Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the Rock Island Auction House
taking a look at some of the guns that they are going to be selling
in their upcoming June of 2017 Regional Auction.
And today, we're taking a look at the Winchester Model 1894.
We're approaching the end of our series on the development
of the Winchester lever action rifle, and today we've got the biggest
and the most popular and the most iconic of all of them.
By 2006 when Winchester's New Haven factory shut down,
they'd manufactured more than 7 million of these rifles,
70% of them in a single cartridge.
This is by far the most popular Winchester rifle ever made.
It is in fact the most popular centrefire sporting rifle ever made in the United States, total.
This is the iconic deer rifle. So, what makes it different, what made it so popular?
Well, it is a John Bowning design, as were the last couple of Winchester lever action rifles.
And what Browning did with this design was usher the smokeless powder cartridge
into the United States sporting firearms market.
So the rifle was developed in 1894, as the name suggests,
and it is basically an improvement over the mechanical system of the Winchester 1886 and 92.
Assuming you saw the last two videos, you already know that the 86 and the 92 were basically the exact same design,
just one's rifle calibre, and one's pistol calibre.
And Browning, being John Browning, pondered this design
and after a couple years came up with some ways to improve it, and that was the 94 action.
Now Winchester took his patent for the 1894 action, which is improved over its predecessors,
and they coupled it with a brand new cartridge that they were developing.
They'd spent some time working with smokeless powder, and they introduced smokeless powder to the US market
in the .30 Winchester Centre Fire cartridge, or as it's better known, the .30-30 Winchester.
When this rifle was first introduced onto the market it was actually not available in .30-30,
it was originally offered in .32-40 and .38-55.
Those are actually both cartridges that were on the market already. They'd been introduced ... originally by Ballard,
and then those were standard cartridges for the Marlin lever action firearms of this same time period.
Winchester took those cartridges and used them, of course Marlin would chamber their rifles in Winchester cartridges as well.
None of this stuff is, you know, secret or trademarked or proprietary.
But what Winchester then did was (and by the way, the .32-40 and the .38-55 are the same case head,
just one is necked down to .38 and the other is necked down to .32 calibre,
similar to what Winchester ... well, what everybody did with a lot of their cartridges,
use the same case head so that you have the same bolt design, but offer people different bullet diameters).
At any rate, Winchester took that same case head, they necked it down to .30 calibre and that became the .30-30.
And it was introduced as a smokeless powder cartridge from the very get-go. There never was a black powder .30-30,
and it was the first cartridge like that for the US sporting and hunting market
Now what the .30-30 got right, in addition to being the first which is a nice, you know, a bonus for anything,
it also was just a really perfect balance of power and recoil and size.
And it did exactly what someone needed a standard hunting rifle cartridge to do.
It wasn't a buffalo rifle, and it didn't need to be, but it was plenty powerful enough to take deer.
It was small enough that you could use it on small game if you wanted to without obliterating them.
It was just this perfect middle ground balance, and that's I think largely what has made it so popular.
That, and the fact that the rifle it was chambered in was an excellent John Browning design.
You know, there'd been more than 30 years, almost 35 years since the advent of the Henry rifle.
Winchester, both itself and working with John Browning, had really optimised the
lever action system to be about as good as it possibly can be. And the top of the heap is the Winchester 94.
So between an excellent firearms design and an excellent and innovative novel cartridge,
that's the makings for a classic gun.
I should point out, what that .30-30 did, in addition to not creating a cloud of smoke at the muzzle,
it also was a far cleaner cartridge. That was one of the big advantages of smokeless powder,
it didn't leave all this residue and fouling in the barrel.
The idea that you could fire hundreds of rounds without having to clean out the barrel
lest you literally overpressure the gun. That's a new concept when smokeless powder comes around.
And smokeless powder allowed higher velocities than black powder had.
Pretty much all of these black powder lever action cartridges,
whether they're pistol rounds or big rifle rounds, they topped out at about 1,500 feet per second.
Because black powder was just not that efficient of a propellant, and
you really had diminishing returns trying to accelerate a bullet beyond 1,500.
Well the .30-30, that ran a bullet at just shy of 2,000 feet per second,
and that was a huge increase from everything else that was available at the time. ...
.30 calibre was at the time small bore, you know, smaller than even your .32.
Well, it is a small-bore, high-velocity cartridge and it worked fantastically, and it was very popular.
So let's take a look, let me show you the mechanical changes to this system.
We'll compare it to the 92 and you can see what changed over just the course of a couple of years,
and why the 94 really is a better design.
There will be some variation in barrel markings, but here is this particular 1894
top of the octagonal flat barrel, you'll also sometimes on round barrels find the markings on the side.
But manufactured by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, New Haven, Connecticut, still.
One new marking on the model of 1894 is this one: "Nickel Steel Barrel, Especially For Smokeless Powder".
Pretty much all of Browning's lever action designs were capable of handling smokeless powder pressures,
as long as they were manufactured with proper modern steels.
But that wasn't the case with all of the other guns that were out there from Winchester and other companies.
... Once smokeless powder was available there's, of course,
a lot of interest in loading it instead of black powder in all manner of different cartridges.
