Research, answering questions and the trouble with Madis and Pirkle|Page 2|General Discussions & Questions|Forum|Winchester Collector

Bert H. said

Kirk Durston said
Madis’s book was the very first volume I purchased when I first started collecting old Winchesters. I almost wore it out. Over time, however, I became aware of the dating problem between Madis’s information and the actual factory records. I was also involved for several years in the Model 53 survey and the discrepencies between the real data and what Madis wrote about the Model 53 were so large, that his chapter on the Model 53 is almost unusable. I still have Madis’s book (and the more portable one), but I keep them not to refer to, but to enjoy as a vintage book on Winchesters. A massive amount of work went into that book, especially considering desktop publishing using computers was not yet invented. I would say that it is time for an entirely new Winchester book, not just an addendum that includes corrections and updates. There is room for substantial improvement in the photos for each model that show more detail and resolution.
I’m thinking of something more akin to the kind of articles Bert Hartman, Rob Kassab, Donald Klancher, Gary White, John Madl and others have been publishing in the WACA journal – all of them top quality articles. I would love to see someone like Bert author, or at least be the editor of a new Winchester book. 
  

That is actually something that I am planning to do.  The (yet to be written) 5th edition of the Red Book will be focused on the production information and statistics of the various models versus the value numbers.  My plan is to reformat the Red Book by Model (a chapter for each model that I plan to include), and then discuss the production history and statistics for each of the models that will be in the book.  I will be relying on several of our WACA Gurus (Bob Reabe, Jeff Abendshein, Lou Luttrell, Michael Puzio, Marc Murphy, Greg Docktor, etc.) to provide some of the necessary details & information for appropriate chapter(s).
Bert
  

Bert,

This is also music to my ears, as the knowledge, that has developed over the years, through the passionate and time consuming undertaking, by the competent members is so appreciated by the rest of us. We simply can only sit back, and say thank you, over and over, and then step up with our purchases of these fine publications. I’m looking forward to this fine work!

Tony

steve004 said
On the topic of the Madis numbers, David Kennedy had an interesting article in the Fall, 2006 WACA magazine:  Winchester Single Shot Shipping Dates: Re-examining George Madis Dates of Manufacture.
  

Thanks, was wondering about him when I saw someone with a U. S. Marshal Museum jacket yesterday. I think I’d enjoy reading that article.

Mike

Bert H. said

steve004 said
On the topic of the Madis numbers, David Kennedy had an interesting article in the Fall, 2006 WACA magazine:  Winchester Single Shot Shipping Dates: Re-examining George Madis Dates of Manufacture.
  

I was the person who encouraged him to write that.  I had spent more than a week at the museum researching the Single Shot records and then showed him my results (which differed very greatly from the Madis numbers).  It was during that same research trip that I first got to see and handle the Polishing Room records.
This is the table I created for my future Single Shot reference book;

 
Bert
  

I sure am looking forward to seeing you’re new work, Bert.That page is a nice tease!

Will that be an updated version of the Red Book? Or a separate S. S. Book?

