The Velocity Race

When I was a kid just learning the shooting sports in the Seventies, all the major rifle manufacturers, ammo companies and wildcatters were engaged in a race for velocity.  Roy Weatherby contributed heavily, with his proprietary line of 3,000fps+ rifle cartridges, but he wasn’t alone.  The gun companies were daily bringing out new variations on the Eargesplitten Loudenboomer Magnum with muzzle velocities approaching relativistic speeds.  The trend continued into the next couple of decades; back in the Nineties when I was running a little email newsletter on Mauser bolt guns, one of my regular readers used to regale us with tales of his wildcatter buddies Aimo and Delbert.  Those worthies once supposedly came up with a .17/50BMG wildcat which had a muzzle velocity so high that the bullet arrived on target before the shooter even uncased the rifle.

But there was one man who anticipated the trend, and indeed predated them all; so much so, in fact, as to have been well ahead of his time.  His name?  Charles Newton.

The Man

Surprisingly little is known about Charles Newton.  We know he was born in Delevan, New York, in 1868; we know he was a lawyer and firearms aficionado with an ambition to become a gunmaker.  He had some pretty good ideas about big game rifles, was conversant in bolt guns and was obviously a student of Paul Mauser’s designs.

We also know he was a couple of decades ahead of his time.

The Plan

When Newton first set out to market his own ideas in bolt-action game rifles in 1914, the American outdoor scene was dominated by lever-actions.  But several events were happening around the world that would change that.

First:  Sixteen years earlier, Paul Mauser, working in his factory in Oberndorf am Neckar in Bavaria, created what would be the pattern for the vast majority of bolt guns thereafter:  The 1898 Mauser.  Unlike the previous designs from Mauser-Werke, the 98 had a robust reinforcing ring in the beefier forward receiver ring; the ’98 also had a third “safety” locking lug, an improved gas shield in the bolt shroud to vent hot gases away from the shooter in the event of a case failure, and it cocked on opening, using the leverage of the bolt handle to cock the striker rather than making the shooter push the bolt closed against the striker spring.

This set the 98 apart from previous bolt guns in several ways.  First, the action was tougher, allowing the use of high-pressure, high-performance cartridges.  Second, the cock-on-open action made for faster, more certain cycling of the action.  Third, the gas shield made the ’98 safer for the shooter in the case a high-performance round blew a case head.

Second:  In June of 1914, when a Serb Yugoslav nationalist named Gavrilo Princip rubbed out the Austro-Hungarian royal heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, triggering a conflict which eventually exploded into the Great War.  Why is this relevant to the American sporting rifle picture?

Because three years later, in 1917, the United States entered that conflict.  In all 2.8 million American servicemen volunteered or were conscripted for that conflict (my grandfather among the first group).  Those who were hunters and shooters had, like most American sportsmen, favored lever guns prior to this, but their service time made them intimately familiar with the Pattern 17 Enfields and the excellent 1903 Springfield rifles they were issued; both rifles were essentially clones of the 98 Mauser.  When they returned home, the American doughboys led the slow but inevitable rise of the bolt gun as the go-to American sporting rifle.

Charles Newton was poised to capitalize on that trend.

The Cartridges

A rifle is a device for launching bullets.  Knowing that to be true, Newton began his forays into ammunition before he began building rifles.  Of all his cutting-edge (for the time) cartridges, only his first is still in use today.

In or around 1912, Charles Newton designed a new cartridge for a company that had a great property, a cutting-edge lever gun; that company being Savage, the gun being the Model 99, and the cartridge Newton developed became the .22 Savage Hi-Power.  It wasn’t a complicated piece of engineering; he merely took the .25-35 WCF case and necked it down to take an oddball .228 bullet.  But the combination of high velocity and the slightly over-bore .22 round firing a 70-grain soft point bullet yielded a round that punched well outside its weight class by the standards of the time.   The round became popular in Europe for hunting red deer, Europe’s slightly smaller variation on North American elk; no lesser a man than W.D.M. “Karamojo” Bell, demonstrating once again the advantages gifted by an enormous set of brass balls, successfully used a .22 Savage Hi-Power rifle to hunt Cape buffalo.  Newton’s ideas of high velocity and high penetrating power were beginning to earn some respect in the game fields.

The .22 Savage Hi-Power, in the European guise of the 5.6x52R, is, in fact, the only one of Newton’s cartridge designs still in common use, although only in Europe – and only in those jurisdictions where the peasants are still allowed to own rifles.

The following year, 1913, saw Newton bringing out another new cartridge.  The .256 Newton was another adaptation of an existing round – Newton took the famous .30-06 case and necked it down to take a .25 caliber bullet.  Sound familiar?  Of course – many years later Remington legitimized the popular wildcat round that originally came out as the .256 Newton, calling it the .25-06 Remington.  For Newton, the .256 round was a breakthrough.  Western Cartridge Company loaded the case with a 123-grain pill at a tad over 3100 fps, a blazing-hot round for the time.

Then, that same year, Newton brought out one of the first real magnum rifle cartridges, the .30 Newton, which fired a 150-grain bullet at over 3,200fps.  This was a rip-roaring .30 caliber round for this pre-Great War market.  Newton achieved this by necking down the big German 11.2×72 Schuler case.  This was a big, beefy case; the original 11.2×72 (firing a .44 caliber bullet, more or less) round was a popular round in German rifles made for the African safari market at the time.

This case was roomy enough to be adapted for larger bullets, and Newton took advantage of that, bringing in the .33 and 35 Newton in 1915, launching 225 and 250-grain bullet at 2800fps, and finishing up with the .40 Newton, which never saw full production (as we’ll explore here in a moment) but which theoretically could propel a 300-grain slug at over 3,000fps.

But a cutting-edge cartridge is of little use unless you have a rifle that can handle it.  It was in the development of those rifles that Newton showed his prescience.

