The .38-40 Winchester is actually a .40 caliber (10 mm) cartridge shooting .401" (10.2 mm) caliber bullets. The cartridge was introduced by

Winchester Winchester is a cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government district, at the western end of the South Downs National Park, on the River Itchen. It is south-west of Lo ...

in 1874 and is derived from their .44-40 Winchester. This cartridge was introduced for rifles, but in its reintroduction for

Cowboy Action Shooting Cowboy action shooting (CAS, also known as western action shooting, single action shooting, Cowboy 3 Gun, Western 3-gun) is a competitive shooting sport that originated in Southern California in the early 1980s, at the Coto de Caza Shooting ...

it has seen some popularity as a revolver cartridge. It is not particularly well suited to hunting larger game, but it was popular when it was introduced, along with the previous .44-40 Winchester, for deer hunting. It can be used successfully on smaller game animals, and for self-defense. Current loadings are intended for

revolvers A revolver (also called a wheel gun) is a repeating handgun that has at least one barrel and uses a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers (each holding a single cartridge) for firing. Because most revolver models hold up to six ...

Design and history

It is unclear why this cartridge was introduced, as it is very similar to the .44-40 from which it was derived. It has approximately less muzzle energy, and has a muzzle velocity about less than the .44-40. The bullet differs by only .026 inches in bullet diameter and in standard bullet weight from the original .44-40. The goal may have been to reduce recoil while maintaining a similar bullet sectional density. One unusual design element of this cartridge is that factory ammunition was loaded with a different case profile than the standard chamber for this cartridge, factory ammunition having a much longer neck than the standard chamber. Most reloading dies are designed to size fired brass to the chamber specification rather than that of the original factory ammunition case profile. The renewed interest in this caliber can be explained by the increasing popularity of

cowboy action shooting Cowboy action shooting (CAS, also known as western action shooting, single action shooting, Cowboy 3 Gun, Western 3-gun) is a competitive shooting sport that originated in Southern California in the early 1980s, at the Coto de Caza Shooting ...

and metallic silhouette shooting. Several single-action revolvers have recently been chambered for this cartridge, including the

Ruger Vaquero The Ruger Vaquero is a six-shot single-action revolver manufactured by Sturm, Ruger & Co. based on the New Model Ruger Blackhawk frame and was introduced in 1993. It comes in blued steel, case colored, and a gloss stainless finish (the latter gl ...

. Most modern reloading data for this cartridge is found in the handgun section of reloading manuals.

Performance

Though introduced as an "all-around" cartridge, traditional sources suggest the .38–40 performs inadequately on deer. Ballistically, commercial 'cowboy' loads are similar to the much newer .40 S&W, sharing the same bullet diameter, bullet weight, and similar velocity. A limited number of 'hunting' loads are available commercially, which produce about 25% more muzzle energy than the more common target ammunition.
, Midway 38–40 Winchester Super-X.

Dimensions

Synonyms

*.38-40 *.38-40 WCF *.38 CFW *.38 WCF

References

External links

38 WCF , 38-40 caliber

Reloading .38 WCF for Rifles

The .38-40 - The ‘Frontier Forty’ — A sixgun/levergun natural
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current 2019 Feb approved saami cartridge specifications #4, CENTER FIRE RIFLE, 2015/12/14 PDF, page 136 (148)
{{DEFAULTSORT:38-40 Winchester Pistol and rifle cartridges Dual-purpose handgun/rifle cartridges Winchester Repeating Arms Company cartridges