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Hello everyone,
I am new to this Forum. I am more of an opportunistic accumulator than a collector. But I really like Winders and shoot them almost every week.
My question is about half-stock Winders and their origin. Are they factory products? If not, what is their origin? & how common are they? I have seen or seen photos of 3 in 50 years of Windering. I have one, SN above 136,000, with what looks to be an original short fore-end, with the normal red finish on the stock.
Also on this rifle, the blue is not what one normally sees on a Winder. But if you put it next to a Winchester-made 1917 Enfield, the finishes are the same.
As a long-time Winder addict, my observations are that there are 3 types of Third Model Winders:
The first type is one that is everything a person would expect from a commercial Winchester product.
And then there are Winders that probably passed a gov’t acceptance inspection in the hectic days of 1918 and were used intensively. To me, these always seem a little rattly and sometimes don’t shoot as accurately as others. I think of these as a second type, although maybe they were simply "rode hard & put up wet".
And there seems (to me) to be a third type of Winder, usually with very high SN, that I describe as being put together from parts in 1919-1920, when Winchester was closing out the Single Shot and getting rid of the Winders and parts that they had bought back from the Gov’t at scrap steel prices. To me, these rifles always feel a bit tight & rough, especially when compared with what we usually expect of a Winchester.
My apologies for no photos. I am new to digital photography & the whole business of posting photos on the web is more than I can cope with today.
Waterman
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Hello waterman,
It appears that you are asking about the Third variation (Model 87) Winder Muskets. I have done an extensive amount of research on them over the past 30+ years, and several years ago I wrote an article that covers all three of the Model 1885 Winder Musket variations (published in the "Winchester Collector" magazine).
In regards to the half-stocked Third variation Winders, they were not built that way by Winchester. The NRA Junior Rifle Corps bought several hundred of them, and converted them to the half-stock configuration after the fact. There are also a good number of them out there that were converted (cut-down) by individual owners (I have one of them)
The production period for the Third variation Winder Musket was from January of 1918, to June of 1920 (when regular production of the Model 1885 Single-shot ceased). The observed serial number range is from 121,800 – 139,700, but early in production, a fair number of them were made using leftover high-wall frames in the 100,000 –109,000 serial number range. There were several hundred additional guns assembled up through late 1923, when Winchester finally ceased assembling them from remaining parts on hand, and sold all of the remaining parts to R.F. Sedgley of Philadelphia, PA.
In regards to the military contracts, the U.S. Government sales include:
2,000 per contract 16363 of December 5, 1917
6,289 per contract P3745-1549Sa of May 15, 1918
2,000 per contract P10430-1903Sa of June 21, 1918
1,000 per contract P11979-2051Sa of July 16, 1918
All told, my estimate is that Winchester manufactured somewhere between 14,000 – 15,000 of the Third variation Winder Muskets. Thus far, I have surveyed 1,135 of them, and of that number, (18) of them have the shortened forend stock. I am always looking to add more of them to my research survey.
Bert – [email protected]
WACA Historian & Board of Director Member #6571L
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