The Guns

While a rifle may be a device for launching bullets, the bullets are nothing without the rifle; and it is in the rifle that a designer has a chance to achieve some real artistry.

The first Newton rifle wasn’t made by Newton.  In 1914, the Model A Newton hit the market, sold only in the .256 Newton caliber.  It’s unclear how many Model A Newtons were imported, but the number is likely under a hundred.  The rifles were made under contract in Germany; one shipment of 24 rifles, built on 98 Mauser actions, is confirmed to have been received and sold by Newton.  Other shipments were prepared but not sent, and it is unknown what happened to those guns, as the beginning of the Great War interfered with shipments across the Atlantic.

Undeterred, Newton decided to build his own guns.  In 1916 re-formed the Newton Arms Co., Inc. and enlisted the assistance of legendary gunsmith and barrel-maker Harry Pope.  In due time, The Newton Arms Co. introduced the first American-made Newton, the First Model 1916.

This was a solid bolt gun that departed from the Mauser in having not one two large locking lugs but six smaller ones, making for a shorter bolt throw.  The 1916 was, at last, the culmination of Newton’s intentions for a modern bolt-action sporting rifle.  About 4,000 were made, chambered for the .22 Savage Hi-Power, the .256, .30, .33, .35 Newton calibers as well as the .30 U.S.G., better known nowadays as the .30-06.  .40 Newton rifles were advertised but it’s unclear if any were actually built.  The 1916 also featured a variety of wood grades, barrel lengths up to thirty inches, scope mounts, and a double-set trigger.

But not all those 4,000 rifles were made by Newton.

Newton was a man ahead of his time, but his timing was poor in other respects as well.  He was trying to build an market an innovative new sporting rifle while most of Western civilization was involved in a horrible war of attrition on the European continent, making it very difficult to obtain steel and components for ammunition; since Newton’s rifles used (mostly) proprietary ammo, there was no pre-war inventory to rely on.  Newton was able to produce the 1916 rifles for about 16 months, building 2,400 or so rifles in that time.  But then ongoing financial troubles threatened to sink the New Arms Company, which was forced into receivership for a little over three months; the receiver sold the company’s assets to a third party, who formed the Newton Arms Corporation in New York City and continued building the Model 1916 rifles, cranking out about 1,600 before Newton sued to get his design back.  No more Model 1916 Newtons were built after that.

Still, in due time, the Great War ended.  Lots of American doughboys came home, and many of them returned to their pre-war pastimes, which included hunting and shooting; suddenly there was a market for bolt-action sporting rifles.  Such firms as Remington and Winchester were already stepping into the market, and so in 1922, Charles Newton, having once more re-organized his business as the Chas. Newton Rifle Company, arranged with Germany’s J.P. Sauer to import Mauser-based rifles in .256 Newton as the Model 1922.  This was not a good business model; only around a hundred rifles were imported before the whole thing fell through.  So, Newton shifted gears yet again, moved his operation to New Haven, Connecticut, and formed the Buffalo Newton Rifle Company.  Once again Newton was manufacturing.

Between 1924 and 1930, the Buffalo Newton Rifle Company put out about 1,000 Second Model 1924 Buffalo Newton rifles, chambered in .256, .30, .35 and .40 Newton calibers as well as the .30-06.  The Buffalo Newton, like the Model 1916, was available in a variety of trims and barrel lengths and featured a double-set trigger designed and patented by Newton himself.

But the Newtons were something of a premium rifle.  Take note of the years of manufacture; after the crash of 1929 and during the resulting Great Depression, there wasn’t a great market for top-end guns.  The Buffalo Newton Rifle Company folded in 1930.

Charles Newton wasn’t quite finished.  In 1929 Newton had come up with a prototype for what he called the “Leverbolt” rifle, a fast-actioned, straight-pull bolt gun that looked like the illegitimate child of a 98 Mauser and a 99 Savage lever gun.  The gun was never manufactured, and while there have been a couple of attempts to revive the design over the years, nothing has ever come of it.

A while back I had the chance to handle and shoot a Model 1916 Newton rifle in .30-06.  It was a great rifle, well-made and beautiful, with a premium walnut stock and good sights.  The rifle impressed me enough that I asked the owner, who had inherited the rifle from his grandfather, if it might be for sale; he replied, “not at any price,” which is understandable.  The stock had rather more drop than a modern rifle, but the action was smooth, and the double-set trigger clean and crisp.  I’d like to have one like it one day.

The Legacy

Charles Newton passed away at his home in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1932, aged 64.  While he never saw much commercial success as a gun builder, in his development of fine bolt-action rifles and high-velocity magnum rifle cartridges firing tough, heavy slugs resulting in high shock effect and great penetration, Charles Newton foretold what the American sportsman would be looking for in a game rifle – he just saw it about twenty years too soon.  I look today at my favorite big-game rifle, my own Thunder Speaker, based on a ’98 Mauser action, using the .338 Winchester Magnum cartridge to fire a tough 250-grain bullet at around 2800 fps; this is a rifle that will let daylight in both ends of a moose, the long way.

That’s a rifle Charles Newton would have approved of.

It’s a difficult thing, sometimes, to be too far ahead of the wave.  Had Charles Newton brought out his rifles and cartridges in the years leading up to the second world war instead of the first, he may well have taken his place along John Browning and Sam Colt as a great American gun designer.  As it is, he’s a footnote; few people today know of Newton rifles, and the guns themselves are relegated to ranks of collectors, too few and too valuable to see much use in the game fields.

And that’s too bad.  I’ve long watched the online auctions for a Newton rifle, and when I do find one to take an honored place in the gun rack at the Casa de Animal, it will certainly be taken out to the range and the field, shot and hunted with.  That’s what a rifle is made for; that’s why Charles Newton designed his rifles and cartridges.

When you get right down to it, there are plenty of worse legacies a man could leave behind him.

Lever Guns in the Smokeless Powder Age

The introduction of the new smokeless powders changed everything.

