More Developments in Lever Actions - The Birth of Two American Legends

Where we left off in our last post, the company formed by Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson was off to a bad start, as the lever action firearms that they made did not sell very well. Their chief financier, Courtlandt Palmer, had reorganized Smith & Wesson into the new Volcanic Army Company and managed to convince another group of investors (including Oliver Winchester) to buy their company. After this, Courtlandt Palmer got out of the firearms business completely, Horace Smith went back to his home in Springfield, Massachusetts, after selling his remaining shares in the company. Daniel Wesson stayed on as a factory manager at Volcanic Arms for 8 more months, before leaving as well. Benjamin Tyler Henry also left and went back to his old job at Robbins & Lawrence.

After this, Oliver Winchester moved the Volcanic factory to New Haven, Connecticut, where he already had a successful shirt manufacturing business. The Volcanic company nearly went bankrupt in 1857, due to poor sales. Oliver Winchester managed to acquire the remaining shares of the company and reorganized its assets under a new company called the New Haven Arms company. Meanwhile, he kept the patent rights of the Volcanic Arms company under his own name and licensed the rights to manufacture them to the New Haven Arms company. He also managed to convince 11 other investors to invest in this new company (7 of these investors owned shares in Volcanic as well), while retaining a controlling majority of shares.

In the beginning, sales were rather slow and the company was mainly kept running, due to personal funding by Oliver Winchester and his partner in the New Haven Shirt Manufacturing company, John M. Davies. Around April or May 1858, he managed to convince Benjamin Tyler Henry, who had gone back to Robbins & Lawrence, to rejoin and become the new factory superintendent. Henry had worked with Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson at various stages of development of the previous Jennings and Smith-Jennings rifles, so he was fully aware of the advantages and disadvantages of their products. He was convinced that while the lever-action principle was a good idea, the ammunition could be improved. Therefore, with the backing of Oliver Winchester, Henry set upon improving the metallic cartridge and initially produced a better cartridge in .38 caliber in 1859 and produced a few sample carbines and pistols using this cartridge.

Click on the image to enlarge.

However, Oliver Winchester decided that .38 caliber firearms would probably not sell very well and wanted a bigger cartridge. He also recognized that the future of lever-action firearms lay with rifles rather than pistols and therefore directed the company to concentrate on rifle development. With Winchester's backing, Henry came up with a .44 caliber rimfire cartridge and a rifle to fire it, in 1860.

Due to Oliver Winchester and John Davies expanding their shirt manufacturing factory in the beginning of 1860, they could not fund the re-tooling of the New Haven Arms factory to immediately manufacture the Henry design. Instead, they settled on making 3000 Walch pocket revolvers in .31 caliber for the Walch Arms company owned by Cyrus Manville of New York. By April 1861, Winchester's finances had improved so that he could fund the re-tooling process and the company started to deliver the new Henry rifles by 1862.

A Henry Rifle. Click on the image to enlarge.
Image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported by Hmaag

Sales were initially slow, but then the Civil War started and demand for the Henry rifle increased. It is interesting to note that the US Government only purchased about 3140 Henry rifles before the war and 1731 Henry rifles during the war, but more of them were purchased by the soldiers privately, using their own money. The official repeating rifle of the US military was the Spencer rifle, which was also a repeating lever-action weapon and much more sturdy than the Henry rifle. However, despite the relative fragility of the Henry rifle and its lesser power than the Spencer rifle, it had two big advantages over the Spencer rifle:

1. It had a larger magazine capacity (16 cartridges, compared to the Spencer's 7 cartridge capacity)
2. It had a faster rate of fire. Manipulating the lever on the Henry ejected the old cartridge, loaded the new cartridge and also cocked the rifle, all in one motion. The Spencer rifle, by contrast, required the user to cock the rifle separately.

Therefore, individual soldiers in the Union Army saved up to buy Henry rifles, using their own money and they purchased more rifles than the US Government did. To the Confederate soldiers who were armed with slow single shot muzzleloading rifles, a Union soldier armed with a fast firing 16-shot repeating rifle was a deadly opponent. In fact, confederate soldiers called the Henry rifle as "the damned Yankee rifle that they load on Sunday and shoot all week!"

