High Quality Winchester Model 1873 Rifles

A long time ago, we studied lever actions and one of the most famous lever action weapons was the Winchester Model 1873 rifle.

Winchester Model 1873. Click on the image to enlarge. Image courtesy of http://www.adamsguns.com/

This rifle was extremely popular with settlers and cowboys in America and became known as "the gun that won the west". It was manufactured for 46 years between 1873 and 1919 and during this time, 720,610 rifles were made. Bear in mind that the entire population of the United States was around 70 million people at that time, so this means it was an extremely popular rifle.

The reader should note that this was not a long-range rifle at all. The cartridges it used weren't very powerful and accuracy was not the best -- your average Model 1873 rifle couldn't put 5 shots into a dinner-plate sized target at 100 yards. So what was good about this rifle that made it so popular then? Well, it was a rugged design, and it used the same cartridges as revolvers, so that the user only needed to carry one type of cartridge for both weapons. Also, many users didn't need pin-point accuracy and the rifle was powerful and accurate enough to be used to hunt deer or for self-defense. The lack of accuracy and power was more than made up for by its ability to shoot rapidly and the large capacity of its magazine. It was also relatively cheap.

However, in 1875, Winchester began to offer higher grade versions of the Model 1873 for sale. Every Winchester rifle barrel was test-fired in the factory, as part of the manufacturing process. Rifle barrels that shot with exceptional accuracy were set aside for special orders. These exceptionally accurate barrels were then handed over to the best workmen in the factory, to make customized models of the Model 1873. These rifles were made with set triggers, case hardened parts, extra-fine quality of finish, high quality walnut stocks with checkering, fancy engravings on the metal parts etc. The best quality barrels were engraved with the lettering "One of One Thousand", or "One of 1000". The second best quality barrels were engraved with the lettering "One of One Hundred".

Three Winchester "One of One Thousand" rifles and a "One of One Hundred" rifle.

Winchester catalogs from that period were quoted as follows:
"The barrel of every sporting rifle we make will be proved and shot at a target, and the target will be numbered to correspond with the barrel and be attached to it. All of these barrels that are found to make targets of extra merit will be made up into guns with set-triggers and extra finish and marked as a designating name, "One of One Thousand," and sold at $100.00. The next grade of barrels, not so fine, will be marked "One of One Hundred" and set up to order in any style at $20.00 advance over the list price of the corresponding style of gun."

The price of an ordinary Winchester Model 1873 rifle around 1880 was around $20. The "One of One Thousand" rifles were sold at a list price of $100 each and the "One of One Hundred" models were sold for around $40 each. Considering that the price of one acre of best quality farmland in Kansas was $11, these higher quality firearms were quite expensive and only rich people could afford to buy them.

While the fine walnut stock with checkering, case hardened parts and set triggers were standard with these higher-end rifles, the factory also offered custom upgrades for extra. For instance, a person could add special upgraded walnut stocks, long range sights, silver or gold finish, custom engravings and monograms etc. Since many of the owners of these higher-quality rifles were quite rich, these rifles were often upgraded with these extra options.

Winchester only manufactured 132 rifles of "One of One Thousand" quality (some sources say 133 or even 136 rifles.) The "One of One Hundred" rifles are even rarer, only 8 were ever produced, as per the Winchester factory records.

In 1950, Hollywood produced a popular western movie called "Winchester '73" starring James Stewart, where the story involves a "One of One Thousand" rifle. As part of marketing this movie, Universal Pictures published advertisements in many papers, for a contest to find the remaining "One in One Thousand" model rifles. Due to their efforts, 61 "One of One Thousand" rifles of Model 1873 and 6 more of the Model 1876 have been located. Of the "One of One Hundred" rifles, only 6 of the 8 that were manufactured, have been found.

When the "One of One Thousand" rifles hit the market, they were priced at $100 each. Today, one of such rifles could easily sell for over $100,000 or more. The "One of One Hundred" models are even more expensive, since only 8 were ever made, therefore the selling price of one of these is much more. By contrast, an ordinary Winchester M1873 from that period sold for around $20 then and would sell for around $3,000 - $4,000 today.

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.

Tubular Magazines

In our last post, we studied the basics of magazines and also the difference between a magazine and a clip. In today's post, we will study a particular type of magazine, the tubular magazine.

Tubular magazines were among the very first types of magazines to be used in repeating weapons. It consists of a tube that can hold cartridges placed end-to-end. In many cases, there is a spring on one end of the tube, that serves to push the cartridges into the chamber. The tubular magazine is usually placed under the barrel, or in the butt-stock of the firearm. These are usually used with lever-action rifles or pump-action shotguns. Tubular magazines are also usually of the "fixed" type (i.e.) they cannot be detached from the firearm in normal usage.

A Winchester model 1873 lever-action rifle. Public domain image.

In the above image, we see a Winchester Model 1873 lever action rifle. Note the cartridges are shown stored in a magazine tube under the barrel of the firearm. There is a spring on the other end of the magazine tube, that forces the cartridges backwards out of the magazine. When the user manipulates the trigger guard lever, it pulls a cartridge out of the magazine and chambers it.

In the above image, we see a pump-action shotgun. You can clearly see the extra shells being stored in a tubular magazine under the barrel.

Not all tubular magazines are necessarily under the barrel though. Let us look at a very early repeating weapon, the Spencer carbine (and its larger cousin, the Spencer repeating rifle).

A Spencer Carbine. Public domain image.

The Spencer rifle and carbine were invented in 1860 and preceded the Winchester model 1873 that we just studied above. Unlike the previous examples where the magazine is under the barrel, this weapon stores its cartridges in a magazine in the stock and there is a spring mechanism at the butt end of the stock that pushes the cartridges out of the magazine and into the chamber.

Not all tubular magazines were necessarily spring fed though. In very early repeating rifles such as the Kalthoff repeater and the Girardoni air rifle, both of which we studied a couple of months ago, gravity is used to feed a new bullet from the magazine. The user typically tilts the rifle upwards and manipulates a lever to load a firearm. Due to gravity, a bullet rolls down from the magazine and into the chamber. Of course, this mechanism was used before the invention of cartridges and also when bullets were round balls.

In some of the above images we've seen above, note that the cartridges have pointed bullets (a.k.a. spitzer bullets). If the cartridges are of the centerfire type, this means the pointed end of each bullet is resting against the primer cap of the cartridge ahead of it. In early repeating rifles, these sometimes caused problems because the pointed nose of one bullet could sometimes detonate the cartridge ahead of it, if enough force was applied. This could happen if the user were to accidentally drop the weapon, or even due to recoil after firing a cartridge. Sometimes, this could also result in a chain fire, where every bullet detonates the cartridge ahead of it. The risk of premature detonation increased as rifles got more and more powerful because of the increased recoil forces. Therefore, tubular magazine are generally seen these days on weapons that don't use pointed spitzer type bullets, but use other types of bullet shapes, such as shotgun shells (which have flat tips), round-nose bullets or rimfire cartridges (because the primer is in the rim, rather than in the center of the cartridge base). This is why they are usually seen today in shotguns and rimfire rifles mostly. They also don't generally have the capacity compared to some other magazine types (typically, they hold 3 to 12 cartridges). Another issue is that it is usually not possible for the user to see how many cartridges are left in the magazine. On the plus side, it is a very simple magazine mechanism and has been used for several decades.

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.