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September 2, 2005
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Does anyone have any idea how rare and the number of 73s with 32 inch barrels? Thanks
March 20, 2009
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Hello,
There has not been a survey of the Model 1873 factory ledgers that would allow for a cumulative number to be quoted. Jim Gordon conducted a survey of 2889 existing rifles and documented 33 which had 32" barrels. Of those 20 were in 32WCF, 8 were in 38 WCF,and 5 were in 44 WCF.
Michael
Model 1892 / Model 61 Collector, Research, Valuation
May 2, 2009
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The numbers in the Gordon survey are fairly close to what I have seen at shows. The most common is the 32 cal followed by the 38 cal but I see very few in 44.
Bob
WACA Life Member--- NRA Life Member---- Cody Firearms member since 1991 Researching the Winchester 1873's
Email: [email protected]
April 15, 2005
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To give you fellows an idea of just how difficult it is to conduct a caliber (or barrel length) survey of the factory ledger records, it too me 8+ years, and more than 500-hours of dedicated effort to survey the 109,999 Model 1885 records for the caliber survey I finished this past year. The fact that there are more than 720,000 serial numbers in the Model 1873 records makes it a very daunting challenge to survey them in a timely fashion.
To put it in a simple perspective, working 8-hours/day, it took me 62.6 days to complete my survey of 109,999 records, and I did not work at it for 8-hrs/day. If you extrapolate the time it would take to survey all 720,610 Model 1873 records, it would take approximately 410-days, working 8-hrs/day, 7-days/week to finish it. Not impossible, but it is going to take some real hard-core dedication from someone to do it.
Bert
WACA Historian & Board of Director Member #6571L
February 13, 2012
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Bert H. said
To give you fellows an idea of just how difficult it is to conduct a caliber (or barrel length) survey of the factory ledger records, it too me 8+ years, and more than 500-hours of dedicated effort to survey the 109,999 Model 1885 records for the caliber survey I finished this past year. The fact that there are more than 720,000 serial numbers in the Model 1873 records makes it a very daunting challenge to survey them in a timely fashion.To put it in a simple perspective, working 8-hours/day, it took me 62.6 days to complete my survey of 109,999 records, and I did not work at it for 8-hrs/day. If you extrapolate the time it would take to survey all 720,610 Model 1873 records, it would take approximately 410-days, working 8-hrs/day, 7-days/week to finish it. Not impossible, but it is going to take some real hard-core dedication from someone to do it.
Bert
LOL, Bert forgive me but this scene from Caddycshack just came to mind. 
-Chris
March 20, 2010
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Its like eating an elephant, one bite at a time. I think such a project would be worthy of the effort for any of the models, regardless of how long it may take. Just think of what you could do with such a database once completed.
1892takedown @sbcglobal.net ......NRA Endowment Life Member.....WACA Member
"God is great.....beer is good.....and people are crazy"... Billy Currington
December 9, 2007
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Maybe the technology is not there yet, but if not, I’m surprised. You’d think there would be something akin to those receipt scanners, on steroids, where you just feed everything in rapidly and then you can find and sort in a nano-second. Maybe some day.
May 2, 2009
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The problem is the old style of writing, the abbreviation and that some additional information was written in between lines that OCR software would have a problem with. It would have to be done by a human.
Bob
WACA Life Member--- NRA Life Member---- Cody Firearms member since 1991 Researching the Winchester 1873's
Email: [email protected]
