Bert,
Thanks for correcting me on the retail price of an 1894.

As to steel prices, steel was an openly traded commodity on the stock exchange, pretty easy to find data. Most of the data is by month, so I just took the highest price for 1928.

I also have both the Midvale Steel Company & Crucible Steel Company’s product/sales catalogues from the mid 1920’s. And as I’m sure that you are aware, they were the main suppliers for Winchester’s barrel steel.

Yes I agree that Winchester’s management was frugal, you need to be to make a profit. But there is a difference between being frugal and compromising either the quality or the perceived quality of your product.

Winchester had brand reputation that they rabidly defended. Just think of the fallout /negative press that Winchester would have gotten had the public perceived Winchester was using surplus barrels on their guns. We saw this in 1964, a reputation that is hard to live down. Many to this day feel that anything Winchester produced after 1964 is a piece of junk, no matter how well made.

Now I’ve tried to explain from the manufacturing point of view and from the economic point of view why this was not practical. That the few dollars saved would not be worth the energy involved, and would have a negative impact on their reputation of quality.

I find myself in the untenable position of having to prove a negative (Winchester did not produce these). As you well know it’s a simple rule of logic that you cannot prove a negative. I cannot prove that Bigfoot & fairies don’t exist, or polar bears are not surfing off the California coast. All I can do is provide an inductive argument to make a conclusion probable …but not certain.

In past posts I have:
1. Described that Winchester would have had to make new or modify existing fixtures to produce these.

2. Described how Winchester broke one of the cardinal rules of mass production by making non standard parts.

3. Described (by the examples Bob R provided in his book) that these barrels were not modified using the same fixturing.

4.Identified issues with supportability once these guns left the factory

5. Shown that the savings would not have warranted the effort.

In short it just does not pass the common sense test.

Yet you have provided no evidence that these were factory produced. No mention in catalogues, no drawings, no fixtures, and no internal memo’s saying make it happen, no example in the Cody museum, and no listing in Winchester’s catalogue of guns that they turned over from the factory research department to the Cody museum.

So bottom line is that I’m done with this subject. My offer still stands that I will pay shipping both ways if someone wants’ to send me one (which I don’t see happening), and I will gladly “eat crow” if someone proves that Winchester originally produced these.

Mike

Of Course Santa is real, how else do you explain millions of gifts under millions of trees on the same morning.

Look, the bottom line is that I really don’t have a dog in this fight. I personally don’t own one, and my reputation is not hanging out there if these are proven to be bogus or real.

Truthfully; I hope that they are real, interesting 1894 variant.

It also makes other combinations possible…. An if Winchester would have put 1895 barrels on 1894’s then we should see 1886s with 1876 barrels, and 1892s with 1873 barrels, and 1894s with 1892 barrels mounted on them. Lots easier to do, and Winchester never threw perfectly good parts away.

Bert
Yes very familiar with John Madl and his work; very good friend of mine whom I’ve had many discussions with over a bottle of sour mash.

Agreed that Winchester probably used rifled 1885 “ BLANKS” for some 1886s ; calibers were the same, bore, grove, rate of twist & exterior tapers were the same.

Again these were blanks…not finished barrels converted to fit another rifle, slight difference.

I have to take exception with all this talk about the frugality of Winchester. During WWI and for several years after Winchester was employing over 17500 people. Shifts were running around the clock. The majority of retirees I interviewed for my book were hired during the depression. They all mentioned, my Dad included, standing in lines several blocks long. Winchester was one of the few places hiring during the depression. These guys knew if they could get a foot in the door that they would have a job for life. This was the largest employment number period. During WW2 they only employed 13000. Some how that doesn’t sound like a business that was going to worry about a few extra bbls. to me.

If you read all of my post I stated that I had issues with "the frugality" of Winchester during the depression era. I also stated that most all of the employees that I have interviewed were hired during that time or had relatives that were. They were one of the only places other than possibly the phone company that you could get a job around here at that so called "dark period". The period between wars according to anyone I have talked to that was employed there showed no big slowdown in production or purchase practices.
I’ll give you just a small example of their "frugality" with gun parts during the depression . If you lived around the plant during the winter you would see, once a week or so, a group of wagons going around the streets next to the plant. The company offered free firewood to any family who came out to ask for it. This "free firewood" was gun stocks, forearms, and even blanks that they considered scrap.
This was told to me by several employees, two who ended up lifers on the wiood line. These two guys also told me "what they considered scrap back then would never have been tossed out today".
I can give you many other examples like this, but the bottom line is Winchester according to any one I have spoken to was thriving during those years, no one recalls anyone asking for conservation of product.
They always, like any plant pushed for productivity and efficiency.

Anyone can question anything, and they should ask questions. What I am saying is that I have interviewed more than a couple of hundred employees over the years. They are the people who worked there and gave first hand accounts of how the place operated. These were upper management all the way down to bench workers. Incidentally, it was the average bench workers who gave most of the incite to how things operated.
Another example of Winchester "frugality", during the Depression era the plant employeed several people full time just to clean spitoons.
It goes to show as in the case of most large corporations, just because bankruptcy looms it doesn’t necessarily change much. The same was true in the late 1980s, according to employees, when they faced bankruptcy again.

Ok, I’ll get off my “high horse”,

Now during this entire conversation I’ve been providing reasons why I feel a 94/95 hybrid was impractical / improbable but, not impossible for Winchester to produce. Notice I said impractical / improbable but, not impossible.

I don’t doubt their existence; I just doubt that they were Winchester produced. Yes, I have actually seen one …..the barrel is sitting in my shop, Was it factory converted… my opinion ..No, but it did take dismantling the gun to identify its shortcomings.

Hopefully, one of these days, copies of these SN records will turn up, BUT until then all we can do is speculate. Maybe Pauline will turn something up in her vast holdings… if so I calll dibbs