Barry in IN

I just looked to see if there was any progress here. With 3D printers getting more common, I was hoping someone had tried making them by now. Anyone? I don't have a 3D printer, but have access to one and someone who knows how to use it. Now if I only had a carrier to copy. I have two Indoor Target Rifles, but neither has the carrier. I'm not about to ask to borrow one to copy either. Since it would be out of my hands while being copied, I don't want to be responsible for safeguarding the return. Maybe someday soon we can get a part owner and printer owner together!

You found it! Welcome Vernz! I keep looking at those threads and thinking about the JA brakes I have. I know it would likely affect function, but I'd still like to know if on would fit, just for the heck of it. We are in the process of moving, or I'd send you one to try just to satisfy my own curiosity. Hopefully I'll remember this in a couple of weeks after we get settled. Since it's hard to put metal back, I'm always hesitant to remove anything. For that reason, I'd leave the threads there. They don't hurt anything. Later, if you decide to get rid of it, then you could redo the muzzle.

Thank you very much for sharing.

Answered mine! Thanks!

I'd also like to know the band diameter that fits best. I started to order bands for mine, thinking "surgical tubing" was "surgical tubing". Apparently it comes in several sizes.

I'm so sorry to hear that, Sir. My condolences.

Neat plate. BTW, I never was much of a Toyota fan and never thought I'd have one. Then my wife bought one, I bought one about six months later, and just got my third straight (Highlander).

When that show was announced, the owner's name rang a bell, which is odd because the place is several hundred miles from here. I'm on an email list with quite a few guys from CO on it, and I ran a search and saw his and the shop's name a few times. Not a popular guy. A few lawsuits along the way. One "popular" trick is to sell a gun, then if the NICS check is denied (restraining orders are almost SOP with divorces nowadays) he refuses to refund the money. But he will offer to sell it on consignment for a nice fat cut. Swell sounding guy.

It looks like it's going to sell, after meeting the reserve in a relisting. I think it was at $6125 the last I looked. This stuff really sets me off. There has been enough misinformation repeated about Johnson rifles over the years that I expect some incorrect things to be claimed. Maybe that's why when something that is clearly intended to deceive comes up, it bugs me so much.

Welcome!

That's what i use, for the Johnson and for a re-barreled .308 Mauser I have. The are great on the range, but when carrying them in a pouch or pocket they don't retain the cartridges as well as US clips with (decent condition) tabs. I pull a clip out and it has three or four rounds on it. But I'm working on a solution.

I don't know how useful the info is, but I found it interesting. I'm a lot smarter about cast bullets now than when I started but I've found it doesn't take much to make them work in almost anything. Still, getting them to function so well through a semiauto that was meant to be operated by ammunition firing bullets nearly twice as fast impressed me.

