Henry repeating arms serial numbers full#
The Henry rifle's design included a brass frame (a few iron frame Henry's were built), full length magazine mounted beneath an octagon barrel, exposed hammer and a top ejection receiver. However, it featured the toggle-link lever action used, with little change, in all subsequent Winchester rifles for the next 16 years. The Henry rifle never bore the Winchester name, as it was produced during the New Haven Arms years, before the Company name was changed to Winchester Repeating Arms. Image courtesy of Henry Repeating Arms Co. 44 Henry rimfire cartridge, which hit the commercial market in 1862. The result was the famous 1860 Henry rifle, chambered for the. 44 Henry.Īt the same time, Henry was redesigning and improving the New Haven Arms lever action. Tyler Henry was designing and experimenting with a big bore (.44 caliber) rimfire cartridge that became the. The cartridges used in Volcanic pistols were unreliable and under powered, so by 1858 B. This was a time of flux in the arms industry, as designers in both North America and Europe were experimenting with self contained cartridges and breech loading actions that would soon largely replace the muzzleloading firearms that had dominated arms design for centuries. Tyler Henry became the plant manager and chief designer, a position that had been held by Horace Wesson at Volcanic Arms. Winchester reorganized the Company under the name New Haven Arms and B. Long story short, the Volcanic pistols were not commercially successful, the Company went into receivership early in 1857 and Winchester wound up owning all of the Company's remaining assets. At this time, Oliver Winchester was successfully manufacturing mens' shirts of an improved type in Hew Haven and had become a wealthy businessman with sufficient capital to branch out into other fields of interest. That same year, Oliver Winchester became a director of Volcanic, providing capital to keep the struggling Company afloat. Although patented by Smith and Wesson, the Volcanic lever action was actually designed by Horace Smith and a brilliant firearms designer named Benjamin Tyler Henry. Volcanic manufactured lever action repeating pistols, and a few rifles based on the same action, for primitive self contained cartridges.
Volcanic was owned by three partners, financier Courtlandt Palmer, Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson. To provide a bit of back story, in 1855 the little known Volcanic Arms Co. It is certainly not a definitive history, as that would require a very large tome and such books have already been written by people more knowledgeable than I.
This brief introduction to the subject covers Winchester lever action rifles from the New Haven Arms Henry rifle to current Winchester (Herstal Group) production centerfire rifles. A Brief Winchester Lever Action Rifle Chronology and History
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