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A fellow researcher who is working on a book dealing with the Model 61 Routledge and Counter bore rifles contacted me for some assistance. We traded lists of the Routledge bore serial numbers and when compiled we end up with 86 total guns. Various authors including C.H.Key claim that “records show” that only 77 of these rifles were manufactured. We are now 9 rifles beyond that number.
Michael
Model 1892 / Model 61 Collector, Research, Valuation
I have long suspected that the published production number lists of that nature are for the most part not accurate. Many of my research surveys have definitely proved those lists are simply somebody (the author’s) WAG !!
Bert
WACA Historian & Board of Director Member #6571L
I would not put much credence in what C.H.Key said about anything. His “expertise” on the Winchester 61 falls under a rather large dark shadow, in my opinion.
BRP
November 7, 2015
Offline
I believe it’s safe to say there are more 61 smoothbores than Key was aware of. And a good chance there are or will be more than are presently accounted for.
Mike
Blue Ridge Parson said
I would not put much credence in what C.H.Key said about anything. His “expertise” on the Winchester 61 falls under a rather large dark shadow, in my opinion.BRP
I would tend to agree. I know that he was associated wit ha fairly good number of “upgraded” and fake rifles.
Michael
Model 1892 / Model 61 Collector, Research, Valuation
Good morning,
It has been a number crunching and data extrapolation morning. Taking a deeper dive into this subject I decided to do a bit of of work. For the year of 1939, the year that all of the RB rifles were produced, Winchester manufactured 6950 Model 61’s in all configurations. For that year I have 253 total rifles sampled of which there are now 86 RB rifles for a 34% of the samples for the year. 34% of 6950 equals 2363 possible RB rifles. BUT, to be more accurate I looked at the number just within the range of the RB rifles which do not show up until about the mid year. The first RB serial number is right at 45000 and the last SN of the year is 48440 resulting in a total number of rifles in all configurations being 3440. In just that range I have 160 sampled rifles of which 86 are RB guns, or 54%. 54% of 3440 equals 1849 possible RB rifles. I think that this is a more accurate extrapolation based on the data.
Now, from Winchester’s point of view. Fred Routledge proposed this bore design in support of the Moskeeto indoor trap shooting hobby. Does it make sense that Winchester would go through the time and cost to design the rifle and create the matted receiver top for less than 100 rifles? It has been proposed that there was a problem with wanting to pay Routledge a royalty for the use of his patent design which lead to Winchester dropping the RB design and creating and patenting their own Counter Bore rifles which appear in mid 1940 and no further RB rifles are produced. I would propose that somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 RB rifles were produced, sold quite well as the hobby caught on and Winchester wanted to “improve the economics” of the Model 61 by producing their own rifle and not have to pay a royalty.
Michael
Model 1892 / Model 61 Collector, Research, Valuation
I did a bit more number crunching in an effort to determine IF the number of Routledge bore rifles that have been found may be a function of differential sampling for the year 1939. I looked at the total number of rifles manufactured per year from 1936 to 1940 versus the number of samples from each year’s production that I have found. Here are the results.
Year Total Produced Total Samples % of Production
1936 5526 168 3.0%
1937 15,055 496 3.3%
1938 4844 160 3.3%
1939 6949 253 3.6%
1940 5418 198 3.6%
I am pretty surprised that the number of samples is fairly consistent from year to year.
Michael
Model 1892 / Model 61 Collector, Research, Valuation
twobit said
I did a bit more number crunching in an effort to determine IF the number of Routledge bore rifles that have been found may be a function of differential sampling for the year 1939. I looked at the total number of rifles manufactured per year from 1936 to 1940 versus the number of samples from each year’s production that I have found. Here are the results.Year Total Produced Total Samples % of Production
1936 5526 168 3.0%
1937 15,055 496 3.3%
1938 4844 160 3.3%
1939 6949 253 3.6%
1940 5418 198 3.6%
I am pretty surprised that the number of samples is fairly consistent from year to year.
Michael
I set up most of my many survey documents to do exactly the same thing… Excel is such a wonderful tool! 
Here is an example from my Model 71 survey
Bert
WACA Historian & Board of Director Member #6571L
Bert H. said
I set up most of my many survey documents to do exactly the same thing… Excel is such a wonderful tool!
Here is an example from my Model 71 survey
Bert
Yes, Excel is the only way to do these survey projects. I can not imagine trying to do it 50 years ago with yellow legal pads and #2 pencils!! My spreadsheets are not nearly as formula oriented as you have yours. I end up doing a fair bit of “number crunching” by doing “Sort & Filter and some paper and pencil calculations. I justify it by keeping my brain exercised.
I do believe that the consistency of the data lends credibility to the calculation that there were A LOT more Routledge rifles produced than has been commonly thought.
Michael
Model 1892 / Model 61 Collector, Research, Valuation
twobit said
Yes, Excel is the only way to do these survey projects. I can not imagine trying to do it 50 years ago with yellow legal pads and #2 pencils!! My spreadsheets are not nearly as formula oriented as you have yours. I end up doing a fair bit of “number crunching” by doing “Sort & Filter and some paper and pencil calculations. I justify it by keeping my brain exercised.
I do believe that the consistency of the data lends credibility to the calculation that there were A LOT more Routledge rifles produced than has been commonly thought.
Michael
I did indeed spend a fair amount of time upfront building all of the formula tables inside of the survey spreadsheets, but I really like the fact that the spreadsheets auto-calculate all of the statistics as I make each new entry.
The data consistency definitely does lend a lot of credence to the results, and having 30K+ specimens documented really enhances the statistics.
WACA Historian & Board of Director Member #6571L
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