Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Rock Island
taking a look at a Model of 1899 Remington-Lee.
This is the smallbore, smokeless powder
version of the Remington-Lee rifle,
which started all the way back in 1879.
This is the rifle that ... really was the basis for the British Lee-Enfield.
Same Lee, same basic action.
Now what makes this one stand out, this is the last
version of the Remington-Lee as produced by Remington.
And, as I said a moment ago, it was a smallbore, smokeless powder rifle.
So the vast majority of these that were actually produced were made in .30-40 Krag,
or, as it was called at the time, .30 US or .30 US Army.
It was also offered in several other calibres that ... were popular elsewhere at the time.
So it was offered in 7mm Mauser, it was offered in 7.65mm Mauser.
... After a couple of years it was offered in .303 British.
It was offered in 6mm Lee Navy,
since that ... had been adopted a few years prior by the US Navy,
"Well, why not? We'll offer this in that calibre as well."
But virtually the only guns that were ever actually ordered or made were .30-40.
So this was introduced in 1899.
The first major contract that Remington got for it was from the Michigan National Guard,
they ordered 2,001 of them, which were produced.
There would then be one other significant contract,
and that was 3,000 rifles and carbines for Cuba.
And those were produced and sold.
And those, by the way, have their own independent serial number range starting at 1.
We'll take a look at the serial number on here when we
take a look at the whole gun up close in a moment.
But, basically what we have is an adaptation of the existing
black powder Model of 1885 Remington, which was chambered for .45-70 and .43 Spanish.
"Well, like the hot new thing is smokeless powder, so how do we adapt our existing
inventory and our existing designs to that new higher pressure technology?"
So, let me show you how they did.
So how do you adapt a black powder rifle to smokeless powder ammunition?
Well, a good way to start is double the number of locking lugs,
and that's exactly what they did here.
So, disassembly of the bolt on this is a little funky,
what we have is a lever that runs over here and down.
... On the 1885 pattern this held the extractor in place,
on the 1889 pattern this holds the bolt head in place.
So this one is a little bit loose, which is nice because it's easy for me to get off.
Normally what you would do is put a screwdriver or something in that little notch,
and pry it upward, and then you rotate it 90 degrees down,
and you can pull that pin out, and then the bolt head is a separate piece.
But with a little coaxing we can get the bolt head separated from the bolt body.
And then I can take the bolt head and lift it out of the gun.
And by the way, the extractor then basically will just fall off.
So if you have one of these and take it apart, make sure you don't lose the extractor
because it'll be tricky to find a new one.
And then the bolt body comes out the back of the action.
Now on the 1885 and 1882 patterns you had just these two locking lugs.
What they did to strengthen the gun is they added two additional ones onto this removable bolt head.
So you put this together and now, presto: one, two, three, four.
And when you rotate the bolt down they all lock into recesses in the receiver.
While we've got the bolt removed here's a neat feature,
you can, of course, take the magazine out.
These pre-date stripper clips, these magazines would be manually loaded,
and they did sell spare magazines.
In fact it wasn't the 1899 pattern,
but one of the patterns of these that was actually purchased by the US military,
they also purchased web belts that held like four spare magazines per belt.
... The idea being a detachable box magazine where you carried spare magazines,
and that's how you reloaded the gun.
Anyway, you'll notice we have this blade that sticks out there,
that is your magazine cut off.
And that allows you to just drop a single cartridge on, close the bolt, and single load it.
And that actually automatically appears,
it pops out of the side of the action, when you take the magazine out.
So as long as the magazine's in place the gun will feed from it.
So it's not quite a normal magazine cut off.
But the idea being if your magazine runs dry, you just take it out of the gun.
And either while you're in the process of trying to fumble out a new magazine,
or if you just don't have one,
you can leave the magazine out and the gun will still work as a single loader.
We have the various patent dates over here.
And, more substantially, we have the Remington Arms Company name there.
And our serial number right back here on top of the receiver.
Now, ... there are like four different serial number ranges for these rifles.
The Cuban guns started at 1 and went up to about 3,000.
... There are three other serial number ranges that Remington came up with,
because they anticipated selling a lot of these rifles.