I thought others might be curious about using cast bullets in the Johnson semi-auto rifle. I'm no expert on either Johnsons or cast bullets, but thought I'd share what I have found in recent experiments. I know this is long, but since cast bullets are so far from the norm with these rifles, I was afraid to shorten it up and leave something important out. I only recently started seriously messing around with cast bullets in rifles. In fact, aside from some cast loads in my 45-70 rifles, I've never shot any cast bullet loads in rifles until a couple of months ago. I have never casted a single bullet of my own (but am accumulating the things to start). I'm saying all of this to make it clear that I'm not one of those hardcore cast bullet guys who shoots cast in everything and has a bunch of top secret voodoo magic formulas to make cast bullets shoot well. I just tried cast bullets in my M1941 Johnson out of curiosity. While I know people do it, I had not considered shooting cast bullets through any semiauto, let alone a Johnson. Until... When I got my JSAR's barrel back from Joseph Scott, the new parkerizing made it fit tight in the radiator and action. I'm not complaining, but rather, I was pretty happy since it snugged all of it up a little. The parkerizing at the wear/contact points smoothed up soon, so it fit really well. On that first trip to range, I could work the barrel back and forth by hand, but the barrel latch's spring would not quite return it forward on it's own. The only ammo I brought was loaded with 147 grain FMJs, but the powder charge was a little on the light side. In addition, Mr Scott had installed a new main (recoil) spring, so it was at full strength. I had little hope it would work, between the tight fit, new spring, and using light ammo, but decided to shoot it to start wearing it in. It worked just fine. So that got me thinking- How lightly loaded can the ammo be and the Johnson still function? I had already loaded some cast bullets in .30-06, but had not planned on using them in the Johnson. Since I had them, I decided to start with those loads and see where it took me. It they were a dismal failure and scattered hits all over the paper, I would drop the whole idea. I tried them, and they shot pretty well. I did not expect them to function the rifle since they weren't loaded with a semiauto in mind, and they didn't. What I didn't realize then was how close some were to being functional loads. On my first trip to the range, I used two bullet designs. I buy my cast bullets from Montana Bullet Works, BTW. He will make most bullets sized to the diameter you want, and often gives you a choice of what alloy (Linotype, heat-treated lead/tin, etc) and sometimes a choice of lube. I used the Lyman #311041, which was originally designed for the .30-30 I think. The other was the RCBS 180-FN, which is similar. The Lyman weighed 173 grains, and the RCBS weighed 180. Both were cast of Linotype (hard stuff). Both were sized to .309", and lubed with LBT Blue lube. Both have crimp-on gas checks. I shot at 50 yards. That is rather close, but I had a few reasons for it, not the least of which is that I didn't know how far off the point of impact would be from the service load and wanted to make sure I hit paper. These first groups are all five shot groups. They were all fed from the magazine. The bolt was always ran by hand, but they were fed from the magazine and not hand placed in the chamber. Velocity was chrono'd at 15 feet from the muzzle. I used a front rest only. I was concerned the rear sling swivel would catch in my rear sandbag and recoil inconsistently, so I just went without it. In some loads, I tried a 1/2" square piece of tissue paper pushed into the case over the powder to hold it in place. I thought I'd see if that made any difference by keeping the low charges from moving around inside the case. This rifle is still new to me, and I yanked a few shots. There were a lot of 4+1 groups, with four in a group then one away from the group. I don't think I yanked that many out, but the evidence is that I did. So in cases where there was one odd shot, I am listing that in the stats. 173 Lyman: 25.0 grains of IMR 4198 went 1920 fps and made a 2 3/8" group. Four shots went into 1 3/8" 30.0 grains of IMR 4895 went 1792 fps and made a 2 3/4" group. Four in 1 1/2" 30.0 grains of IMR 4895 (with tissue wad) went 1788 fps and made a 2 1/8" group. 180 RCBS: 25.0 grains of IMR 4198 went 2043 fps and made a 3 1/8" group. Four in 2 1/8". 30.0 grains of IMR 4895 went 1875 fps and made a 1 7/8" group. Three went into one 5/8" hole. 30.0 grains of IMR 4895 with tissue wad went 1847 and made a 2 1/8" group. Four in 1" even. This showed me that it would at least keep them on paper and the project was worth pursuing. All but one load was in the general area of 2-2.75". Discounting the stray hits, there were several 1" to 1.5" groups. That may not sound earth-shaking, but isn't bad for the first attempt of just picking some loads that I have heard/read of other people using. And the group sizes translated to 2-5 MOA, which is about where I've been with surplus military ball ammo. There was zero evidence of leading. It gave me encouragement to try more. I wanted to see if I could make it function with cast loads, and then work on improving accuracy. I did some looking online and found some info on cast bullet loads for the M1 Garand. I was surprised to see IMR 4350 favored for cast bullets in the Garand, since it is usually a no-no in that rifle. Being a slower burning powder, it gives higher gas port pressures than those in the 4895 range. I've been led to think that Zeus would come down from the mountain and throw lightning bolts at you for even thinking about trying it. But apparently it's a different ballgame with cast. Compared to attempts to load service or match ammo with 4350, the powder charges are lower so there is less gas volume to begin with, and using bullets that are on the heavy side helps too by delaying the arrival of these gasses to the gas port. I'm still not fully convinced and ready to shoot a bunch through my Garands, but it sounded like the recoil impulse might make the Johnson function. More reading showed that slightly heavier charges of IMR 4895, along with slightly heavier bullets, have operated Garands just fine. So my next direction would be to use either heavier bullets, heavier charges of IMR 4895, or use IMR 4350 with or without heavier bullets. I didn't have any heavier .30 caliber bullets, so used the heaviest I had- the RCBS 180 FN- and confined my next experiments to using it. The two powder charges that kept coming up in my research were 38.0 grains of IMR 4350; and 35.0 grains of IMR 4895. With IMR 4350, I would start at 35 and work up. That 35 grain charge of 4895 was only three grains more than the mild load I had tried already. With the IMR 4895, I decided to start at 33.0 grains and work up to 35.0 to see if it would function. My main concern right now was to see what would make the rifle function. Accuracy would come later. I just wanted a low-end baseline functioning charge to start from. With that in mind, I only loaded only three rounds of each powder charge. I thought I'd just creep up on the minimum charge for function. It didn't take much creeping. Back at the range today, here is what happened: I started with the IMR 4350. I loaded the rounds singly this time to see if and when the bolt would lock open. IMR 4350: 36.0 grains of IMR 4350 ran 1840 fps. All three rounds ejected. Two of the three rounds locked the bolt open. Wow, the first try was close. The shot that did not lock it open was the one that gave the lowest velocity of the three (1933 fps). Apparently, the difference between working and not working fell somewhere in that area. 37.0 grains averaged 1979 fps. All three rounds ejected. All three locked the bolt open. 38.0 grains ran 2054 fps. Since this charge was the "goal", I had loaded five rounds of it. All five ejected. All five locked the bolt open. IMR 4895: My 4895 starting charge of 33.0 grains ran 2024 fps and functioned right off the bat. All three ejected. All three locked the bolt open. I didn't try the heavier charges. I plan to go back and try lower charges to see where the cutoff is. I wasn't trying all that hard for groups today, as I was mostly trying to find the low end point where it would function with cast bullets. Even at that, these loads shot better than the first ones. However- They were three shot groups as opposed to the five shot groups (except one). Remember, these groups are at 50 yards, not 100 or more. All with RCBS 180 FN. 36.0 IMR 4350: 1 3/4" 37.0 IMR 4350: 1 1/4" 38.0 IMR 4350 (5 shots): 1 1/2 (four of those went into 1/2") 33.0 IMR 4895: 3/4" So it's looking good. I now know it can function in this range, and I have hope for more accuracy. Even if I quit now, I have a couple of 180 grain cast bullet loads that run 1950-2000 fps or so, function the rifle, and shoot pretty well. And there is still no barrel leading that I can see. Just thought I'd share if anyone was curious. I think it's pretty interesting and impressive that the good ol' Johnson runs just fine with a load that is so far from the military M1 or M2 loads.

