me. To this day I still have a dream of someday shooting a black bear with a .30-40 Krag using 220 grain bullets. I read about that sometime in my young life and have held onto it ever since. I doubt very much at this stage that dream will ever be accomplished.
In 1955, when I was still a junior in high school, Elmer Keith’s book Sixguns appeared and I found his first center-fire sixgun was a .32-20 Colt Single Action Army with a 7-1/2” barrel with which he killed several mule deer. Even though he said it was less than adequate for the task it opened a soft spot in my sixgunnin’ heart which I had no idea would be so hard to fill in the future. I filed that information away hoping to someday have a Colt .32-20 of my own. Colt dropped the .32-20, in fact all Single Actions, before WWII and even though they resurrected the Single Action Army with the 2nd Generation production in very late 1955, the .32-20 stayed dead.
I had looked for a shootable/affordable .32-20 sixgun at gun shows, however none ever seemed to surface. I was just about over my longing for one when along came Skeeter Skelton telling how he mustered out of the service in 1946, stopped in Chicago and bought a 7-1/2” Colt Single Action .32-20. Obviously Chicago in 1946 was a lot different than it is now. The glowing embers were now once again fanned to full flame and I wanted a .32-20 just as badly, or worse, than before. Why wouldn’t I since my two favorite writers both started with identical .32-20 single actions?
The .32-20 started life in the Winchester Model 1873 and then shortly thereafter was chambered in the newer Model 1892. The two other members of the Winchester bottle-necked levergun trio, the .44-40 and .38-40 were more serious cartridges for hunting and self-defense while the .32-20 was obviously designed for small game and varmints. By the time it arrived the West was much tamer than it had been in the 1870s-1880s and rifles were needed by farmers and ranchers mainly to keep the varmint population down. Colt, just as they had with the .44-40 and .38-40, chambered their Colt Single Action and their Bisley Model for the .32 WCF and it became the fourth best-selling chambering behind the .45 Colt, .44-40, and .38-40 respectively. They would also offer it in their Model 1878 Double Action as well as the Army Special. Over at Smith & Wesson the number one vehicle for the .32-20 was the Military & Police.
Today the .32-20 can be found in replica single actions from Uberti and in the recent past has been offered in the 3rd Generation Colt Single Action, the Ruger Buckeye Commemorative, the Dan Wesson Heavy Barrel Double Action, and the USFA Single Action. When it was obvious I was not going to find the .32-20 I had long been looking for I had Hamilton Bowen build me the perfect sixgun. Starting with a Colt Single Action Army, Hamilton made a new cylinder, fitted an 8-1/2” barrel along with a Smith & Wesson adjustable rear sight and a post front sight. It shoots just as accurately as we should expect. The Dan Wesson .32-20 is also exceptionally accurate as is the Freedom Arms Model 97 .32 Magnum when fitted with an auxiliary .32-20 cylinder.
Just as with the .44-40 and .38-40 I load my .32-20 cartridges on the RCBS Model 2000 Progressive Press using separate dies for seating and a crimping. The bottle-necked .32-20 cases are spray lubed with Hornady wax-based lubricant putting about 100 at a time in a cardboard tray. They slide in and out of the sizing die even easier than if it was carbide.
For some reason there is a lot of variation in the overall length of .32-20 cartridge cases from various manufacturers. This means they must be separated as to headstamp or the bullets will not seat and crimp properly. I only purchase new brass from Starline and keep my dies at the length of this cartridge case while separating the other manufacturers brass to use for loads safe in such older .32-20 sixguns as the Colt Army Special and the Smith & Wesson Military & Police. For these two older sixguns my most used load is the Oregon Trail 100 grain SWC over 4.0 grains of Unique for right at 800 fps and groups well under one-inch for five shots at 20 yards.
Heavier loads are saved for the Colt Single Action, the Dan Wesson, and the Freedom Arms Model 97. Way back before I ever had a .32-20 I had the load I was going to use which was 10.0 grains of #2400. This has not changed. I use cast bullets sized to .312”-313” with excellent accuracy. In my long-barreled Colt Single Action this load under the Oregon Trail 115 grain SWC does over 1,450 fps and groups in a very tiny 3/4". The same bullet using 5.0 grains of Unique results in 1,180 fps and a group of 7/8”. Jacketed bullets also perform very well with the #2400 load with Speer’s 100 JHP doing 1,313 fps and a 7/8” group while the Hornady 100 XTP gives 1,374 fps and a 3/4" group. The Dan Wesson 8” Stainless Steel Heavy Barrel is absolutely monotonous in its accuracy. Loads well under one-inch are the norm. Lyman’s #31116HP over 10.0 grains of #2400 gives 1,300 fps in the Freedom Arms Model 97 with 3/4" groups.
For a while Thompson/Center offered a 10” Contender barrel in .32-20 using a .308” barrel. Using the Speer 110 grain Varminter JHP over 13.0 grains of #2400 (ONLY FOR USE IN THE CONTENDER!!!) muzzle velocity is close to 2,000 fps with groups of one-half-inch.
With the arrival of the .327 Federal Magnum, the .32-20 is not quite as necessary as it once was for those who want to shoot varmints and small game with a revolver. It is, however still an excellent cartridge which connects us to the past and also to some of our most loved and appreciated past sixgunners.

