GUNSTOCK CARVING ON THIS WINCHESTER 308

While attending one of the many gun shows my husband and I frequent each year. We found several guns that, in my opinion, needed help. We purchased this Winchester .308 model 88 rifle. I chose to put a gunstock carving on this Winchester 308 because the stock was in desperate need of being refinished. There are several deep nicks and scratches on the butt of the gun. Along with the fact, someone has applied several coats of varnish to the stock. I would venture to guess they where trying to cover up the large scratches in the stock. In doing this, they have filled in the original checkering on the grip and forend of the gun. Thus making the gun look like the checkering is almost warn off.

I have stripped the stock of the old varnish, carve mountain goats on the stock, carve the basket weave pattern on the grip and the forend of the stock. As well as painted the carved sceen to bring it to life even more.

The history or background of the gun I am carving has become a very intersting past time for me. Here is some of the history I have found of the Winchester rifle. I hope you enjoy reading about the gun as much as I have. (If the pictures do not load. Please right click on the picture and choose “show picture”).

History of the Winchester Rifle

The term Winchester Rifle is frequently used to describe any of the lever action rifles manufactured in the United States by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, although the name is usually more specifically used in reference to the Winchester Model 1873 or the Winchester Model 1894 rifles.

Winchester rifles were among the earliest repeating rifles, and as such the Winchester name has become synonymous with lever action firearms. The gun is colloquially known as “The Gun that Won the West”, though public perception of its role in the Western Expansion is exaggerated due to the Winchester’s prominence in 20th Century fictionalized accounts of that period.

Predecessors

The ancestor of the Winchester rifles was the Volcanic rifle and pistol of Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson.

 Volcanic Pistol .41 cal

It was originally manufactured by the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company, which was later reorganized into the New Haven Arms Company, its largest stockholder being Oliver Winchester. The Volcanic rifle used a form of caseless ammunition and had only limited success. Wesson had also designed an early form of rimfire cartridge which was subsequently perfected by Benjamin Tyler Henry

 Henry 1860, Winchester Musket 1866

Henry also supervised the redesign of the rifle to use this new rimfire ammunition, retaining only the general form of the breech mechanism and the tubular magazine of the Volcanic. This became the Henry rifle of 1860, which was manufactured by the New Haven Arms Company and was used in considerable numbers by certain Union Army units in the American Civil War.

Development

After the war, Oliver Winchester acquired majority control of the New Haven Arms Company, renaming it the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. This company modified and improved the basic design of the Henry rifle, creating the first Winchester rifle: the Model 1866. It retained the .44 Henry rimfire cartridge, was built on a brass frame, and had an improved magazine and a wooden forearm. In 1873 Winchester introduced the steel-framed Model 1873 chambering the more potent .44-40 centerfire cartridge. In 1876, in a bid to compete with the powerful single-shot rifles of the time, Winchester brought out the Model 1876.

 This is the Winchester 73 toggle link action.

While it chambered more powerful cartridges than the 1866 and 1873 models, the toggle link action was not strong enough for the popular high-powered rounds used in Sharps or Remington single-shot rifles.

From 1883, John Moses Browning worked in partnership with Winchester, designing a series of rifles and shotguns, most notably the lever-action Winchester Model 1886, Winchester Model 1892, Winchester Model 1894, and Winchester Model 1895 rifles, along with the lever-action Winchester Model 1887 shotgun and the pump-action Winchester Model 1893 and Winchester Model 1897 shotguns.

This history was found on the website www.wikipedia.org