Lost Model 70 Factory Records|Winchester Rifles|Forum|Winchester Collector

Justin,

I believe that you are not fully aware of the actual facts, and I will emphatically state that the Model 70 is definitely not “somewhat unique, since detailed records seem to exist for most other Winchester models.”  The opposite is actually much more accurate.

The factory warehouse ledger records only survive up to the year 1907 (for all of the models that were in production prior to that time) with limited exception.  There are a very limited few models where the records still exist beyond 1907 (the Models 1873, 1885, and 1886), but there are far more models that do not have any records surviving at all. 

Beginning mid-year 1907, Winchester stopped using the old style ledger books and began recording each serial number on an individual index card.  Winchester employee Edwin Pugsli had the original ledger book records moved to a different location, and that is ultimately what saved them from destruction. 

It is not just the Model 70 records that were destroyed (not lost).  Winchester intentionally burned them to free up space in their storage buildings.  There were far more records that were destroyed than those that were saved… e.g. for the Model 1894, only the first 353,999 records were spared, with the remaining 2,246,012 pre-1964 records destroyed (burned).  There are several dozen models that have no surviving records at all, beginning with the Model 1910, and all models after it, e.g. the models 1911, 1912/12, 20, 36, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43, 47, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 60A, 61, 62/62A, 63, 64, 65, 67/67A, 68, 69/69A, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, and 77.  Without adding all of the production numbers up, I would estimate that fewer than 10% of the production records survive today.

Bert

Lou,

I am of the very positive belief that factory records did exist for the Model 70 that specified exactly what each individual serial number was built & shipped as. I can see no logical reason why Winchester would not have kept the same records for the Model 70 that they maintained for all other models.

Bert

Louis Luttrell said
Hi Bert-

Thanks for the insight.  Do you happen to know how long the index card system implemented on 1907 was used?  Did it, or something like it, persist all the way up into the computer age, or did the factory go from bound ledgers to index cards to something else?

Shame that there are not at least one or two examples in existence of what these records looked like (for the M70 or any other model from the 1940s and 1950s).  Maybe there are a couple lying around, even though the bulk of these records were systematically destroyed?  It would just be interesting to see what they looked like.

Best,

Lou  

Lou,

While I do not know what the exact answer to your question is, I highly suspect that the index cards were used up to at least 1964, and more than likely well into the 1980s.  Computerization of records did not begin as a common practice until the late 1980s, which was nearly a decade after Winchester got out of the firearms manufacturing business.  Somewhere in my vast pile of research material, I have images of Model 1873 and Model 1886 index card records.

Bert