While the Henry rifle sold well, it had some flaws that made it somewhat unsuitable as a military weapon (such as mud and dust entering the open magazine slot and causing it to not feed cartridges properly), so the New Haven Arms company worked to improve the design. Meanwhile, the shirt manufacturing business owned by Oliver Winchester and John M. Davies started doing so well that they retired from that company on January 1st, 1865 and left it to their respective sons to run, so that they could concentrate their efforts on managing the New Haven Arms company. Shortly afterwards, Oliver Winchester went on a trip to Europe, to try and market the Henry rifle to European countries. While he was travelling in Europe, Benjamin Tyler Henry was angered by what he thought was inadequate payment for developing the rifle, and attempted to acquire the rights of the New Haven Arms company (which he still owned shares in), in collaboration with the company secretary, Charles Nott. They petitioned the Connecticut state legislature to change the name of the company to the Henry Arms company. When Oliver Winchester heard about this in May 1865, he immediately sent a telegram to John M. Davies to present the Henry Arms company with all the debts that the New Haven Arms company owed him. Meanwhile, he hurried back to the US and tried to prevent the New Haven Arms company from operating under its new name. Since he could not prevent this, he decided to form his own Winchester Firearms company. 

The formation of this new company was not that hard, since it turned out one of New Haven Arms factories in Bridgeport was actually leased under Oliver Winchester's name and not the company. He had also paid to equip this factory personally, and not the New Haven Arms company. Therefore, he had a factory already equipped to manufacture firearms and could reduce the New Haven Arms company's production by over 50% immediately. On top of that, he owned many of the machinery used for production, therefore many of the other shareholders voted to keep him as president of the New Haven Arms company. Nevertheless, he formed Winchester and set about producing an improved version of the Henry rifle, which became the Winchester Model 1866. This used the same .44 caliber cartridge, but improved the magazine to prevent the jamming issues, by making a closed magazine that could be loaded via a hinged gate at the bottom of the receiver. The design was modified sufficiently to prevent Benjamin Henry and the Henry Arms company from suing Winchester. From this came the birth of one of American's leading firearm companies.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of this article, we had mentioned that Horace Smith had gone back to his home in Springfield, after the sale of the Volcanic Arms company to Oliver Winchester, and 8 months later, Daniel Wesson had left the company as well. Neither of them had been idle after they left the Volcanic Arms company. While Samuel Colt had a patent on revolvers, his revolver patent was due to expire in 1856. Anticipating this, Daniel Wesson began working on a new revolver design. At that time, most revolvers were percussion cap fired and the user would have to pour black powder into each of the six chambers of the cylinder, then push a bullet into each chamber, and then load the percussion caps on the rear of the cylinder, making the whole reloading process cumbersome. Daniel Wesson began working on a design that would use metallic cartridges to load the revolver, thereby speeding up the whole loading process. To do this, he needed to develop a revolver design where the cylinder was bored through and could be loaded from the breech. While he was doing this research, he realized that this concept had already been developed by a former Colt employee named Rollin White, who held the patent for the design. Immediately, Daniel Wesson went to Springfield, Massachusetts and contacted his old friend, Horace Smith. Together, they formed a new Smith & Wesson company to manufacture revolvers and approached Rollin Smith for his patent. Rather than make him a partner in their new company, they offered him a royalty of $0.25 for every revolver manufactured by them. This meant that they were free to manufacture revolvers, while the job of defending the patent from other infringers was White's responsibility. Due to this arrangement, Rollin White lost a lot of money battling court cases, while Smith & Wesson prospered.

Smith & Wesson Revolver Model 1. Click on the image to enlarge. Public domain image.

The new revolvers were an immediate success and sold very well that by 1860, Smith & Wesson had to expand into a new factory. The US Civil war only increased the demand as Smith & Wesson revolvers were purchased privately by many soldiers on both sides. Rollin White even started a separate factory to supply revolvers to Smith & Wesson, to keep up with the demand. Other manufacturers also started to manufacture similar revolvers and therefore, Rollin White sued them in court. He won many of these cases and therefore, the offending companies were forced to stamp "Manufactured for Smith & Wesson" on the revolvers that they made. Despite winning many of these cases, Rollin White did not make much money himself, as he spent most of his earnings on paying lawyers.

After the end of the Civil War, Smith & Wesson started manufacturing revolvers suitable for the American west and also started selling to the US Army, Russia, Australia etc.

So there you have it, from the Walter Hunt rocket ball patent to the birth of two US firearms giants, Winchester and Smith & Wesson.

Actions: Lever Action

In the last post, we studied a popular mechanism called the bolt-action. Now we will study another mechanism that is also still being used today, the lever-action.