These fancy new propellants developed some hot new performance, but there were some requirements that gunmakers had to adapt to.  Chamber pressures were much higher, and while performance was much higher than the old black-powder loads, realizing the most out of that performance required bottlenecked cartridges and spitzer bullets.

Most of the lever guns on the market were physically capable of carrying and chambering the new rifle rounds, at least the shorter ones like the .250 and .300 Savage.  But steels adequate for black-powder loads weren’t up to the new levels of pressure, and the idea of having jacketed spitzer bullets lying point-to-primer in tubular magazines gave many shooters a bad case of the williwaws.  Some changes in metallurgy and magazines were in order.  The 20^th century was a very interesting time in lever guns.

Winchester’s Dominance Continues – For a While.

1935 saw the introduction of what may be the best of the traditionally-designed big-bore lever guns.  In that year Winchester released the Model 71, a re-engineered Model 1886 lever gun chambered in the new and powerful .348 Winchester.  Intended as a Western game rifle, the 71 was a big, powerful gun capable of taking any American big game at extended ranges, but in this

introduction Winchester’s timing was off.  This was a niche that even in 1935 was increasingly dominated by bolt guns, and after World War 2 the scoped bolt gun became the overwhelming choice of outdoorsmen who wanted to reach out and touch something.  The original 71 was discontinued in 1958.

In 1955 Winchester broke with tradition in offering the lever-action Model 88.  This was a different kind of lever gun, as the short-stroke lever operated a rotating bolt with locking lugs at the front, making for a tighter lockup.  The ’88 ejected spent cartridges to the side, allowing a solid low scope mount on its solid-top receiver.  The new lever gun was striker-fired with no external hammer, making for a faster lock time than older designs.  It had a full-length stock and a box magazine and was chambered for two powerful rounds, the .284 Winchester and the .308 Winchester.  Here was a truly modern lever gun, referred to by some gun writers as a “bolt gun operated by a lever.”  That lever also had something else new; in cycling the action the trigger moved along with the lever, eliminating a common cause of pinched fingers in more traditional lever guns.

The ’88 was joined in 1961 by a semi-auto counterpart, the Model 100.  The ’88 didn’t last, only being made until 1973, but one can usually find them for sale on auction sites and the short, handy puncher is still a great hunting rifle.

In the early to mid-20^th century the famed and wildly successful Model 94 spawned a few variants.  While the 94 was offered in a variety of barrel lengths and in a takedown version, one variant of note even carried a new model number, that being the Model 55 with its 24” barrel and shotgun-style butt.  The 55 wasn’t a commercial success and was only made from 1924 to 1932.  There was also the Model 64, produced from 1933 through 1957 in 20, 24, and 26 versions, often with a half-length magazine.

Later in the century the post-1964 Winchester made still more changes to the Model 94.  The first of these was the introduction of the “Angle-Eject” in 1982, where a cut in the upper right of the receiver allowed ejection of spent cases somewhat more to the side, allowing a scope to be mounted closer to the bore line.  The Angel Eject guns were made until 1997.  To the somewhat aged and jaded eyes of this shooter, the Angel Eject system screwed up the lines of a beautiful old classic, as did the later addition of a butt-ugly cross-bolt safety.  “Big Bore” versions were later offered in the .307 and .356 Winchester rounds (basically rimmed versions of the .308 and .358 Winchester cartridges) and the .375 Winchester, which was sort of a modernized version of the old black-powder .38-55.

In 1972 Winchester capped things off by introducing the 9422, a slick little short-throw lever gun chambered for the .22 Long Rifle.  While its overall appearance mimicked the 1894 rifle it was ostensibly named after, there were two key differences:  Like most .22 rifles of its day with tube mags, the 9422 loaded from the front through a cutout on the tube.  Unlike other Winchester lever guns (except the Model 88) it also ejected spent rounds through the side of the receiver, allowing easy scope mounting on the built-in tip-off grooves.  This new gun was also available as the 9422M in the .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire round.

But while all this was going on, Winchester’s good name was suffering a few setbacks.  The biggest change in what is arguably the single most famous American gun company happened in 1964.  In that year, rising labor costs forced Winchester to re-engineer their production.  This included such steps as eliminating expensive machined forgings for cast and stamped parts; shooters saw a marked decline in fit and finish not only in the company’s flagship lever gun but also in Winchester’s other prominent products, including the Model 70 bolt gun

and the Model 12 pump shotgun.  Having owned and handled many examples from both sides of that line, these days I personally won’t own a Winchester rifle or shotgun made after 1964, but I will qualify that by conceding that I am a stubborn, obstreperous, opinionated old coot with a healthy distrust of all things newfangled.

The company continued to bleed sales after that.  In 1984 the old New Haven plant which was the genesis of so many iconic American rifles and shotguns was sold by parent corporation Olin to the plant’s employees, who re-organized as the U.S. Repeating Arms Company and continued (under license by Olin) to manufacture Winchester-brand guns, but the writing was on the wall.  In 1989 the famous old plant finally closed.  That was the end of the New Haven plant, but the Winchester name would manage to hang on through a couple of iterations; we’ll discuss those in Part 6.

But while Winchester was undergoing trials and tribulations, their primary competitor was circling overhead like a giant predatory bird.

Marlin Hits Their Stride

Perhaps a key to Marlin’s success was that they didn’t play around with their designs as much as Winchester.  Marlin’s rimfire offering, the Model 39, remains pretty much unchanged since its introduction, save for some differences in fit, finish and sighting equipment.  The excellent little pistol-caliber Marlin 94 has remained likewise unchanged since its genesis save the addition of a misguided cross-bolt safety; a key addition was the introduction of a .44 Magnum chambering in 1963, followed later by a short run (less than 5,000) guns in the .41 Magnum, examples of which sell for big bucks nowadays.  The Model 93 Marlin morphed into the Model 36 in (of course) 1936 and in 1948 into the 336, which still is in production, albeit again with that stupid cross-bolt safety.

