The Winchester Model 1894 was covered with what I imagined was trail dust, and I wondered what mountain paths the rifle had followed balanced across the swell of a saddle. Stamped on the left side of the barrel was "32 W.S." The Winchester looked like a lonely orphan standing on the gun shop rack, so I bought it and gave it a home.
Judging by the Model 1894's serial number, it was made in 1910. It's a carbine with a 20-inch barrel and full-length magazine. The gun is a saddle ring carbine, which makes its collector value slightly higher than carbines made after 1925 with no saddle ring. The ring stud remained on the left side of the receiver, but the ring itself was missing.
The gun was in such poor shape there was no concern about ruining its collector value by fixing it up some. Slow and steady scrubbing with a bore solvent cleaned the metal. Quite a bit of bluing remained on the barrel and magazine tube, but none was left on the receiver and lever.
The '94's gouged and cracked stock looked like the gun had been used to build fence. I filled in the major gouges in the buttstock and fore-end with stock epoxy, closed a split in the fore-end with glue and sanded out some nicks. Not much wood would have remained if all the scratches had been sanded out. Several coats of finish on the wood gave the rifle a satisfactory appearance.
Such a pleasant-looking rifle needed shooting. The .32 Win. Special cartridge has been gasping a dying breath for decades. Yet several hundred thousand Winchester and Marlin rifles were chambered in the cartridge over the decades, and half of those rifles are likely still being shot.
The .32 was also supposed to provide higher bullet energy because its somewhat wider bore diameter allowed the .32 to shoot bullets of the same weight a bit faster than the .30-30 Win.