A lever-action weapon uses a lever that is located near the trigger, to load new cartridges into the weapon. Often, the lever is formed in such a shape that it also does double duty as a trigger guard as well.

Image courtesy of http://www.adamsguns.com/. Click image to enlarge.

In the picture above, we see a Winchester model 1873. This was one of the most popular lever-action guns and was known as "The Gun that won the west", though the Colt Peacemaker may also have a claim to that title. Notice the large loop next to the trigger guard. The user can put his hand in the loop and rotate the lever around the trigger. This cocks the hammer and opens the chamber to unload the previous cartridge. Spring pressure moves a new cartridge from the magazine into a position where it is ready to be loaded. The user then pulls the lever back to its initial position and this closes the chamber and the weapon is ready to fire.

Also note the little depression to the north east of the trigger. That is the loading port of this weapon. The magazine of this weapon is a long tube inside the stock. The user can push the cartridges in to the magazine one at a time via the port. Typically, most weapons of this type can hold about 8 to 16 cartridges in the magazine, depending on the size of the cartridge.

The best way to illustrate how the mechanism works is to show one in use. Note how the gentleman in the video loads and fires this weapon.

The first weapon to use this type of action was the Spencer Repeating Rifle in 1860. Unlike the later Winchester 1873, using the lever on a Spencer rifle only removed the old cartridge and fed in the new one. The user still had to cock the hammer as a separate action. The weapon used rimfire cartridges and could hold 7 of them at a time in a tubular magazine. It was shown to Abraham Lincoln and he was impressed enough to order that it be adopted by the United States army and navy. A normal user could fire approximately 20 cartridges every minute using a Spencer rifle. Unusually, the Spencer rifle had the magazine tube in the butt of the weapon.

The first rifle that also cocked the weapon upon operating the lever action was by one Oliver Henry, an employee of Winchester. This rifle was called the Henry rifle in his honor. Unlike the Spencer rifle, this one had the magazine located under the barrel, which is where most lever actions have it located today. During the American civil war, while the rifle was never issued officially to the Union army, many soldiers saved their pay so that they could purchase one with their personal funds. The Henry rifle could hold up to 16 cartridges in its magazine and fire at the rate of 28 cartridges per minute. In fact, the confederate forces, who were still armed with muzzle-loaders often derided the weapon as "the damned yankee rifle that they load on Sunday and shoot all week!"

Winchester also continued to make more rifles, under the Winchester name, such as the Winchester model 1873 and Winchester model 1894 named after their respective years.

In the above image of a Winchester model 1873 rifle, you can clearly see that the cartridges are stored in a magazine under the barrel, as was the case in the Henry rifle as well. Contrast this with the earlier Spencer rifle that stored extra cartridges in the butt of the rifle stock. The lever action mechanism can also be clearly seen. As with the Henry rifle, manipulating the lever ejects the old cartridge, loads a new one and also cocks the weapon simultaneously.

A significant competitor of Winchester was Marlin. The Marlin model 1894 which was first built in 1894 is still being manufactured today. In fact, if you look at the video above, you'll notice the gentleman is firing a Marlin 1894 as well.

Lever action rifles have a few good things going for them: They lack "handness", i.e. they can be fired equally well by a right-handed or a left-handed shooter, as the lever is accessible from either side. They also offer a higher rate of fire than a bolt-action weapon, since all that is required to fire is to pull and push the lever back. They are also shorter than bolt-action rifles, which makes them easier to manipulate by people riding on horseback. This is why Winchester lever-action rifles were so popular with frontiersmen in the Wild West. During the American civil war, many groups of scouts, raiding parties and skirmishers used Henry lever-action rifles for the same reason.

On the other hand, they also have some disadvantages. Since most of them use tubular magazines which are inside the stock, the balance of the weapon is altered. Pointed spitzer type bullets can occasionally detonate inside a tubular magazine, as the sharp pointed tip of each bullet rests on the primer cap of the next cartridge. It is also harder to operate the lever when one is lying prone on the ground. This is why they didn't catch on much with military forces around the world. Most lever action weapons also don't have detachable magazines, hence it is not possible for a user to pre-load a bunch of magazines ahead of time.

Lever actions are also not as strong as bolt-action weapons, so they cannot be used for longer-range rifles. This is why the cartridges used by lever-action rifles are not as powerful as those used by bolt-action weapons. Since hunting usually needs shorter range weapons and also since the weapons are shorter overall and have higher firing rate, this type of action is popular with hunters and they are still used by them to this day.