Here’s a hint on these safeties, by the way.  I have two Marlin lever guns; one is a fine old 1979 336 in .30-30 which I have had since I was nineteen, a great rifle that I have plunked a fair number of farm country whitetails with and which is a Marlin of the original pattern.  My other, though, is the Bullwhacker, an 1895G in .45-70, which I have fitted with better sights, a Burris IER scope and a big lever loop.  I love this gun, as it is nearly the ideal thing for handling big, tough critters at close to medium ranges, but the 1895G has that idiot safety; fortunately, I discovered a company that makes a kit to replace these pieces of pettifoggery with a simple straight flush bolt with a flat screw head, greatly improving the gun’s appearance while eliminating the possibility of having the redundant safety in the wrong position when commencing operations.

I won’t counsel anyone to alter a factory-installed safety, of course.  I merely mention the availability of such things in the event any of you, like me, see little sense in a manual safety on a gun with an external hammer.

Still, safety or no, the 336 action spawned some neat new stuff.

In 1963 Marlin brought out the .444 Marlin cartridge and introduced the Marlin 444 to shoot it.  This ramped up the power level available in Marlin rifles but not without some growing pains; the .444 case was based loosely on the brass .410 shotgun cartridge and was an interesting design, but in 1963 suitable bullets were not much in evidence.  Bullets made for pistol cartridges were prone to breaking up when fired at rifle velocities; later better projectiles for the .444 were introduced but the rifle and its eponymous cartridge languished.

In 1972 Marlin addressed this problem in part by bringing out the 1985, again on the 336 action, this time in the popular .45-70 and, as the 1895M, the .450 Marlin, sort of a sawed-off .458 Winchester Magnum.  This was a hit; the 1895 gave rise to the 1895G “Guide Gun,” a shorter-barreled, muzzle-braked thumper aimed at the close-quarters, dangerous game market.  As mentioned previously, I have one of these, and while it’s great fun, twenty rounds or so off the bench will make you think of maybe picking up a .22 for a while.

While both the 444 and the 1895, like the 336, allow for a scope mounted low on the receiver in the traditional position, the two big-bore versions call for judicious measurement of the eye relief, to prevent possible cases of Kaibab Eye.

The 336 is best known for the .30-30 and .35 Remington chamberings, but other calibers included the .219 Zipper, .307 Winchester, .32-40 WCF, .32 Special, .356 Winchester, .375 Winchester, .38-55 Winchester, .44 Magnum and even the .410 shotgun shell.  The gun was sold in the discount Glenfield version, with a stained hardwood stock instead of American walnut, as well as in a couple of store brands.  In the final year of the 20^th century, Marlin even brought out the 336M in stainless steel.

A big part of Marlin’s success in the 20^th century had to do with the increasing use of telescopic sights throughout that century.  Marlin capitalized on this, advertising heavily with images of Marlin lever guns bearing optics; by the end of the century, Marlin would surpass Winchester as the nation’s leading manufacturer of lever guns, although that was as much to do with Winchester’s issues as Marlin’s solid-top receivers and steady production.

Marlin had one departure from the traditional lever gun model.  In 1955 Marlin brought out the .22 caliber Levermatic, a short-throw, box-magazine fed .22 caliber lever gun.  It wasn’t a particularly attractive piece but performed fine and managed to sell reasonably well in the nine years it was produced.  In all, not quite 32,000 guns were made.

But while Marlin was beginning to achieve some real dominance in the lever gun market, another old builder was also plugging along, this one with one solid, reliable design.

Savage’s New Power Levels

It is ironic that the only moderately-successful Winchester 88 copied the broad pattern of an older and much more successful rifle:  The Savage 99.  During the 20^th century Savage greatly expanded the 99’s range of chamberings, eventually offering not only the original .303 Savage but also the .32-40 Winchester, .300 Savage, .30-30 Winchester, .25-35 Winchester, .250 Savage, .22 Savage Hi-Power, .22-250 Remington, .243 Winchester, .308 Winchester, .358 Winchester, 7mm-08 Remington, .284 Winchester, .38-55 Winchester, .375 Winchester and the .410 shotgun hull.

For a woods rifle, the tough Savage 99 chambered for the .358 Winchester, maybe the best brush-gun cartridge ever made, is hard to beat.  In fact, now I’m trying to think of a reason why I don’t already have one in the rack.

The striker-fired Savage had the solid receiver top that, like the Marlin offerings, allowed the proper mounting of a scope low and centered on the receiver.   Unlike the Marlins it was striker-fired, making for a faster lock time and less chance of a wobble between trigger break and primer fire.

Sadly, the great 99 didn’t survive the 20^th century, as production ceased in 1998.  Savage still makes their 110 bolt gun in a bewildering variety of options, as well as shotguns and (like seemingly everyone else) an AR-15 pattern rifle.  But while the fine old 99 is no longer produced, many were made, and the online auction houses always have a good selection.  It’s a rifle worth looking into.

Winchester and Savage spent much of the 20^th century pushing the more modern line in lever guns, but in the Sixties, a new rifle under an old name was about to take things to the next level.

Browning Enters the Fray

Way back in 1878, the Browning Arms Company was founded by the man Himself to market his non-military arms not built by other manufacturers.  In 1969, this Browning Arms Company, manufacturing in the FN works in Belgium, introduced the ultimate lever-action rifle:  The Browning Lever Rifle, or BLR.

