This rare, custom carved Winchester 32 special is still a beauty to behold. This gun had been handed down to one of the grandson’s. The cattle rancher who owned this gun is as old ranchers. I thought it would be a way to honor him and help keep some of his history alive for generations to come. This gun has been custom carved with their family brand, which has been inlayed in ivory, then surrounded with basket weave. The edging is an old fence post with rusted barb wire wrapped around the entire design.  The gun stock has been hand painted to bring out the detail. I’m sure when the owners grandfather sees his old gun. Showing how his grandson has honored him. He will be very proud.

History of the Winchester .32 Special

Winchester Model 1894 (also known as Winchester .30-30 rifle, Winchester 94, Win 94,, .30-30 Winchester, or simply .30-30) is one of the most famous and most popular hunting rifles. It was designed by John Browning in 1894, and was produced by Winchester Repeating Arms Company through 1980 and then by U.S. Repeating Arms under the Winchester brand until they ceased to manufacture rifles in 2006. In 2010 FN Herstal will reintroduce the Model ’94 as a limited production firearm.

The original Model 1894 was produced in .32-40 Winchester, .38-55 Winchester, .25-35 Winchester, .30-30 Winchester, and .32 Winchester Special. It was the first sporting rifle to sell over 7,000,000 units. The millionth Model 1894 was given to President Calvin Coolidge in 1927, the 1½ millionth rifle to President Harry S. Truman on May 8, 1948 and the two millionth unit was given to President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953.

It was the first hunting rifle chambered for the then-new smokeless powder cartridges. The .30-30 Winchester is the cartridge that has become synonymous with the Model 1894 rifle.

Variants of the Model 94 over its long history also included the Winchester Model 55, produced from 1924 through 1932 in a 24-inch barrel, and the Winchester Model 64, produced from 1933 through 1957 in 20, 24, and 26-inch barrel lengths. (Note: The model number 55 was used twice by Winchester, first as a Model 94 variant introduced in 1924, and, later, as a short-lived single-shot/semi-automatic hybrid .22-caliber rifle that self-cocked the hammer each time it was fired.)

In 1964, the manufacturing of the 94 was changed in order to make the firearm less expensive to produce. Generally “pre-64″ rifles command a premium price over post-64 rifles.

The Winchester 1894 was designed to permit the cycling of longer cartridges than the Winchester 1892 carbines could permit. When the lever is pulled down, it brings the bottom of the receiver with it, opening up more space and allowing a longer cartridge to feed without making the receiver longer. The mechanism is complex but very reliable. Complete stripping of the action is a multi-stage task that must be accomplished in precise sequence. However it is rarely necessary to completely strip the action. The largest cartridge that the 1894 action can accommodate is the .450 Marlin, which was chambered in some custom rifles and the short-lived Timber Carbine on a beefed-up 1894 “big bore” receiver.

Decades after the Winchester 1892 was phased out, the Winchester 1894 Models were also manufactured in typical handgun calibers such as .38 Special/.357 Magnum, .44 Special/.44 Magnum, .45 Colt (sometimes called the .45 Long Colt or .45 Cowboy) and the .44-40 Winchester. Typically, the tube magazine is able to hold 9 to 13 rounds of the previously mentioned handgun calibers. The magazine capacity depends on the length of the barrel, as the tube magazine (located below the barrel) typically covers the entire length of the barrel.

Handgun calibers are preferred by modern day Cowboy Action Shooters as it allows one type of ammunition for both rifle and handgun. A typical combination would be an 1873 Colt (Colt Peacemaker or clone) and a Winchester (or another lever action made by, for example, Uberti or Marlin Firearms) capable of shooting the same type of ammunition. The 1894 action, designed for smokeless rifle rounds, is much stronger than the action of the Winchesters (Models 1866, 1873, 1876) that were based on Benjamin Henry’s toggle-link system, and can easily handle modern high-pressure pistol cartridges such as .44 Magnum. (So also can the even stronger Model 1892, another Browning design, the ’92 ceased production in 1941 and has been recently reintroduced in limited production).

U.S. production was shut down in 2006. There were 14 versions of the Model 94 in the 2005 Winchester catalog.

The Winchester 1894 holds the record for best-selling high-powered rifle in U.S. history.In 2010 Winchester Repeating Arms will reintroduce the model 94. “It will be offered in two Limited Edition models that will commemorate the 200th anniversary of Oliver F. Winchester’s birth in New England in 1810. A Model 1894 Custom Grade and Model 1894 High Grade will be offered in 30-30 Winchester caliber….Delivery of these two commemorative rifles will begin starting in the 2nd quarter of 2010. Both models have 8 round magazine capacity, 42″ overall length, 10″ rate of twist with average weight at 8 lbs. The Model 1894 Custom Grade rifle has a Suggested Retail of $1,959.00. The Model 1894 High Grade rifle Suggested Retail is $1,469.00.”

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