I should also add that this bullet has a pretty blunt nose rather than the streamlined GI bullet. That didn't matter to the Johnson, but it did matter the the Garand and the 1903. I could only load five rounds in the Garand because the fat noses dragged against metal within the receiver opening. Using only five rounds allowed them to wiggle around to find a place to rest. Loading a full eight rounds caused the clip to stop dead long before seating. The 1903 would accept them in the magazine but would not feed all five into the chamber. When it did, it was only those feeding from the left side of the magazine and that was sporadic. A little guidance from my fingers got them all to work. So this is one case where a semiauto was more dependable than a bolt I suppose.

I got a heavy .30 cal mould recently, a discontinued Saeco #308. This makes a bullet weighing a whopping 218.5 grains on average from my alloy. I couldn't help but think I could get it to work in the JSAR at even slower speeds. I tried it out yesterday using IMR 4350. My starting load was 35 grains, which I arrived at by knowing some cast bullet shooters use the very similar Lynan 311284 with 40 grains in their Garands. I thought a five grain reduction would put it right around the edge of functioning. As it turned out, 35 grains operated the Johnson just fine. That 35 grain charge averaged 1555 fps, operated the rifle, locked the bolt open on the last round and made a 2-3/4" group. This was at 50 yards because I had no idea where the POI would be. I wasn't even thinking much about group size, and checking for function. I decided to try a little harder on the next load. The next step up was 36 grains, which went slightly faster at 1576 fps, worked fine, and made a 1-3/4" group. Remember, this us at 50 yards. Finally I tried the 37 grain load. There was a good jump in velocity there to 1693 fps average. Of course it worked the action fine. The group was the smallest of all at 1-1/2". It had occurred to me that although I was shooting five shot groups, I should fill the magazine in case that caused more drag on the bolt. I did that- loading ten and shooting five and it worked fine. I tried these same loads in a Garand and an M1903a3. The Garand operated with the 36 grain charge but the 35 grain would only run the bolt far enough to eject the empty. I need to head back out with some lighter charges to see where the Johnsons's threshold is with this bullet. Getting it to run at the mid 1500s even with a heavy bullet is impressing me but it makes me want to see how low it will go. Though not pertaining to Johnson info at all, I found it interesting that the M1903 liked none of this. That rifle has a two-groove barrel and they prefer cast bullets with a long bore riding nose. This bullet is about half groove-filling bands and half bore riding nose but I didn't think it would do as bad as it did. The first load went 10" with one tumbling (but within the group) and the next load went 12".