The BLR, like the Winchester 88 before it, used the lever to operate a bolt-gun-like rotating bolt.  Also like the Model 88, the BLR fed from a box magazine and had the pinch-free trigger that moved with the lever.  Unlike the Model 88, it used a very smooth geared system that allowed for a short bolt throw, and also came in both short- and long-action versions to enable it to digest a bewildering variety of calibers, including the big belted magnums; in all the BLR was sold chambered for the .22-250 Remington, .223 Remington, .243 Winchester, .257 Roberts, .25-06 Remington, .270 Winchester, .270 Winchester Short Magnum, .284 Winchester, .30-06 Springfield, .300 Winchester Magnum, .300 Winchester Short Magnum, .308 Winchester, .325 Winchester Short Magnum, .358 Winchester, .450 Marlin, 7mm Remington Magnum, 7mm Winchester Short Magnum and the 7mm-08 Remington.

Here at last was a fully modern lever gun, capable of long-range accuracy and cartridge power levels rivalling the current bolt guns.  Originally built in Belgium, in the mid-Seventies the BLR’s production, along with a bunch of other Browning designs, switched to manufacture at Mikoru in Japan; ironically, fine guns with a famous name were now built in a nation whose nation makes it nearly impossible for the workers in that plant to own the very items they produce.  The BLR was revamped some in 1995, including the change from a forged steel receiver to a cast aluminum version.  The gun continues in production to this day.

Also in 1969, Browning doubled down by introducing the BL-22, also made in Belgium, a finely crafted, short-throw .22 lever gun.  The BL-22, like its big brother, featured side-ejection and a trigger that moved with the neat little short-throw lever.  Like most .22 rimfires, the Bl-22 loads through a port in the tube magazine.

Unlike a lot of manufacturers, Browning didn’t treat its rimfire lever gun as the second-tier.  The BL-22 was made available in all the various grades of wood and finish as its larger brothers, and in the higher grades commanded a significant price for the time; now, shooters could take some fancy hardware into the woods in squirrel season.

The interesting thing about Browning’s introductions here is the timing.  Only five years after shooters were roundly disappointed by the apparent decline in quality of post-1964 Winchester, Browning brings to the table two fully modern lever guns, one firing a wide range of powerful big-game cartridges, the other a finely made graceful rimfire.  Browning was clearly going after Winchester’s market share, and that is something that would make the 21^st century movements of gun company ownership rather interesting.

Modern is as modern does, but late in the 20^th century shooters began to feel the stirrings of nostalgia.  That led to some opportunities for new guys.

The Replicators

A detailed discussion of replica lever gun manufacturers would require an article unto themselves, so we’ll have to settle for hitting the high points here.

The popularity of Western movies and the rise of Cowboy Action shooting led to the lever-gun and single-action revolver market’s exploding in the last few decades of the 20^th century.  It didn’t take long for replica manufacturers to start turning out lever guns.

In the late Seventies, an outfit called Navy Arms started importing guns from a variety of sources.  One of those was the Rossi/Braztech clone of the 1892 Winchester, then a neat, affordable little gun.  The initial version was pretty much an exact copy of the original Browning design; later, import/export rules required the addition of an external safety, to which Rossi responded by sticking the world’s ugliest firing pin block safety awkwardly on the top of the bolt.

But while Rossi held the lower end of that market, outfits like Uberti, Pedersoli and Cimarron were cranking up to produce some great, high-end replicas.  Almost every model from the original Henry to the 1866, 1873, 1876, 1886, 1892 and 1894 Winchesters were eventually represented, along with the 1860 Spencer and the 1883 Colt-Burgess.

And Then This Happened

The modern era kicked in, with its sudden focus on all things Tacticool.  The 21^st Century saw the genesis of odd things like monster revolver rounds, legitimized wildcat rifle rounds for every conceivable special purpose, and the odd habit of hanging Picatinny rails on every available bit of a gun’s real estate.  The 21^st also saw an increased hue and cry from the political Left to do something about a few highly-publicized and highly-politicized shootings carried out with semi-auto rifles, and a few localities started restricting those rifles; this suddenly opened some fertile new ground for lever gun manufacturers.

But the 21^st century also saw the sale and reorganization of some fine old gun companies, and that wasn’t necessarily to the benefit of shooters.

We’ll talk about all this in Part 6, the final installment of this History of Lever Guns.

The Other Guys

Every story has some of the Other Guys – the folks who came up with a concept that, while novel and useful, just didn’t quite hang in there.  And there are other Other Guys as well, the ones who keep plugging and manage to carve themselves out a share of the market.  In this part of our history of lever guns, we’ll see some of each.

Spencer

The same year Benjamin Tyler Henry came up with the Henry rifle, a Connecticut man named Christopher Spencer came up with another practical repeater, but the Spencer rifle, while operating with a lever under the action, was quite different than the Henry.  Spencer completed the design of his signature rifle in 1859, technically beating Henry by a year, but the first commercial release was called the 1860 Spencer.

The Spencer rifle, while technically a lever-action, was very different from the Volcanic, Henry, and Winchester designs.  Instead of a tubular magazine under the barrel, the Spencer protected its 7-round tubular magazine by placing it inside the stock, loading through the butt.  The action was unusual, being in effect a modification to the falling-block breechloaders that were coming into the market at that time.  While the offerings of Christian Sharps were single-shots, the Spencer’s magazine fed fresh cartridges into the action while the block was lowered; the process when a shot was fired was to lower the lever, ejecting the empty cartridge; raise the lever, elevating a new cartridge and placing it in the chamber; cocking the big external side-hammer and letting fly.

That was one more action than the Henry required of a shooter, as its bolt cocked the piece’s hammer on its rearward travel.  But with various parts of the country fixing to square off at one another, Spencer wasted no time presenting his rifle to the War Department.

There was a problem.  The one constant in government is the shortsightedness of bureaucrats, and the War Department in the 1860s was no exception.  The Ordnance Department was at that time overseen by Brigadier James Ripley, an old wreck from the War of 1812 with an imagination rather shorter than his nose.  He rejected not only the Spencer but any repeater out of hand, insisting that the soldiery would simply waste ammo.  At President Lincoln’s insistence, he unbent enough to buy some Sharps breechloaders for the cavalry, but that was as far as he seemed willing to go.

