Cimarron's centennial model: at last! The Winchester 1876 .45-60 is reborn. Cowboy action shooters get a 10-shot bio-bore repeater

Guns Magazine, Oct, 2006 by Mike Venturino

Back in the 1870s, Winchester lever guns were selling like hotcakes. People liked the idea of blazing away large numbers of rounds in short order. (Hey, they weren't much different from a lot of today's shooters, were they?) Winchester's dilemma came from their rifle's power factor: In short, it wasn't much.

By 1876 Winchester had only introduced two lever gun cartridges. The Model 1866 took the .44 Henry rimfire round, which popped a 200-grain bullet out at about 1,150 fps. In terms of muzzle energy, one of today's .357 Magnum revolvers can do that from a 4" barrel. Then they came out with the .44 WCF (.44-40) round along with the Model 1873 lever gun. It was a real snorter (not!) with a 200-grain bullet at a bit over 1,300 fps. Only a pitiful .44 Magnum revolver can't beat that.

Real riflemen of the 1870s laughed at Winchesters. "Real riflemen" meant those who went out West with the intention of shooting big stuff like elk, moose and bison. Indian fighters on the other hand preferred rapid-shooting lever guns, but that's another story. The big single shots of the day mostly took cartridges firing charges of powder in excess of 70 grains along with bullets weighing 370 to 550 grains. They weren't going any faster than .44-40 bullets, but they would easily plow through two or more bison if you could get the critters lined up right. And they were accurate, too. Competitions all the way to 1,000 yards were fairly common back east.

Just like gun companies today, Winchester wanted more market share and to get it they needed more power in repeating rifles. Hence, in the year of our nation's Centennial, they introduced the Model 1876. In essence, it differed little in design from their Model 1873. A brass cartridge lifter still raised a round out of a tubular magazine into alignment with the chamber. That happened when the lever was opened while coincidentally the hammer was full cocked. When the lever was closed, the bolt shoved the round into the chamber, and the rifle was ready to fire. And it would do so as fast as someone could run the lever and pull the trigger.

Another feature the Model 1876 shared with Model 1873s was its method of locking the bolt shut with toggle links. That sort of breech-locking system is generally acknowledged as not being overly strong. Hence, the continuous warnings about only using mild ammunition in the Model 1873s today despite the fact they might be newly manufactured such as the Uberti ones made in the same factory as this new Model 1876.

On Steroids

In order to make the Model 1876 accommodate "rifle" cartridges instead of the heretofore "pistol-size" ones of Models 1866 and 1873, Winchester had to make the rifle bigger. Believe me--they are! A Winchester Model 1873 weighed about eight pounds. A Model 1876 goes a full 11 pounds. A Winchester Model 1873 in standard rifle configuration has a 24" barrel. Model 1876 standard rifles had 28" barrels, except those in .50-95 caliber, which for some reason were given 26" barrels.

When introduced, a brand new rifle cartridge came with the Model 1876. Winchester called it the .45-75 WCE What they tried to do was make a lever gun cartridge to equal the government's .45-70 in power. It was close. Most .45-70 factory loaded cartridges used 70 grains of powder (as the name implies) in straight cases 2.10" long with bullets ranging from 400 to 500 grains. The new .45-75 WCF was loaded with 350-grain bullets and 75 grains of powder but in a case only 1.89" long. In order to get that much powder in such a short case, Winchester's cartridge designers had to make it bottlenecked in shape, with the case head being of larger diameter than the .45-70's.

Was this bottlenecked case a great innovation? No way. The government had actually tried them when developing the .45-70 and decided black powder bottlenecked cases gave significantly higher pressures with only a few feet per second increase in projectile speed. Why didn't Winchester just chamber their Model 1876 for the .45-70? It was too long and made the lever throw prohibitively lengthy.

Meager Sales

From the very beginning, the Model 1876 didn't set any sales records. Here's a comparison from figures compiled by the late George Madis, an authority on Winchesters. In 1874, the first full year of Model 1873 production they made 2,599 of those pistol-cartridge lever guns. The next year brought 8,598 Model 1873s, and then in 1876 11,825 were produced. Conversely, in 1876, only 1,429 of the new rifle-size Winchester lever guns were made, followed by only 2,149 in 1877, and 4,387 in 1878. Then, in 1879, the figure dropped to a meager 1,003.

So what does any self-respecting gun company do when sales drop off? They introduce new calibers, of course. (They still do that.) So in 1879 they announced both .45-60 WCF and .50-95 WCF chamberings. Both used only 300-grain bullets over their respective powder charges. In 1881, along came the .40-60 WCF, one of the puniest cartridges ever put into a full-size rifle. Its 210-grain bullet couldn't even break 1,500 fps.