[45MAN]

I USE 4.8grs OF UNIQUE UNDER 115gr FP CAST BULLETS, WITH MAGNUM PRIMERS, IN MY 6" OFFICIAL POLICE REVOLVERS, GIVES ME OVER 1,000fps. THE MAGNUM PRIMERS TIGHTENED THE GROUPS UP OVER NONMAGNUM PRIMERS. I SEE ABOVE WHERE TAFFIN USED 5grs OF UNIQUE WITH THE SAME BULLET IN A LONG BARRELED COLT SA.

[sixshot]

Great information John, everyone needs to bookmark this one! The 32/20 is a great little cartridge for plinking, varmints & as mentioned, been used on many, many deer sized animals with careful shot placement.
In the ultra strong Ruger Buckeye I think you would be hard pressed to overload it but please don't try, it's plenty good just as it is.

Dick

[wpeel]

I seem to remember Skeeter Skelton using 5 grains of Unique. From his Handgun Loads article in the Feb. 1969 issue of Shooting Times magazine:

"When I arrived home from WWII I wore a happy smile, a herringbone tweed suit with wide lapels, and a 7 ½” Colt SA in .32-20. Factory ammo was both too expensive and too ineffectual for use on the Texas jackrabbits and coyotes toward which I aimed it. A Pacific Super Tool press became available and I settled on Lyman’s 31133 bullet mold and Unique powder. This cast slug, weighing 105 gr. in hollowpoint form, gave me everything I wanted when loaded over 5.5 gr. of Unique in the .32-20 cases."

My memory is .5 grains of powder short.  Skeeter's loads tended to be on the "warm-ish" side, so 5 grains of Unique should be gentle on guns, brass, hands and the pocketbook.

[rufus]

Ok thanks all.
I will dial it back to 5 grains.

[Cholla]

Brian Pearce has done a couple of very comprehensive articles, with data, on the 32-20 in Handloader magazine and in fact in the current issue (April-May 2023) he did another. I highly recommend you get those back-issues. A few years ago I had a 5 1/2" Uberti in 32-20 that was a very well built, accurate revolver, but the cartridge itself gave me fits.

Pearce mentions, and shows in accompanying data tables, in all of his articles some of the crazy extreme spreads that occurs when handloading this cartridge, and he ain't wrong! Without going to the shop to fetch my load log I recall more than a few loads of my own whose ES's were around 200 fps! This mainly seemed to occur with heavier loads of slow burning powder. I tried different primers, more firm crimps, everything that should've cured the ill, but no luck. I did finally discover that fairly "normal" loads with fast (Bullseye & IMR-Target) to medium (Unique) burning powder worked much better.

Like others here, I used 5.0 gr. of Unique and a 118 gr. FP cast from a Lyman 311008 mold. It was a nice shooting combo.



Good luck and let us know how it goes!