Spencer had other plans.  (Imagine the consequences if the following events took place today.)  On a summer day in 1863, not long after the Federal victory at Gettysburg, Spencer picked up one of his rifles, a hefty supply of ammo, took them to Washington and proceeded to march with them into the White House, past the inattentive sentries and into the President’s office to face a startled Abraham Lincoln.

No details remain of the conversation that ensued, but if must have been something along these lines:

Christopher Spencer: “Mr. President, I have a repeating rifle I’d like to show you.”

President Lincoln: “I’d like to see it.”

The following day President Lincoln, Spencer and Secretary of War Stanton took Spencer’s rifle shooting on the Great Mall(!), following which Lincoln ordered the fossil Ripley to approve the purchase of Spencer repeaters.  Ripley largely ignored the order, but a fair number of Spencer rifles found their way into the hands of General Grant’s Army of the West.  No less a figure than George Custer became a quick convert to the Spencer rifle, and after the war, many surplus Spencer repeaters were in use all over the country.

The Spencer fared poorly in commercial competition after the war.  While the Winchester rifles’ magazines could be topped up with single rounds while the gun was in use, the Spencer required withdrawing the tubular magazine.  Also, the Spencer was limited to that company’s own rimfire ammo, while Winchester, only eight years after the war, was hitting home runs in its partnership with Colt on the .44 WCF cartridge.

By this time Spencer’s rifle works were already gone, having closed their doors in 1869 and sold the remainder of their patents and machinery to their competitor, Winchester.  In 1882 Spencer tried his hand at gun making again when he started a new company to build what would be the first commercially produced pump-action shotgun.  He continued building that gun until 1889, when the new Spencer Arms Company was sold to Francis Bannerman and Sons of New York, who continued manufacturing Spencer’s shotgun until 1907.  But in 1869, his involvement with lever-action repeaters was over.

A year after Spencer struck his tents and bowed out of the lever gun business, a new kid on the block was about to make a big splash.  A tool and die man from Connecticut who had worked in the Colt plant through the war opened his own company, manufacturing a few single-shot brass derringers, the Ballard-pattern single shot rifles and, eventually, some lever guns.  That fellow’s name was John Mahlon Marlin.

Enter John Marlin

While he opened his Marlin Firearms Company in New Haven, Connecticut in 1870, Marlin didn’t jump into the lever-gun or, indeed, even the rifle business right away.  Instead, he began by manufacturing inexpensive brass-frame single shot derringers, initially in .22 caliber and later in .32 and .38 caliber versions.  In 1875 he began manufacture of the Ballard single-shot falling-block rifle, eventually building more of that rifle than any of its several other manufacturers.

1881 saw the first Marlin lever gun.  The Model 1881 Marlin was intended to compete directly with Winchester’s 1876 Centennial, and in fact the Marlin offering did Winchester one better in offering the 1881 in the popular .45-70 and .38-55 chamberings.

Marlin’s first lever gun had that advantage over the Winchester, but this happy situation wouldn’t last; in 1886 Winchester would offer the first in a new generation of lever guns that would also be chambered in popular, easy to obtain calibers.  Also, the 1881 Marlin was not appreciably different than the Winchester designs; like them, it loaded through a gate in the receiver, had a sealed tubular magazine, an external hammer and ejected spent cartridges straight out of the top of the action.  But the Marlin sold for a few dollars less than comparable Winchester offerings, and this was enough to keep the New Haven plant open until the next innovation.

That next innovation was the Marlin Model 1889, a pistol-caliber lever carbine offered in .44-40, .38-40, .32-20 and .25-20.  The carbine in and of itself wasn’t remarkably different than the Winchester 1866 and 1873 guns in its function or capabilities, but it did have one key difference:  Its receiver top was solid, and empties were ejected instead out of the right side of the action.

In 1889 not many shooters were mounting telescopic sights at all, let alone in pistol-caliber lever action carbines.  But the side ejection, dubbed by the New Haven gunmakers as the “Marlin Safety” action, would become widely known as a Marlin feature, favored by many shooters who disliked the feeling of hot brass landing inside an open shirt collar.  In 1894 the pistol-caliber Marlin was reworked somewhat and re-introduced as the Model 1894, which is still in production today.

Two more historic offerings from Marlin saw their origins in the last years of the 19^th century.  First, in 1891, Marlin brought out the Model 1891, which adopted the side-ejecting lever action to the .22 rimfires, handling the Short, Long and Long Rifle cartridges.  A few reworks of this original rifle resulted in the “Golden” Model 39, a light, handy small-game rifle beloved by shooters and, like the 1894, is still in production.

A nice New-Haven manufactured 39 Marlin has been on my “want” list for quite a while, although the right juxtaposition of “rifle for sale” and “available cash” hasn’t yet materialized.  The 39 and the 39A as made by the New Haven works is a great piece; light, handy and quick.  Because of Marlin’s signature side-ejection, it is easily scoped, a nice advantage when you’re after small game that present small targets.  To be fair, the .22 offerings from Winchester and Browning in lever guns are also side-ejecting, but the Marlin did it first.  Back in the Allamakee County woods of my youth, I used to occasionally bump into an older member of the big Duffy clan who hunted gray squirrels in the tall timber with an ancient Marlin 39 stuffed with .22 Shorts; he was a deadly shot, quick and precise, going only for headshots.  The Shorts in the long-barreled 39 made little more noise than a dry walnut falling on a rock.  He killed a lot of squirrels with that old gun.

But I digress.

In 1893 Marlin came out with their final lever gun of the 19^th century.  The Model 1893, like the 1889, featured the “Marlin Safety” side-eject action.  Offered in cartridges including the .25-36, .30-30, .32 Special, .32-40, and .38-55, the 1893, like the 1889, was a handy, solid rifle that sold for a tad less than Winchester’s offerings but worked just as well.  This rifle would, like the 1894, go through several iterations in coming years, becoming in time the famous Model 336 that is still in production, as well as being the basis for the Marlin 444 and 1895 rifles.