They would sell them in the military pattern like this,
full length stock, military sights, bayonet lug, and those started at 100,000.
And the first up to 2,200 were sent to Michigan as part of that Michigan National Guard contract.
This one is just barely over the threshold to be a Michigan gun.
This is actually just a commercial production military-pattern gun.
You could just order one of these out of Remington's catalogue,
and that's what the buyer of this rifle did.
Now, they also planned to sell them in sporter configuration,
with a different style of sights, a much shorter wood stock,
shorter forend, no bayonet lug, more the hunting pattern.
And those they have a ... specific serial number block that started at 75,000.
They ... ended up making about 1,500 of them, but those will all be numbered 75,000.
And then they also planned to make carbine patterns,
and as it turned out virtually nobody actually purchased a carbine version of the 1899.
The Cuban government did, but those are all numbered as part of the Cuban sequence.
The factory carbines were to start at 150,000.
So you see Remington was planning on having space to make 50,000 of these military rifles.
They ended up making a few hundred really, in addition to Michigan's guns,
and virtually no commercial carbines. But if you do find a carbine version of this,
if it's legitimate, the serial number will be just a hair over 150,000.
It'd be like 150,012.
By the way, that Cuban contract was made specifically for the Cuban Rural Guard,
which is the closest thing Cuba had to a standing army
until they actually established a standing army in 1909.
Some of those Cuban guns will have a Cuban crest on the front of the receiver, but not all of them.
Here's our military pattern sight, just a V notch in the back,
with a much smaller, more precise, V notch on the elevator.
Lift that up to shoot at long range.
Calibre marking is there on the barrel. That is .30 calibre United States Army,
aka .30-40 or .30-40 Krag.
Very small numbers of some other calibres were made, and that's where you would see it marked on them.
As a military pattern rifle, this of course has a bayonet lug
and cleaning rod under the barrel.
Front sling swivel there.
And kind of an interesting and slightly unusual style of front sight for a military rifle,
but that's what Remington went with on these.
There is no ... manual safety on the 1899.
You've got a nice big cocking piece here,
and the idea is if you want to have it with a round chambered and safed,
what you do is just carry it on the half-cock notch there.
That locks the trigger, and also locks the bolt.
The US Navy would end up buying 50 of these rifles for testing in 1901,
but their interest didn't go any farther. They never followed that up with any larger purchase.
Unfortunately for Remington this just wasn't a very successful design,
and it had a number of failings.
For one thing, the four locking lugs made it relatively expensive and complicated to manufacture.
It's one thing to make sure that two locking lugs
both have exactly the same fit against a receiver.
Well, it's a lot harder when you add a second set.
Now you have four locking lugs that all have to be fit precisely the same way,
because if one of them is too tight,
then that's going to take all the stress of firing and it won't last very long.
So you have an expensive gun to make. It also had a number of weak points in it.
This idea of the sort of the flat spring lever disassembly
with the separate bolt head, that's not really a great idea.
The stocks were a bit on the weak side because they don't have a recoil bolt.
So recoil would tend to be more likely to crack the stocks on these.
The extractors were easily lost and damaged.
The bolt stops were apparently a bit weak and prone to breaking themselves.
And only really just a couple of thousand of these would be manufactured in total.
So there was the 2,000 guns for Michigan, the 3,000 for Cuba,
and then beyond that we're looking at 1,500 or 2,000 total made for commercial sale.
The rifles were of course first listed in Remington's catalogue in 1899,
they were taken out of the catalogue after 1905.
So it was only like five or six years that Remington was even offering these for sale.
There would be some sales after 1905
as the last few guns were eventually sold out of the warehouse,
but really quite a short-lived rifle.
And that of course means it's a relatively rare rifle on the collector's market today.
Now the good news is this particular one is one of the commercial sale military pattern rifles.
And because it didn't go overseas to Cuba, primarily, it's actually in really nice condition.
A lot of the guns that did go to Cuba, the ones that eventually came back
are really pretty rough, because they went through some hard times over there.
Anyway, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
This is a rifle that ... the basic design would do better in British service than in American.
Thanks for watching.