Re: [DL] Henry's vs Winchester's

[Frempath2@netscape.net]

I will take a crack at your questions:

Prior to the war the gunmakers of the north were happy to sell to the state and local militia, who were modernizing and gearing up.  Some companies even continued to sell arms to the confederates after the war started until they were threatened with confiscation of their factories.

The US Army produced its own longarms at facilities in Springfield, Mass. and Harpers Ferry, Virginia.  One of the first things the confederates did was to sieze the Armory at Harper Ferry.  This factory was disassembled and shiped to 2 locations.  Richmond Virginia recieved the tooling and parts for the model 1861 rifle musket.  Fayettville (sp) NC recived the tooling and parts for the 1855 rifle.  These arms were produced at these locations until wars end. (our timeline).  The south also had several other private arsonals across the south which were periodically moved as the war overran their location. Now if they could have devoted more effort to production rather than moving around.....  The south also produced several good or excellent arms which were not produced in mass.  They produced a sharps carbine copy which was determined to be of poor quality, however recent examination of existing samples would indicate that they were good arms and the problem was operator error!
.  Men trained to operate muzzel loading weapons trying to use breechloading carbines without proper instruction.  Another excellent arm was the Morse carbine.  An excellent arm, but losses on the field deprived the factory of the resourses to make this advanced, breech loading, metalic cartridge weapon.

The south and the north also decended on europe like locusts and stripped the continent of almost anything which could be thought of as a fire arm.  Some of the better imports were, in order of general quality:
England: Enfeilds
Germany/Austria: Lorenz
Germany:Saxon
Belgium:Liege
The better of these weapons were from the 1840s and 50s.
Though a lot of earlier, even Napoleonic, junk was also unloaded on the americans, of both sides.

The Henry rifle was very expensive, over 60 dollars. This at a time when a soldier was paid 13 dollars a month and the premier rifle musket cost less than 20 dollars for the govt.  If soldiers wanted this weapon it had to be privatly purchased  and a number of units did just that.  The head of the US ordinance supply system was a man named Ripley. He was supplying over 200 different ammunitions to the army and he did not want to have to supply yet another type of ammunition, so he refused to purchase any henrys for the govt..  The govt. did however supply ammuntion for the henrys when a unit had supplied themselves with the repeater.

As to Henry vs. Winchester, They are the same.
Oliver Winchester was the money man in the 1850s for the Volcanic firearms company.  The gunsmiths were also to go on to great things. They were Smith and Wesson.  The company was not doing well and folded in the late 1850s.  Smith and Wesson took the pistol designs and Winchester got the lever action rifle designs.  By gentlemans agreement Smith and Wesson would not produce rifles and Winchester would not produce handguns.  Winchester hired Henry to set up a factory to make the lever action volcanic weapon.  Henry also refined the design of the action and the ammunition.  The result was the Henry rifle of 1860.  Winchester manufactured the Henry rifle until 1866 when the company name was changed to Winchester Firearms.  The model 1866 Winchester was basically a Henry rifle with 2 major improvements.  The first was a wooden forestock.  Trust me a Henry gets toasty when you fire it.  The second was the Lord's side loading gate.  The Henry rifle had to be turned upright to load !
and loaded from the top of the magazine.  From there the later models were refinements of the basic Henry/Winchester design.  As production scaled up, and refinements simplified the design, the price did drop on the Winchester, much like computers today.

How common were the lever actions?  Very. Millions of Winchesters were made in numerous calibers in the 19th century.  Though the muzzle loader was still prevelent until the turn of the century along with hundreds of various single shot metalic cartridge firearms.

Sorry to get long winded
g'day
frempath
  
 

deadlands@gamerz.net wrote:
>
> Howdy Lad's & Ladies!
> 
> Simple Question: How was war industry split after forming of CSA? Where from
> Southeners get their guns? AFAIK the most important firearms manufacturing
> companies remained in Yankee hands. How gun trade is controlled by
> government forces of both nations?
> 
> And Another Simple Question: What was real difference between Henry and
> Winchester rifles? Price of Henry rifle is somewhat high (35$ according to
> Law Dogs), so I guess it is not 1877 price, but cost of gun when it was
> introduced, back in 1862(???). Also, how widespread are this both types of
> lever-action rifles in 1877?
> 
> Yours Sincerely
> 
> Tomasz F Misiorek
> 
> 
> 
> To unsubscribe, send a message to esquire@gamerz.net with
>     unsubscribe deadlands
> as the BODY of the message.  The SUBJECT is ignored.
> 
> 
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