In Marlin, Winchester was finally seeing some steady and determined competition in the lever gun market.  Marlin, however, wasn’t the only other player.

The Colt-Burgess Rifle

In 1882, the folks at Colt cast some envious gazes on Winchester’s success in rifles and sought to get a piece of that action.  To that end they went to gun designer Anthony Burgess, who had a patent for a lever-action rifle with a toggle-joint action; Colt bought that patent and, in 1883, began production of the Colt-Burgess lever gun in .44-40.  Two versions were offered; a carbine with a 20” barrel, and a rifle with a 25” barrel.

The Colt-Burgess rifle didn’t really catch on.  About 6400 examples were made, mostly in the rifle version.  About this time, as we noted in the recent series on sixguns, Winchester had an engineer building a few prototype revolvers; long-standing gun industry rumor has it that the two companies entered into a gentlemen’s agreement wherein Winchester would drop revolver development in return for Colt eschewing the continued manufacture of lever guns.  Whether this is true or not, Colt dropped manufacture of the Colt-Burgess rifle after only two years.

Someone else, though, was a more serious contender.

A Savage Competitor

In 1893, a couple of New Yorkers patented something new:  A lever-action rifle with no external hammer, that used a unique rotary-style magazine allowing it to fire spitzer-type bullets.  Further, their patented rifle was specifically designed to handle high-pressure, smokeless powder cartridges.

The two designers were Arthur William Savage and his son, Arthur John Savage, and their design would eventually enter production in Utica, New York, as the Savage Model 1895 and later altered slightly into the Model 1899.

The hammerless Savage was offered in a plethora of high-performance calibers in its time, including the proprietary .303 Savage, .32-40 Winchester, .300 Savage, .30-30 Winchester, .25-35 Winchester, .250 Savage, .22 Savage Hi-Power, .22-250 Remington, .243 Winchester, .308 Winchester, .358 Winchester, 7mm-08 Remington, .284 Winchester, .38-55 Winchester, .375 Winchester and .410 shotgun shell.

The 99 was and is a versatile rifle.  In its original rotary magazine version, it had a handy cartridge counter that appeared through a small aperture on the left side of the receiver, allowing the shooter to instantly check how many remaining cartridges he had on hand.

Savage wasn’t done yet, though.  In 1897 Arthur Savage filed another patent for a variation on the original Model 1895 rifle, which replaced the rotary magazine with a detachable box magazine, the first time a detachable box magazine was offered in a repeating rifle.

It was the Savage 95/99 that finally brought lever guns fully into the smokeless powder era.

Winchester, however, wasn’t exactly sitting idle while all these other gun makers were innovating and inventing all over.

And Then This Happened

Remember in the previous chapter, when we mentioned a certain Ogden, Utah-based gun designer?

In 1883, negotiations concluded that brought John Moses Browning on board as a primary gun designer for the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.  That association was to prove long and fruitful for both parties, not only in the area of lever guns but in shotguns as well.  While Browning wasn’t a Winchester employee and, indeed, designed guns for several different companies, his association with Winchester was to produce some of the most iconic American firearms ever made.  More on that in Part 4.

As the world moved into the Twentieth century, some significant changes were coming to the shooting world:  the advent of smokeless powder, the gradual adoption of telescopic sights, and the increasing performance of rifle cartridges.  While it’s common even now to consider the lever gun as a short-range brush gun, the manufacturers of lever guns had other ideas; in the mid-late Twentieth century, the lever gun would be modernized in a big way.  But that’s a story for Part 5.

In the Beginning…

Percussion Caps and Rocket Balls

In the early years of the nineteenth century, there was a lot of innovation in the world of firearms.  In my recent series on sixguns, we examined the results of that innovation, but there was, of course, a lot more happening in other aspects of the gun trade.

All this innovation had its genesis in one thing:  The percussion cap.

Prior to this, all guns used the flintlock mechanism, which evolved from the flint-and-steel snaphaunce locks and the earlier pyrite-and-steel wheellock guns.  These guns, apart from the excessively complex Collier revolver, relied on multiple barrels for multiple shots.  The early percussion era continued this trend for a few years until the 1836 invention of the Paterson revolvers by Sam Colt.

The revolver mechanism, however good for sidearms, doesn’t lend itself well to long arms.  Why not?  Because the cylinder gap in a revolver has the tendency to vent hot gases and, if the gun’s timing is a tad off, to spit hot lead shavings.  That’s not good on the non-firing arm which, in a normal stance, is positioned near that cylinder gap.

So, the advent of a practical, single-barrel, single-chamber repeating rifle had to wait in the invention of practical fixed ammunition.  But that initial fixed ammunition and the guns that fired it may not be what you think.

Enter a fellow named Walter Hunt.  In 1848 Hunt, a quick-witted New Yorker who invented such things as the safety pin, the lockstitch sewing machine, the first streetcar bell and street sweeping machinery, also invented the Rocket Ball self-contained cartridge.  Hunt effectively did what gun cranks ever since have been trying to do; he invented a caseless rifle cartridge.  The Rocket Ball cartridge was a conical bullet with a hollow base, into which was packed black gunpowder; the whole shebang was sealed with a wax cap with a small hole to allow in a spark for ignition.  The Rocket Ball cartridge combined with a firearm to shoot it resulted in a real mouse gun, delivering rather less muzzle energy than a modern .25ACP pistol cartridge.  It was a practical self-contained cartridge, though, suitable for feeding from the magazine of a repeating rifle.  This was the very thing inventors needed to build the first magazine rifles.

