Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm 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.
Today we're going to continue our look at the
development of the Winchester lever action rifle.
And we're kind of starting to approach the end of that development process.
Today we have the Winchester Model of 1892.
Now the last rifle that we looked at was the Winchester 1886,
and that was the first of the John Browning designed
lever action rifles ... marketed and sold by Winchester.
And the 1892 is pretty much the same gun, just scaled down for pistol cartridges.
The purpose of this was to be a replacement for the starting-to-get-a-bit-long-in-the-tooth Winchester 1873.
The 73 was still a popular gun, but Winchester could see how much more efficient and strong the 86 was.
And they wanted to replace the 73 with something more modern.
So, in 1890 ... Bennett, the President of Winchester at the time, was on one of his routine trips out to Utah
to visit John Browning and his brothers, and see what kind of goodies were there to be acquired by Winchester.
And he actually proposed this to Browning, he said you know,
"Hey, we want to replace the 73. We think a scaled- down version of your 86 would work really well.
I tell you what, if you can have it ready in three months I'll buy that patent from you, that concept, for $10,000.
And if you can have it in two months, I'll give you $15,000 for it."
And Browning apparently thought about this and responded that he would take $20,000 for it
and it would be done within the month, or else he would give it to Winchester for free.
Bennet accepted that deal, and within about two weeks Browning had a prototype ready and testing.
And safely within the one month period he had the gun delivered to Winchester, so.
... He got his $20,000 by the way, and that was the genesis of the Winchester 1892.
Now $20,000 just to scale down an existing design that Winchester already had the rights to
kind of seems like a lot of money in 1890. And it was.
However, to put that into context, within about 35 or 40 years Winchester would sell over a million of these rifles.
That initial fee to Browning was a drop in the bucket and money very well spent.
This rifle would become one of the most iconic lever action rifles of American history.
... It's no mean feat to sell a million of a particular product, especially a rifle which is a high-cost good in the 1890s.
So as the replacement to the 1873, the Winchester Model 1892 was available in all the same cartridges,
primarily .44-40 (or .44 Winchester Centre Fire), that accounted for like 80% of the actual production of the gun.
But then it was also available in .38-40, in .32-20, and then they did also come out with the [.25-20].
Kind of a less popular, less common round, but that was also introduced with the 92.
And by the way, I should point out that around 1920 they changed the marking designations on the gun.
They stopped calling it the 1892 and they started calling it just the Model 92,
because by that point ... 18 anything was starting to sound kind of old-fashioned and anachronistic,
and the rifle was still selling well, and let's just leave that off and let people think about it as a modern gun still.
So, we actually have an example of each of that, an 1892 marked gun and a 92 marked gun.
As with all of the other rifles that Winchester had been selling up to this point,
you had a plethora of different custom options that you could get for the 92.
Everything from barrel lengths, we have a trapper model carbine here up to a standard rifle here.
The standard carbine was a [20] inch barrel, ... the rifle was a 24 or 26 inch barrel,
and then there was a 30 inch musket that you could still actually get.
Although very few people were buying musket versions of these guns by this point.
Custom-wise you could get pretty much any barrel length you wanted, from 14 up to I think 36 inches.
Fancy wood, engraving, checkering, round barrels, octagonal barrels, all manner of sights.
All of the same options that you would have on the previous models of Winchester rifle.
So, let's take a close look at this one and we can compare it side by side to an 86.
You can see just how similar the actions really are.
Down here at the bottom we have a 92, and then this is an 86.
So I think you can get a feel for the difference in scale there. The 86 receiver is a bit longer,
the loading gate is substantially longer because, of course, the 86 was made for a much ... longer cartridge than the 92.
However, they retained the same basic design here.
We still have a King's Patent Loading Gate, although those patent numbers are no longer marked on the guns.
And in fact, I believe by this point the patent on the King's gate had expired, so at this point anyone could do that.
Looking here at the top of the actions, you can see the locking lugs on both guns.
The locking lugs are a little bit longer on the 86 because of its larger and more powerful cartridges,
a little bit smaller here, but otherwise exactly the same mechanism.
One modification that Browning did make was to simplify and improve the elevator, or lifter,
system from the 86. So it's a little bit better, and I'm sure it doesn't hurt that in the 92
the bolt had a shorter throw, the cartridges were shorter, all of those things are
going to simplify engineering and developing the feed system.
Our markings on this particular one are actually on the side of the barrel.
Typically you would expect them to be on the top, but this is a little short trapper carbine
and there isn't sufficient space between the rear sight and the barrel band to fit these markings in,
so they put them on the side.
This is just another example of ... all the ... variations that you will get in
these rifles, because there was such a long commercial production sequence.
Anyway: Winchester Repeating Arms Company, New Haven, Connecticut, and we have an 1884 patent here.
This is the base patent for the 1886 rifle, because the 92 wasn't really anything
substantially new, it was a scaled down version of the 86.
Moving back on the barrel we of course have the calibre marking, so .44-40, or as it's written by Winchester, .44 Winchester Centre Fire.
Now this little carbine is a later production gun, this is post-1920 at some point.
We could look up the serial number, but I haven't actually done it.
And it is marked simply Model 92 Winchester on the top tang.
The serial number however is no longer located on the lower tang, because the lower tang is shortened
and there's no place outside of the lever to put it.
So instead the serial number has been moved to the front bottom surface of the receiver.
And this particular one is just under 900,000. That is really an incredible number of these rifles to make and sell.
Now the rifle that you saw on the table is an earlier production gun,
and you can see right here on its tang it is still marked "1892" where the new one is just "92".
So a couple different variations of the model designation that you will see.
So the 1892 really did very well worldwide, a lot of these guns were sold ... for export to other countries.
They became very popular in Hollywood, there are a number of very iconic movies and television shows.
... The Western craze of the '50s made heavy use of the 1892.
And it's as a result of that actually that you will see some of the really big loop modifications to the guns.
That's something that was never actually done historically. It was a modification to the gun
to make it easier to cycle the thing by flipping it under your arm with one hand.
Kind of goofy, but made a big splash on television and became very popular as a result. So that's where that came from.
At any rate they would sell in the US, they would sell abroad, they would sell
to a Dr. Seuss rhyme about everywhere that they would sell Winchester 92s.
We will continue this series with two more actually, but our next one is going to be a rifle that is almost as iconic as the 92,
the Winchester 1894. So stay tuned for the next video, we'll take a look at the differences between this one and the 94.
And of course, if you're interested in adding a 92 to your own collection,
these two are coming up for sale here at Rock Island, as are a bunch of other Winchester 1892s.
If you take a look at the description text below, you'll find links to Rock Island's catalogue pages for these two,
and a little exploration through the catalogue can find you a whole bunch more examples.
Thanks for watching.