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RIA,
Claims under condition, “Likely Factory Experimental Prototype”!
Until it’s proven and verified here, I’m not buying the claim!
I was looking at this auction this morning and relaxing, and I saw this rifle and I was wondering what others are thinking here!
Anthony
Online
It looks pretty good, the caliber stamp looks like a 1890 or 06 and the low serial number. I’ve heard of early strait gripped guns, so it is possible that’s the way it left the factory.
I sometimes wonder if the good folks at RIA have ever heard of the word “provenance.” They certainly don’t provide any here.
BRP
I am of the opinion that the “22 SHORT” would not provide enough “blowback” to work the action. That is why Winchester specified “22 LONG R.-SUPER SPEED & SUPER-X” on the Model 63 barrel marking. They don’t show any other barrel stamping, just the caliber. RDB
November 7, 2015
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rogertherelic said
I am of the opinion that the “22 SHORT” would not provide enough “blowback” to work the action. That is why Winchester specified “22 LONG R.-SUPER SPEED & SUPER-X” on the Model 63 barrel marking. They don’t show any other barrel stamping, just the caliber. RDB
That’s my issue with this theory, Roger, very much a fly in the ointment. Speculation is a poor substitute for prevenance. Frankenchester.
Mike
rogertherelic said
I am of the opinion that the “22 SHORT” would not provide enough “blowback” to work the action. That is why Winchester specified “22 LONG R.-SUPER SPEED & SUPER-X” on the Model 63 barrel marking. They don’t show any other barrel stamping, just the caliber. RDB
Roger, Browning’s little 22 automatic and Remington’s version of it, the Model 24, were available in a gallery version that will reliably shoot the 22 short.
I’ve often wondered why WRA didn’t make a Model 63 gallery gun. It was so expensive was the likely reason.
It’s just a matter of spring pressure and possibly a reduction in the weight and length of the bolt travel, to perfect timing.
I recall very clearly one cold Fall night in the early Fifties, my dad buying me a couple of magazine loads with a Model 24 at a shooting gallery. The carny loaded my gun with one of those gallery tubes inserted into the face of the buttplate. Even then I recognized the cartridges were shorts but only later learned the bullets were formed from powdered lead. ( I’d bet a donut that carny died of lung cancer. )
I suppose Winchester thought their Model 90/06/62 gallery guns sold well enough for the purpose.
While I use a Model 63, I also have a Belgian Browning auto, early enough to have a “wheel sight”, that is the Winchester’s full equal. The Remington version of the Browning did the same thing to Winchester in the American marketplace that the Remington 11 did in American automatic shotgun sales.
It is a mystery to some why Winchester couldn’t make and market a successful automatic shotgun or an automatic twenty-two rifle. By successful I mean POPULAR and a big seller. I’m a great admirer of Marsh Williams, Harry Sefried, Bill.Roemer, and a couple other WRA in-house gun designers. To my mind, they were just as talented as Wayne Leek, Mike Walker and the brilliant John Pedersen.
The absence of John Moses Browning from Winchester and the presence of his designs at Remington made the difference in both cases.
In fairness to Leek and Walker, they moved forward from the Browning patents and the Remington 1100 and the Nylon 66, in particular, made some mighty high watermarks.
Whereas. the most innovative. elegant and well-balanced automatic shotgun ever made — the Winchester Model 59 and its Versalite integral choke tubes — came a cropper in sales and died an early death. Go figure…
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
To add to what Bill was mentioning, Winchester DID experiment with the .22 Short cartridge in the Model 63. There is a gun that was formerly in the Winchester Reference Collection (Tag 1316) that was one of the 63 experimental models in .22 Short and there were likely a few others. I would have to do some research to see how many but Winchester’s C.G. Swebilius was working hard cranking out a plethora of .22 Short designs at that time and he produced more than a dozen experimental semi-auto rifles in .22 Short in a few months, and these when Winchester already had a “gallery” version .22 Short semi-auto Model 74 in the catalog.
This information in no way provides provenance for the RIA rifle but does keep the door open for possibilities.
Best Regards,
WACA Life Member #6284 - Specializing in Pre-64 Winchester .22 Rimfire
Blue Ridge Parson said
I sometimes wonder if the good folks at RIA have ever heard of the word “provenance.” They certainly don’t provide any here.BRP
They’ve heard it, they just ain’t got it! 
Jeff, Thanks. I could not remember the Swebelius name except I knew it was the guy who went on to High Standard. My old age kicking in..
I may as well throw this in, at the risk of being ridiculed: i have often wondered about another shooting gallery at another Fall carnival in what must have been 1957 or 1958.
In those days the outskirts of South Houston still held a lot of open land in agriculture. Southeast Texas had carnivals that came through in late October, probably on their way South to Florida. My Dad, Louisiana born, liked them and would always take me along.
By 1957, at age 13, as a result of hours spent pouring over the 1953, 54. And 57 Gun Digests, I had an unusually educated grasp of the cataloged 22 rimfire lines of all the manufacturers, even for most adults. In pretty fair detail, including some I’d never seen in the flesh.
We went to a carnival grounds — maybe it was a semi-permanent fair grounds of some sort, off the old Galveston Road. I remember parking on gravel instead of dirt. By then I was ready to make a beeline for a shooting gallery and Dad was accommodating.
The gallery guns were pistol gripped automatics and had the distinctive, squared-off receivers with rear-mounted, knurled take-down knobs of the Model 63. I recognized the design instantly and could not have confused them with anything else. The attending carnys loaded them through the buttplates in single passes with a tube loader. The cartridges were gallery shorts.
I can’t take my oath and swear these were Winchester 63 gallery guns but I still don’t know what else they could have been. They were certainly not the ungainly looking Model 74 nor any Remington, Savage, Browning, or High Standard ever made that I know of.
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Zebulon, That makes perfect sense. A “Short” only Model for a special purpose. By using the heavier springs it required the use of the more expensive SUPER-X and SUPER SPEED ammunition. Good marketing ploy. RDB
Zeb, I marvel at your memory and ability to recall names! I am younger (for what its worth) and never did names well! Tim
I think there are some events in life that make such a strong impression on us, for good or bad, we retain them in long memory. My short term memory has grown very faulty this last year but that’s a different part of the brain. My younger wife gets quite irritated that she’s told me something two days ago and I have no memory of it.
In elementary school, first grade, Fall of 1949, a grumpy old harpy of a teacher screamed at me for some minor, inadvertent infraction and it terrified me. I still remember that, although not what I did that displeased her. The old bat.
A young boy, if he is so fortunate, benefits from the presence and attention of his father and a lot of trouble today comes from the absence of such attention. I think my interest in guns and hunting comes from woods walks with my father at about age 12, when he was teaching me safe gun handling with my uncle’s .22 rifle, a bolt action Remington repeater made before WWII. Like many men of his generation, he was not demonstrative and demanded absolute obedience and respect but I knew he wanted me to do things with him and was proud of me. You don’t forget those experiences, ever.
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
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