The Rocket Ball was of extremely limited usefulness.  Other than being a self-contained cartridge it really had nothing going for it.  It was not powerful enough for hunting anything more robust than a songbird or perhaps an undernourished rabbit.  Some professional and even amateur troublemakers were rumored to fear an underpowered gun more than a full-strength piece, as a full-power gun would generally go through-and-through, resulting in a relatively clean wound; on the other hand, the weaker round would plant a slug in one’s chest, dragging the grease, fouling and (usually dirty) clothing of the shootee along with it.  Bear in mind this was well before the advent of modern surgery and antibiotics, so the implanted slug and it’s accompanying junk would stay in place, where the wound would suppurate and fester, often resulting in a very unpleasant death.

By and large, though, the Rocket Ball ammo was pretty much worthless as anything more than proof of concept.  The concept it proved, though, was to have long-lasting implications.

Enter the Jennings

Walter Hunt wasn’t finished.  He had his Rocket Ball ammunition; now he needed a rifle to fire it.  After some tinkering, he came up with a repeating rifle design that used a tubular magazine under the barrel, with an underlever to lift cartridges into the chamber.  As the first Rocket Ball cartridge had no primers, Hunt used an external percussion cap, just like the front-stuffers of the time.  After firing, the shooter was required to work the lever to bring a new Rocket Ball into the chamber, place a new cap on the nipple, and then was able to discharge the piece again.  This operation, while cumbersome by today’s standards, was still much faster than reloading a muzzle-loading piece.

Hunt lacked funds to develop his “Volitional Repeater,” and so sold his patents to a man named George Arrowsmith.  Very little is known about Arrowsmith other than the fact that he had an employee named Lewis Jennings, who slicked up the action of the Volitional Repeater; Hunt then marketed it as the “Jennings Magazine Rifle.”  It wasn’t a bad piece outside of its cartridge; one oddity was its combination of the action lever with the trigger, which would give any modern gun-safety advocate a bad case of the galloping collywobbles.

Probably in large part because of its weak cartridge, the Jennings rifle didn’t blow up a lot of people’s skirts.  Only a few prototypes were made, one of which is in the NRA Museum today.  Still, it was innovative enough to attract the attention of two gentlemen we’ve met before in our discussions of firearms history.

Remember These Guys?

One of the few customers for the Jennings Magazine Rifle was a fellow named Courtland Palmer, who purchased some Jennings repeaters for his hardware store and, eventually, also purchased the patents to those rifles from Arrowsmith.  Palmer had two employees who were keenly interested in seeing this new repeater, and they promptly set about tinkering with the design, resulting in the 1851 introduction of the “Smith-Jennings Repeating Rifle.”  In case you haven’t yet guessed, “Smith” was Horace Smith, and the other interested party was Daniel P. Wesson.

Yes, that Smith & Wesson.

Fewer than 2000 Smith-Jennings rifles were ever made.  Those guns command some fancy prices today if you can find one; shooting an original would be out of the question even if ammo were available, and nobody (rightly so) has seen any real reason to build a replica.  But Smith & Wesson weren’t done with the design.

One of the perceived problems with Hunt’s original Rocket Ball cartridge, aside from its rather pathetic power level, was that it wasn’t really a self-contained cartridge.  The Jennings and later Smith-Jennings repeaters still required the shooter affix a percussion cap after levering a fresh round into the chamber.  Also, the opening of the Rocket Ball cartridge that admitted the spark also admitted other things, like grease, dirt, and moisture.  Smith & Wesson did the obvious; they improved the Rocket Ball by adding a fixed primer at the base of the cartridge.

A new cartridge merits a new rifle.

The redoubtable pair left the employ of Mr. Palmer and set up shop in Norwich Connecticut, originally as “The Smith & Wesson Company” but later, on the addition of a couple of investors, changing in 1855 to “The Volcanic Repeating Arms Company.”  The Volcanic rifles and pistols, both using an adaptation of the Smith-Jennings lever action, was the result of that action.

In the Volcanic rifle, the form of the lever-action rifle was finally set:  A rifle with a tubular magazine under the barrel, a finger lever that lifted fresh cartridges into the chamber and operated the bolt, a trigger separate from the lever and an external hammer.  The Volcanic guns were still bound by the limitations of the pathetic Rocket Ball cartridge, but they were quick to load, quick to shoot, had a decent ammo capacity and used a truly self-contained cartridge, making them the first truly effective mass-produced repeating rifle.

But there just wasn’t a big market for the Volcanic.  A traditional percussion-fired muzzle-loader was even more reliable and far, far more powerful.  The militaries of the world were still almost universally using front-stuffing muskets and rifle-muskets, partly because they were solid and reliable, partly because they were easier to train poorly educated conscript soldiers in their use.  Mountain men, sport hunters, and pot hunters after big game wouldn’t consider the Volcanic; it was just too weak.

The Volcanic company only lasted a year, closing their doors in 1856 when one of their financial partners finally forced the failing company into insolvency.  Once again, Volcanic had produced something that was pretty much worthless except as proof of concept.  Once again, the concept they had proved was to have long-lasting implications.

And Then This Happened

On the failure of Volcanic, Messrs. Smith & Wesson decamped to purchase Rollin White’s patent and form the “Smith & Wesson Revolver Company,” now enshrined in history and amply described in the late series on the History of The Six-Gun.

Meanwhile, the Volcanic financial partner who administered the mercy shot to the moribund Volcanic company took the remains of that organization to New Haven, Connecticut, renaming it the New Havens Arms Company.  That worthy’s name was Oliver Winchester, and in 1857, he hired a plant manager named Tyler Henry.  Winchester wanted the Volcanic rifle design upgraded and adapted to the newfangled brass rimfire cartridges that were just then becoming the big new thing.  “Hold my beer,” Henry told Winchester, “…and watch this.”  The fruit of that business union was to yield great results.

Only three years later the southern United States grew fractious.  Former lever-gun builders Smith & Wesson were not to play a great part in the weaponry supplied for that contest of arms, but Winchester and Henry would prove to play a larger part.

But that’s a story for Part 2.