Unknown Rifle|General Discussions & Questions|Forum|Winchester Collector

Chuck said
Not a Winchester.  My friend has passed away and we are trying to figure out the maker of this rifle/carbine.  He and I had talked about this gun in the past but my memory is terrible.  Top of the barrel says Pat. Apr. 21. 1874.  No other markings.  I really don’t want to go through every page of a Flayderman’s

  

Doubt you’ll find it in Flayderman’s, but possibly in one of James Grant’s SS books, which I’ll look through.  Many limited production guns never made it into Flayderman’s.

Chuck said
  I know he told me the Manufacture but I don’t remember it being some obscure maker.  

How much more obscure could it be?

https://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0&docid=00150102&IDKey=1EBCE27E7F08&HomeUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fpatft.uspto.gov%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fpatimg.htm

In the first decade after the Civil War, there were SCORES of similar breech-loader patents filed by would-be inventors so deluded they thought they could compete against Win, Ballard, Sharps, Maynard, Rem, & other proven, successful breech-loader designs.  Until seeing this pat, I assumed it was a SS, & Grant’s books show photos of over 2 doz SSs as strange or stranger than this one, produced in quantities ranging from 1 or 2 prototypes to maybe a few doz.  

But this one, unlike most of the others I was referring to, is a repeater, which makes it very unusual.  Winchester’s policy at the time was to try to squash any potential competition by buying up (or suing) other makers of repeaters, like Orville Robinson, who was successful enough to produce several hundred of his rifles.  Would be highly interesting to investigate whether WRA knew of this patent.  If so, it probably seemed too little a threat to worry about.

Chuck said

Thanks Clarence.  This is more data than I found.  My friend may have not really known who the maker was.  He told me it was ??? which as I remember it was someone we would be familiar with.  He had this habit of buying rare items and as we all know finding the right buyer is just as rare.  

Why don’t you find out from Cody if there are records from the 1870s that refer to this patent.  It would be proof that the company knew about it, but probably didn’t regard it as a potential competitor, or some action would have been taken–like buying the pat.

I’ve run into a few old collectors (now dead, all of them) interested in such weird designs, the stranger the better, but not many.  In fact, I’d guess the number of “unknown” guns like this outnumber the people seriously interested in them!