It is something everyone should see at least once. I haven't been in about 12 years. It was getting too crowded for my tastes then, and I bet it's worse now. A far cry from when my buddy started going and knew almost everyone by name. I'll never forget my first time though. I have to describe it so those who have never been can get the feel: We parked and started walking in, and I heard the sound of rushing water nearby. I assumed there was a swollen creek nearby (it always rains buckets for days leading up to the shoot). I asked my buddy, who had been several times, about this and he didn't know what I was talking about. As we walked, I kept hearing it so I asked again once or twice. He kept wondering what I was talking about. He thought I was nuts. Then the sound just stopped. And I understood. The rushing noise was not rapids or a waterfall, but MGs in the distance. There were so many being fired at once that it was one solid sound. When the sound stopped, it was due to calling a regular cease fire. I thought I knew what it would sound like from hearing MGs before, but I had never heard so many at once which was quite different. A wall of noise. This guy and I also like to talk about that time since we had $10K in cash between us and that would have bought most things there. Now, besides us not being able to scare up $10K, it wouldn't touch hardly anything if we could.

That sounds neat. I didn't know there was one.

Either Brian Alpert or (the) webmaster usually replies with the info. I'm kinda surprised they haven't responded to this post already.

Looks like a Johnson that was sold by Winfield Arms in the 50s/60s. They "helped" a lot of them before reselling them. Mine looked similar when I got it, but Joseph Scott fixed it up and made it look like it should. A couple of the guys here can give you data from the serial number. Happy birthday. Nice present.

That should be an interesting story. Even the simplest ways I could think of would not be simple.

Well, lookie here. http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.aspx?Item=221617909

I was just saw a copy of an old Winfield Arms ad, and seeing the address I started goofing around on Mapquest. I found a view of the front of the building today if anyone wants to see it. It looks like it says "Cafe Esquinita" on one side of the main entrance and a kid's clothing store on the other. If I'm ever in LA again. maybe I'll stop by for lunch. I'll try to post the link, but if it doesn't work, just go to Mapquest, enter 409 E Pico Blvd Los Angeles CA. When it comes up, click on 360 view then swing around to the north. http://mapq.st/go4Tab http://mapq.st/gBoT2c

Thanks Tanker. Assistance? I could use the BB carrier thingy, but it looks to me it should be as lightweight as possible so the rubber band can sling it fast, so I think I can make something by stacking three pieces of thin sheet metal together that are cut to the right shape. It will be a nice winter day project if nothing else.

There isn't really a category for this on the forum, but it is a Johnson "gun". I put it here since I didn't have a better idea. I got this in the mail today. I bought it before Christmas. It's not a Red Ryder Carbine Action whatchamacallit with a compass in the stock, but I'm about as happy as Ralphie. It's not perfect, but it's mine! I knew when I bought it that it wasn't in the best shape, but it isn't as bad as I expected either. I don't think everything is there, but I don't think it is far off. It looks close to shootable, except for the obvious missing rubber band. (Funny how I was just happy to get it and wasn't expecting to get it operating until I got my hands on it. Now I want to shoot it.) Aside from needing a rubber band, the trigger flops freely and it's mechanism doesn't catch or lock onto anything when the cocking ears are pulled back. I don't know if anything is missing in there or if it just needs freed up with some oil. I don't know what's supposed to be in there. Any guidance on that would be appreciated. It might be fun to shoot in the garage on these cold winter days.

The webmaster posted while I walked away and before I hit "enter". No, it's missing the BB carrier. It looks like everything is there but that and the band. That was going to be my next question- What size tubing (now that I checked and saw it comes in every diameter imaginable), but now that I see my BB carrier is gone I guess that's the least of my concerns now. Yours sound nice. From what I read on that airgun site, the box sounds like the hard thing to get. This is a pretty interesting design. Now that I have it in my hand to look over, it's pretty neat seeing how it works. Edit: I found a completed auction on AuctionArms of one, with more pictures. It looks like mine is missing one more part: the trigger return spring. I can make one of those, it looks like.