Could be fun...you just never know. I bought an old 1889 Marlin in 32-20 many years ago with a dark bore and it shot fine, but the pits in the chamber made it difficult to extract brass for any loads above powder puff level. Since it was already refinished, I relined it and it works great. This one appears original so don't know if you want to mess with it beyond the CF firing pin, which should not difficult to get or have made.

to the .32 S&W which has been MUCH easier to acquire (ammo and brass). Somebody does make firing pins for these, but who escapes me now.

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Sincerely,

Hobie

It was made for the .32 short & long rimfire and the .32 short & long Colt. These are the same outside dimension. The .32 rimfires & .32 Colts are approx 0.020" smaller in diameter than the .32 S&W's and .32 Colt NP. That may not seem like much, but it is pretty difficult to swage brass down that much. Brass cases, bullets, dies, moulds, are all different sizes from each other.

The firing pin had to be changed out in this gun to change from rimfire to centerfire. As was said, someone on the internet says that they can make either of them for you. The .32 rimfires have not been made since about the 1980's, and that was a special run that quickly reached collectors item prices. The last time before that was probably the 1950's. The .32 Long Colt has not been made for 10 or more years and the .32 Short Colt went out of production 2-3 years ago. Both are hard to find and are expensive when they are found.

I have heard others say that it is easy to rechamber it to .32 S&W Long, but I have never actually read someone say that they did it. There may be other things that we don't know about with that conversion (I remember having a serious problem with replacing a 32-20 magazine on a Marlin because of minor differences between new and old production sizes -- or tolerances). If you decide to do this, let us know how it turns out.