homepage Forums SimHQ Community Community Hall Forgotten weapons evolution of the lever gun

I know some here view the Forgotten Weapons videos produced and posted on Youtube by Ian McCullom. Last week he started a series of 8 short videos ---one each on the evolving models of the Winchester lever action repeater through history showing how and why each model was developed. There were really only 7 main Winchester named lever guns, but technically the 1860 Henry which evolved from the Volcanic pistol just prior to the ACW was really the first Winchester. The next 3 models in the series were all based on the action of the Henry. The reason being that although the patent for the Henry was filed by Benjamin Tyler Henry, he was an employee of the New Haven Arms company, which was essentially owned by Oliver Winchester, thus the ownership and rights to produce under the Henry patent belonged to Winchester.

Each video is about 15 minutes, so I linked the playlist where you can watch them at your leisure if you can't handle 2 straight hours of lever gun nirvana. He recorded these while at the Rock Island auction house in Illinois since they have A large 3 day all firearms auction coming up in a couple of days and with over 10,000 firearms to auction off, there were multiple versions of all
8 models to use for the videos. Of course Rock Island doesn't mind him promoting their auction either, but wouldn't it be fun to be able to handle all those historic old firearms?

Only one or two of these models might qualify as a "forgotten weapon" to anybody with only a passing interest in lever guns, but Ian ties them all together along with a lots of interesting historical background information. I thought I was a bit of a Winchester lever gun geek, but his videos had some fascinating tidbits that I had never heard or read before.

Rather than link each video, this will take you to the first video along with the playlist. so you can decide if you want to go on after watching the first about the Henry.

Winchester development play list


Cheers

Interesting stuff , thanks for posting

Ian's Buddy at 'InRangeTV' also has an interesting video about the lever action 1860 Henry was the world's first 'Assault rifle'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8KfCKjbIUA

There's also another interesting discussion with both of them about 'What if' The US army had seriously adopted it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOtW76itFtU

Cool progression, very interesting. Kinda the AR-15 of it's time, tons of gadgets to add, different styles...

Thanks Ant for adding those video links. They do make some valid points and I've often referred to the early Winchesters as the assault rifles of their day long before I had seen either of these videos.

In Ian's first video about the Henry, he mentions that the Union did purchase a small quantity of Henry's. I read somewhere that their main reason for doing this was for use by Navy since the ammunition was relatively water or weather-proof and that shipboard use of small arms was not as punishing on the firearms as land combat would be.

He also mentions cost, but doesn't get too specific. A Henry cost $50 per rifle while a standard ACW muzzle loading musket like the Springfield was in the $12 to $15 range. Those state and town militia units that were able to self purchase and field Henry's during the war came from generally affluent areas. The monthly pay of a regular soldier in the Union army was only about $16 per month, so a $50 rifle was pretty much out of the question for the large majority of volunteer units. The few Henry's captured by Confederates soon became useless since the South had no way to manufacture the proprietary rim fire cartridge or even procure it other than by battle capture.

Winchester tried for years to secure a US government contract with a lever gun, but it just wasn't meant to be. They seemed to always be a day late and a cartridge caliber short.

Cheers

I can't watch the videos yet (limited data) but I'm a big fan of levers, particularly the 1886 and 1895.

Not a big fan of cresent butt plates though, yeah they look nostalgic and are probably useful for keeping the rifle shouldered when on a moving horse, but they are a pain otherwise.