And not all guns could actually handle that increased pressure, so
Winchester made a point here to ... mark right on the rifles that this was just fine with smokeless powder.
However, carried over from all of the previous models, we still have the calibre designation marked on the
back end of the barrel, right here. This is .30-30, or as Winchester called it, the Winchester Centre Fire.
Tang markings are the same. As with the 92, once they got substantially into the [20th] century
they got rid of the 18, and started designating these just Model 94 Winchester.
And our patent date is now there as well.
And as with the Model 92, the serial number is down here on the bottom of the receiver.
So 63,000 - this is a pretty darn early rifle, and it's a really nice one, too.
It's got the fancy checkering, the nice wood, the pistol grip, and the takedown option.
You can always tell the takedown rifles because there will be a seam here between the receiver and the barrel,
as well as this lever on the end of the magazine ... which you flip out and
use as a sort of handle to unthread the magazine tube.
Now to compare the action of the two guns I have a 92 here, and we have a 94 here.
So on the 92 you can see the bottom of the two locking lugs at the bottom of the lever,
and then the front of the receiver is rounded.
On the 94 this whole section actually pivots down with the lever so it's a flat bottom to the receiver.
And you can't see anything special here because the locking lugs actually don't protrude down to the bottom of the receiver.
So the substantial change that Browning made here was to replace the two independent locking lugs with a single one.
It's going to cross behind the bolt to hold everything in place, and it's still cut into both sides of the receiver.
So it's still a nice strong, obviously smokeless powder capable, system.
And what this allows him to do is simplify a lot of the safety mechanisms in the bolt.
So the 1892 and the 86 had this kind of awkward system where the front face of the bolt
... protruded forward while the bolt was cycling to prevent it from firing out of battery.
You can see a little bit of detail about that in the previous videos on those actions.
The 94 replaced that system, because instead of all of that weirdness
this locking block actually contains a transfer bar for the firing pin.
Alright, I'm switching to the carbine here because it's shorter and easier to get in front of the camera.
But you can see the firing pin transfer right there in that locking block.
And as soon as I start to lower the action that transfer bar drops, and it's no longer in a position to be hit by the hammer.
Now, the hammer is actually locked, I can't pull the trigger with the lever not fully in battery.
But, even if that system were to fail somehow, you can't fire the gun unless it's in battery.
And that's an important safety feature and it allows Browning to get rid of this weirdness at the front of the bolt.
So the 1894 bolt face looks normal, unlike the 86 and the 92.
And you can see this mechanism working when I cycle the action.
So this bar is connected to our locking block.
When you open the action the locking block drops down, the [bolt] passes above it.
And then when you close the action the bolt closes,
clears space for the locking block to lift up into position to lock the gun.
So it's definitely an improved system.
... To the uneducated observer they look identical to 92s or 86s, but the mechanism is definitely improved.
I should also point out that these rifles now have this little safety pin here, which blocks the trigger.
In fact you can see it pretty easily right there. So if this pin isn't depressed
the trigger simply can't be pulled, and that's an additional safety.
That pin is activated by the lever and so if you're not holding the lever closed, the rifle won't fire.
And those are important things. That's what comes with a fully mature design
is a good set of effective and reliable safety mechanisms.
One thing that didn't change here was Nelson King's loading gate.
The loading gate still works exactly the same way as it did, dating all the way back to the 1866,
the original Winchester repeating rifle, so props to Nelson King, man, he came up with a long-lived cool idea.
There're not a whole lot of other patents from 1866 that were still in production literally 150 years later in ... 2006.
So I guess that's 140 years, but well done Mr. King.
And I probably don't need to reiterate it again at this point, but as with all of the previous Winchester levers,
you have a plethora of different special order custom options that you can get on the guns.
So you have your standard barrel lengths, the carbines, the rifles, the muskets,
as well as custom barrel lengths of anything in between.
We have a standard carbine here and a fancy rifle.
The fancy rifle has a pistol grip to it, nice wood, checkering, all of those features.
It is also actually a takedown model of the rifle.
So you can unscrew the magazine tube, and separate this at the barrel and receiver junction
so that it makes a nice compact package for transportation. That was an option.
Bunch of different styles of sights, you name it. Saddle rings, this carbine has a saddle ring on this side.
All of that stuff was available on the 94, just as it had been on all the previous models.
Over the years they hit a number of significant digits in production, so
serial number 1,000,000 went to President Coolidge in, I believe, 1928.
Serial number 1,500,000 ... was given to President Truman.
Serial number 2,000,000 was presented to President Eisenhower, and they just kept hitting these milestones.
Although I think 2,000,000 is about when they stopped giving them to presidents. ...
There is really hardly a shooter or gun enthusiast today
who is not at least aware of the Winchester Model 1894, so well done Browning, well done Winchester.
If you don't actually have one of these yet, well, maybe this is your chance to get one.
These two are both coming up for sale here at Rock Island, along with a bunch of other 94s.
If you take a look at the description text below, you'll find links to the catalogue pages for these two,
and if these aren't exactly the kind you're looking for,
well, there are a bunch of others in that catalogue as well, you'll just have to do some exploring to find them.
Thanks for watching.
[ cc by sk cn2 ]