Farewell Winchester lever guns: it shouldn't have happened this way

Guns Magazine, Feb, 2009 by Mike "Duke" Venturino

The fact Winchester lever guns are truly gone is difficult to accept. It's akin to losing a lifelong friend who was always there and now is not. "Gun people" who are truly initiated about firearms know Winchester made a wide assortment of guns from single shot .22 rimfires to many types of shotguns. But to the general public the word Winchester was synonymous with a lever-actuated rifle. Most, likely many moviegoers just thought of them as "cowboy guns."

It's also hard to accept such a giant name in firearms manufacturing is pretty much gone now too. Winchester Repeating Arms Company was one of the pioneers of mass production of long guns starting back in the 1860s. And if the company had not been there in the first half of this century our American military would have suffered. Winchester along with Remington produced over a couple of million Model 1917 "Enfields" during World War I, and Winchester developed the M1 Carbine in 1941 and its little .30 caliber cartridge. The company also produced M1 Garands circa 1940-1945 and a host of other war weapons for WWII. Now the word "Winchester" is usually stamped on firearms made in Japan.

Although Winchester produced a total of seven lever gun models in the late 1800s, until the very last one they followed a constant theme. That is, the first six all loaded through a port on the receiver's right side with the cartridges being stored in a tubular magazine beneath the barrel. Pulling the lever/triggerguard downwards caused the bolt to travel rearwards extracting and ejecting either a fired case or a live round, whatever happened to be in the chamber. Pulling the lever upwards chambered a fresh round, leaving the exposed hammer cocked and the rifle, carbine or musket ready to fire.

Perhaps that "rifle, carbine or musket" thing should be explained a bit further. In each of their seven incarnations of lever gun, Winchester made three basic versions as standard. First and usually most popular, were full-size rifles. Depending on the exact model, they had 24" to 28" barrel lengths of either full round, full octagon, or half round/half octagon.

A standard rifle also had a crescent-shaped steel buttplate, a steel fore-end cap, and buckhorn-type rear sight with elevation adjusted by a slider. Winchester rifles had post or blade type front sights dovetailed into the barrel. Sighting in for windage could be done by drifting either front or rear sights, or both, in their dovetails.

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Winchester carbines had 20" to 22" lightweight round barrels, a slightly curved steel buttplate, a barrel band around the forearm and another out near the muzzle. A carbine's sight was an open, V-notch type usually called a ladder sight, because one leg of it lifted up and another V-notch could be moved upwards. Windage could be adjusted by drifting the rear sight in its dovetail, but carbine front sights were usually blades pinned into studs silver soldered to the barrel.

Also, Winchester's carbines of the late 1800s were called "saddle ring" types because there was a ring on the receiver's left side. Ostensibly the ring was for a leather thong to attach the carbine to a saddle. Some carbines were very popular such as the Models 1873, 1892 and 1894. Others were not so popular such as the Models 1876 and 1886 (most probably because even in carbine form they were awfully heavy for horse carrying).

Back in the heyday of Winchester lever guns, the company was forever looking for military contracts. The US military forces never bought them as standard issue, but occasionally a foreign country bought in quantity. Turkish Model 1866s and Russian Model 1895s come instantly to mind. For that reason, all seven of Winchester's 1800s lever guns were made in musket configuration. Those had long, round barrels of 27" to 30" with long forearms secured with barrel bands. Interestingly Winchester usually equipped their muskets with carbine buttstocks. They would also furnish bayonets at a nominal extra charge.

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And here's something else interesting. Usually the musket was the least produced version of Winchester's three basic lever gun configurations. For instance, only about five percent of Model 1873s were muskets. Conversely, the majority of Winchester Model 1895s were muskets, but that was a special situation. The Russian Government bought almost 294,000 Model 1895s chambered for their 7.62x54R cartridge during WWI. In an ironic twist of fate, some of those Winchesters were turned against American soldiers during the Korean War when the Soviets passed them onto Chinese and North Korean Communists forces.

The '66

The Winchester ball got rolling circa 1866 with the Model 1866. Actually in the beginning the Winchester Model 1866 was called the "Improved Henry" because it was simply a redesign of the Henry rifle. It used the same "gun metal" receiver, which looked like brass, but actually wasn't. And instead of loading from the front of the magazine tube sort of like modern .22 rimfires still load today, the new Winchester was the first to load through a port on the side of the receiver.