Predecessors of the Winchester ’73 – the legendary rifle of the Wild West
“Oliver Winchester was not a gunsmith, and the company in its early days owed much of its success to other well-known gunmakers”
Most readers will be familiar with the name Oliver F Winchester and associate it with the bestselling brand of lever-action rifles the world has ever seen. What many will not be aware of, however, is that Oliver Winchester was not a gunsmith and the company in its early days owed much of its success to other well-known gunmakers.
Oliver Winchester was born with his twin brother in Boston on 30 November 1810. By the age of seven he was working on a farm, but during the winter months took himself off to school and by 1830 was skilled in carpentry and had qualified as a master builder, supervising the construction of many properties around the Baltimore area.
With money behind him, he bought into a clothing business in 1834, specialising in men’s shirts, and quickly amassed enough capital to venture into other businesses.
Double act
Famous gun-making pair Smith & Wesson had acquired Rollin White’s patent for boredthrough cylinders on revolvers and, in 1855, reformed their company as the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company. Their intention was to build improved versions of their lever-action, self-contained cartridge pistol and branch out into rifles using the same principle. Winchester became a stockholder in the company and shortly after a director.
All the machinery, patents and unfinished weapons were moved from Norwich to New
Haven and the manufacture of around 600 Volcanic Arms was commenced. Smith, however, was more interested in perfecting his revolver and left to work out of his own shop. Wesson, who had been superintendent of the workshops, also left to rejoin his former partner and a gentleman called
B Tyler Henry joined the Volcanic Arms Company as his replacement.
Volcanic meltdown
Unfortunately, poor sales of the Volcanic product soon put the company into financial difficulties. Winchester and a major shareholder, Nelson Gaston, bailed it out but Gaston died at the end of 1856. Winchester bought Gaston’s mortgage and became president of the company, but with debts of more than $40,000 and creditors hounding daily, the company was forced to close.
Winchester ended up with all the stock and machinery in settlement. Most of the problems with the Volcanic had been based around the ammunition, which was unreliable at best. B Tyler Henry had been working on a larger rimfire cartridge for some while (up to this point only .22 had existed) and redesigned the Volcanic to accept this new .44 ammunition. Henry was granted US patent 30446 on 16 October 1860, and the Henry rifle was born.
Henry rifle
While not a rip-roaring success, the Henry rifle was streets ahead of the Volcanic in both power and reliability. Its major drawback, however, was the integral exposed underbarrel magazine tube. In theory, dirt or damage could prevent the smooth cycling operation but, over the next six years, more than 12,000 rifles were produced. In 1865, Henry was honoured by having the name of the company changed to the Henry Repeating Arms Company, but this honour was short-lived. In 1866, it was changed again, this time to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.
The main reason for this was that in 1866, the rifle was redesigned to incorporate ‘King’s Patent Improvement’, a feature whereby the ammunition could be loaded into the magazine from the rear, allowing an enclosed magazine tube and the fitting of a conventional fore-end. Nelson King, the patentee, took over as workshop superintendent in late 1865.
The redesigned rifle, known by collectors as the ‘Model 1866’, was distinctive in that it was fitted with a brass action, leading to its nickname ‘the Yellowboy ’. This model proved so popular that it stayed in the lineup until 1898, long after it and the rimfire ammunition it fired became obsolete. The total production exceeded 170,000.
Next month, we will look at what is possibly the most famous lever-action rifle, the Model 1873, and its successor, the 1876.