Just a couple of thoughts:

I’ve got a Winchester in house factory parts breakdown document dated 1900; it lists all the parts for their guns. Winchester list two lengths of carbine forends for the 1894, one for standard carbines and the second for carbines with barrels 16 inch or shorter. It also lists two separate rear barrel bands; again the cut off line is 16 inches.

If, what Renneberg states is true; that Winchester used the same distance from the receiver to locate the markings; and the carbine pictured has a standard length forend; then clearly Winchester put the address in the wrong place.

Serial no. 119046. Here is a picture of the barrel marking:

http://s234.photobucket.com/user/RickInOregon/media/TopBarrelInscription.jpg.html

One minor distinction between the two 18" carbines: the one on GunBroker has a 1/2 magazine (3 shell capacity) and mine is a button magazine that will only hold 2 shells. They might have been ordered that way thus accounting for the variance in forearm length???????

The fore end on Rick’s looks shorter and therefore the extent of the exposed magazine looks similar to the longer "half magazine" and long fore end wood.

Michael

Ohlode
Good questions; I will try and answer to the best of my knowledge.

Winchester’s barrel making sequence was fairly rigid and lock step. I have copies of Winchester’s sequence of operations, fairly detailed and in-depth; they even specify when to clean the bore between operations, with lots of inspections during the process.

As to barrel address, yes there are drawings detailing the exact location of the barrel address.

It’s very unlikely that Winchester would cut down finished barrels to fill and order, especially a carbine barrel. Winchester normally roll marked the barrels and gave the barrel a final polish before it was sent to the browning department, no machining was done after the roll marks were applied; except for possible true up of the muzzle/crown.

Cutting down a carbine barrel from the rear (breech end) is very unlikely, as the sight location would be way off, also the 94 carbine barrel has 3 distinct tapers, if the start and end of those tapers are off by more than a few thou.. the wood, barrel bands etc will not fit correctly.

Winchester could have shortened a barrel form the muzzle end, but with the amount of time it would take with alignment, set up etc would be quicker/easier to make a new barrel. And I suspect (without a barrel in front of me) that lopping off two inches from the muzzle would put the cut dead center of the front sight.

On early carbines the front sight was dovetailed into the barrel with a very shallow dovetail, then silver brazed into place. Later carbines the front sight was forged into place.

I’m gonna disagree with Rick a bit, my guess as to the carbine on GB is that the carbine originally had the shorter forend on it; as the placement of the address is correct for the short forend. Then, sometime in its life the forend was replaced with the longer forend.

I sincerely doubt that Winchester would have let the carbine leave the factory that way; they were pretty anal about not covering up the barrel address.

A quick look under the forend wood will tell the story.

My thoughts are that if the original short FE got busted etc… where are you going to find a replacement? Standard length Forends are a dime a dozen but not a shorty.

I wouldn’t mind having an 18 incher since I don’t have one yet, but I think you need to pick it up and collect the whole set, only 10 more to go 😀

besides this one is famous…it’s been in a book and everything.