Winchester rifle is a comprehensive term describing a series of lever action repeating rifles manufactured by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Developed from the 1860 Henry rifle, Winchester rifles were among the earliest repeaters. The Model 1873 was particularly successful, being marketed by the manufacturer as "The Gun That Won the West".
Rimfire ammunition is a type of firearm metallic cartridge whose primer is located within a hollow circumferential rim protruding from the base of its casing. When fired, the gun's firing pin will strike and crush the rim against the edge of the barrel breech, sparking the primer compound within the rim, and in turn ignite the propellant within the case. Invented in 1845, by Louis-Nicolas Flobert, the first rimfire metallic cartridge was the .22 BB Cap cartridge, which consisted of a percussion cap with a bullet attached to the top. While many other different cartridge priming methods have been tried since the mid-19th century onwards, such as pinfire, only small caliber rimfire and centerfire cartridges have survived to the present day with regular usage. The .22 Long Rifle rimfire cartridge, introduced in 1887, is by far the most common ammunition in the world today in terms of units sold.
Lever action is a type of action for repeating firearms that uses a manually operated cocking handle located around the trigger guard area that pivots forward to move the bolt via internal linkages, which will feed and extract cartridges into and out of the chamber, and cock the firing pin mechanism. This contrasts to other type of repeating actions such as the bolt-action, pump-action, semi-automatic, fully automatic, and/or burst mode actions. A firearm using this operating mechanism is colloquially referred to as a levergun.
The .45 Colt (11.43×33mmR), is a rimmed, straight-walled, handgun cartridge dating to 1872. It was originally a black-powder revolver round developed for the Colt Single Action Army revolver. This cartridge was adopted by the U.S. Army in 1873 and served as an official US military handgun cartridge for 14 years, before being replaced by the .38 Long Colt in 1892.
.22 Short is a variety of .22 caliber (5.6 mm) rimfire ammunition. Developed in 1857 for the first Smith & Wesson revolver, the .22 rimfire was the first American metallic cartridge. The original loading was a 29 or 30 gr bullet and 4 gr of black powder. The original .22 rimfire cartridge was renamed .22 Short with the introduction of the .22 Long in 1871.
The .44-40 Winchester, also known as .44 Winchester, .44 WCF, and .44 Largo, was introduced in 1873 by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. It was the first metallic centerfire cartridge manufactured by Winchester, and was promoted as the standard chambering for the new Winchester Model 1873 rifle. As both a rifle and a handgun caliber, the cartridge soon became widely popular, so much so that the Winchester Model 1873 rifle became known as "The gun that won the West."
The .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire, also called .22 WMR, .22 Magnum, .22 WMRF, .22 MRF, or .22 Mag, is a rimfire cartridge. Originally loaded with a bullet weight of 40 grains (2.6 g) delivering velocities in the 2,000 feet per second (610 m/s) range from a rifle barrel, .22 WMR is now loaded with bullet weights ranging from 50 grains (3.2 g) at 1,530 feet per second (470 m/s) to 30 grains (1.9 g) at 2,200 feet per second (670 m/s).
A wildcat cartridge, often shortened to wildcat, is a custom cartridge for which ammunition and/or firearms are not mass-produced. These cartridges are often created in order to optimize a certain performance characteristic of an existing commercial cartridge, or may merely be intended as novelty items.
The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was a prominent American manufacturer of repeating firearms and ammunition. The firm was established in 1866 by Oliver Winchester and was located in New Haven, Connecticut. The firm went into receivership in 1931 and was bought by the Western Cartridge Company, a forerunner of the Olin Corporation. The Winchester brand name is still owned by the Olin Corporation, which makes ammunition under that name. The Winchester name is also used under license for firearms produced by two subsidiaries of the Herstal Group – FN Herstal of Belgium and the Browning Arms Company of Ogden, Utah.
The Henry repeating rifle is a lever-action tubular magazine rifle famed both for its use at the Battle of the Little Bighorn and being the basis for the iconic Winchester rifle of the American Wild West.
The Winchester Model 71 was a lever-action rifle introduced in 1935 and discontinued in 1958.
The Winchester Model 1894 rifle is a lever-action repeating rifle that became one of the most famous and popular hunting rifles of all time. It was designed by John Browning in 1894 and originally chambered to fire two metallic black powder cartridges, the .32-40 Winchester and .38-55 Winchester. It was the first rifle to chamber the smokeless powder round, the .30 WCF in 1895. In 1901, Winchester created the new .32 Winchester Special caliber with production of rifles starting in 1902.
The .303 Savage is a rimmed, .30 caliber rifle cartridge developed by the Savage Arms Company in 1894 which was designed as a short action cartridge for their Savage Model 1895 later 1899 hammerless lever-action rifle. The cartridge was designed for smokeless powder at a time when black-powder cartridges were still popular. The .303 Savage round was ballistically superior to the .30-30, but only marginally. The .303 Savage remained popular through the 1930s. Savage produced a half dozen loads for it. With its 190-grain loading, it was used on such animals as deer and moose.
The 7-30 Waters cartridge was originally a wildcat cartridge developed by author Ken Waters in 1976 to give better performance to lever-action rifle shooters than the parent .30-30 Winchester cartridge, by providing a higher velocity and flatter trajectory with a smaller, lighter bullet. By 1984, Winchester introduced a Model 94 rifle chambered for the 7-30 Waters, establishing it as a commercial cartridge. In 1986, Thompson/Center began chambering 10-inch, 14-inch, and 20-inch Contender barrels for the cartridge.
The .219 Zipper cartridge was created by Winchester Repeating Arms in 1937 to be used in their lever-action Model 64 rifle. It is a 30-30 Winchester cartridge necked down to a .22 caliber bullet. Marlin Firearms also offered their Marlin Model 336 rifle chambered for the cartridge.
The Winchester Model 1886 was a lever-action repeating rifle designed by John Browning to handle some of the more powerful cartridges of the period. Originally chambered in .45-70 Government, .45-90 Sharps, and .40-82 Winchester, it was later offered in a half dozen other large cartridges, including the .50-110 Winchester. Despite being originally designed for use with black powder, the action was strong enough to make the jump to smokeless powder with only minor modifications, and was subsequently chambered in the smokeless .33 Winchester cartridge beginning in 1903.
The Winchester Model 1885 is a single-shot rifle with a falling-block action. It was principally designed by John Browning. Two models were produced, the Low Wall and the High Wall.
The .45-75 WinchesterCentennial is a centerfire rifle cartridge developed in 1876 for the newly designed Winchester Model 1876 Centennial lever-action rifle. Winchester Repeating Arms Company introduced the rifle and cartridge at the United States Centennial Exposition. The Model 1876 rifle used an enlarged version of the famous Winchester Model 1873 action to offer a lever-action repeating rifle using cartridges suitable for big-game hunting. The cartridge and rifle enjoyed brief popularity with Gilded Age American hunters including Theodore Roosevelt, and was issued to the Canadian North-West Mounted Police and to Texas Rangers.
The .45-60 Winchester is a centerfire rifle cartridge intended for 19th-century big-game hunting. Nomenclature of the era indicated the .45-60 cartridge contained a 0.45-inch (11.43 mm) diameter bullet with 60 grains (3.89 g) of black powder. Winchester Repeating Arms Company shortened the .45-70 Government cartridge to operate through the Winchester Model 1876 rifle's lever-action.
The .40-60 Winchester is a rimmed, bottlenecked centerfire rifle cartridge designed for use in lever-action rifles by Winchester Repeating Arms Company in 1884.