Tony

twobit said
Hello to all,
Over the past several weeks I have had numerous collectors from several countries contact me inquiring about potential value and rarity of various Model 1892 rifles.  In the process of trying to be helpful and answer the questions put forth the results have been met with anything from gratitude to disbelief to “how dare I question Madis & Pirkle?”  As a result, I am going to put post some information that I have accumulated and processed in an effort to dispel the inaccuracy of the earlier published work.  I am not throwing stones at the authors but rather trying to shed light on the most up to date research and what it says about the rifles that we collect.  Some of the following will be taken “cut and paste style” from my earlier conversations and I will attempt to make it flow as well as possible without totally having to rewrite my earlier thoughts.  I know it will not be perfect by any chance.
Trappers
This all got started with a question as to how rare a certain trapper configuration was.  I gave my reply based on my inspection of 288,000 factory ledgers combined with the current status of my survey.  Madis states in his books that 2 out of 3 guns were rifles.  Therefore 33% of production were carbines.  Then he notes that 1 of 325 (.0031%) carbines had shorter than 20 inch barrels.  If you run the math that works out to 985,000 (excluding Model 53 and 65 rifles in the 1892/92 SN sequence) x .33 = 325,050 carbines x .0031 = 1,007 carbines with barrels less than 20 inches.  Pirkle states that carbines with 14 to 19 inch barrels make up 1200 samples.
To date I have examined the written factory production letters for the first 288,000 Model 1892’s that were produced and transferred all of that information into a huge excel spreadsheet.  This represents the first 29% of the total production of the Model 1892/92’s.  Within just this portion of production there are already a total of 5,387 proven/known short barreled carbines. Beyond SN 288,000 I have cataloged an additional 508 individual carbines with short barrels within the balance of the rifles that I have surveyed.  Between SN 944970 to SN 945056 (86 SN’s) I have  6 SRC’s and each of them has a 16 inch barrel.  That suggest that ALL 86 of those SN’s are trappers.  There is another batch of 4,543 serial numbers in the 954,000 range where I have 92 samples.  All are SRC’s and 22 of those (24%) are short barreled.  Mostly 16” and a few 14” examples.  If you gross that up for just that interval it suggests that another 1090 short barreled carbines were produced in that single interval alone.  Add these numbers up and it totals:  5,387 + 508 + 86 + 1068 (extrapolated addition in the 954,000 range) = 7,049 short barrel carbines were produced.  There are several additional runs of SRC’s that show similar concentrations of short barrels and I still have another 1000,000 production ledgers to compile plus listings from the BATF that are not included yet.  
It was at this point that the house of cards begins to crumble in the published info and a thorough re-evaluation of its merits had to seriously considered.  Both of these books were valiant efforts in their day but they need to be placed on the end of a book shelf and not taken as the current best knowledge of the subject. 
Short Barrel Sporting Rifles
Madis states that 1 of each 850 (.00117%)  sporting rifles had barrel less than the standard 24 inch.  Pirkle does not really address this very well but notes that 21-23 inch rifles account for 800 examples.  I only found 3 rifles with 21 inch barrels, 50 with 22 inch barrels and no 23 inch examples.  Doing the math then 985,000 x .66 (the percentage of production that is sporting rifles) x .00117 = 760 short barrel sporting rifles.   Within the first 288,000 ledger entries there are actually 15,761 documented sporting rifles with barrel lengths between 14 and 24 inches!!! 
Muskets:
In Pirkle’s book covering the Model 1886 and 1892 on page 103 he has a Table 5-1 detailing “Model 1892 Variations.”  On page 105 at the bottom of the table is a notation that “The numbers shown in this table are estimates based on the Authors research in factory records at the Cody Firearms Museum, Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody WY.”  He then states that the number of muskets is unknown and probably less than 2%, or approximately 19,700 examples.  There are actually 851 listed in the ledgers up to SN 288000.  To date I have identified 16 within this interval and an additional 19 between 288000 and 992166 which extrapolates out to an additional 845 muskets and a total of only 1696 potential Musket configurations.  That is a long way from 19,700.
Full vs Half Length Magazines
Pirkle claims that 99% of the produced rifles have full length magazines.  That there were only 1214 examples with half or button magazines.  Of the 21,000 rifles in my survey where I have magazine configuration data for the reality is that 11.5% of the rifles have something besides a full-length magazine.  11.5% of the approximately 985,000 Model 1892’s produced equals 113,275 magazines other than full length.  That is 2 orders of magnitude difference. 
Caliber distribution
Madis claims that 4 out or 5 (80%) of rifles are chambered for 44 WCF.  Assuming around 1,000,000 total production that is 800,000.  Pirkle has the listed caliber distribution as shown below.  Am I shocked that Pirkle’s % for the 44 is identical to that of Madis?  No.
Caliber   Number     Percentage                    Real World Data %
25-20       40,000             4%                                   29%
32            75,000             7%                                   20%
38            85,000             8%                                   14%
44           800,000            80%                                 37%
Extra Length Barrels
Madis postulates that 1 out of 1200 sporting rifles had extra-long barrels.  That is .00083%.    Pirkle suggests that rifle configurations with barrels longer than the standard 24-inch totals ONLY 35 examples.  In the 379,999 production ledgers there are, 34 sporting rifles listed with 36-inch barrels. Is there really only one other rifle with 26, 28, 30, 32, or 34-inch barrels out there?  We absolutely know that is not true.  So far, I have cataloged 174 additional sporting rifles with barrel lengths between 24 and 36 inches within the 20,062 sporting rifles sampled.  That calculates to .008% which is ten times larger than the Madis estimate.
Half Round/Octagon Barrels
Madis estimates that 1 out or 150 rifles or .0066% had these barrels.  Pirkle claims that 6,675 examples were manufactured which is darn close to .0066 x 1,001,324, his highest SN for the 1892/92 rifles.  A problem arises though that only 66% of the total production are sporting rifles and that would calculate to around 4362 1/2 round rifles.  Real world data shows that the number is almost 3% of the sporting rifles are half round/octagon configurations.  Granted, these are relatively small numbers but it is a 4.5 times increase.
End of Year / DOM Serialization
 The serial number and Date of Manufacture information in both Madis and Pirkle are identical with regard to the end of year numbers.  It is now accepted that the Polishing Room/Serial Number Application dates are actually the correct data to determine when a receiver was serialized and thus the Manufacture date for a rifle.  If you look at the M/P tables they suggest that by the end of 1895 there had been 106,721 Model 1892 rifles produced.  That would be very close to 10% of the total production within the first 3.7 years!  When compared to the PRSNA numbers that is an overestimate of some 53,105 rifles or almost half what M/P claim. 
I built a small Excel spread sheet showing the end of month SN for the first few years of 1892’s, the date they rifle arrived in the warehouse and the shipping dates.  Based on this it appears that the typical rifle went from serialization to shipped out of the warehouse within 2 to 3 months.   Obviously, we are all aware that there are outliers to this but they certainly make up a very small percentage of production. 
There are additional shortcomings in both publications with regard to the style of both the upper tang stamps and the various styles of barrel address stamps.  These are beyond the scope of this thread and will be addressed when I complete the website that synthesizes this information and so much more.  I hope this helps for some of you when you are attempting to figure just what is out there.  THIS is why I started working on this project.
Michael

  

 Very well done Micheal! We appreciate the hard work you do

Its not easy work to painstakingly crunch all the numbers and data on spreadsheets!