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Like many of you, I am fascinated by all things Winchester. I have a special fondness for vintage Winchester sights. The Winchester Express sights (front and back) first showed up in the November 1887 catalog. The rear three leaf Express sights are fairly common on the secondary market. Not so the Express front sight. I owned a late production 1876 Express rifle that had Express front and rear sights installed years ago. It’s the only rifle I have ever owned that had the Express front sight.
The Express front sight appears to be a close approximation to Lyman’s #3 sight which made its commercial introduction first. Winchester hated to give up market share, so perhaps they introduced their own version in hopes of siphoning off some sales from Lyman. Winchester did list the “Lyman Ivory Front Sight” in their late 1880’s catalogs. It was priced at $1.00 while the Winchester Express front sight was listed at 50 cents.
What do you think? Was Winchester attempting to take some of Lyman’s market share?
Winchester Express sight and Lyman #3:
I call myself a collector as it sounds better than hoarder
Since the Winchester sight used a brass bead rather than ivory, I wouldn’t say it was a direct imitation of the #3. Lyman was the first sight maker to feature ivory beads, but their patent wouldn’t have prevented other makers from using ivory in some different configuration. I’ve always wondered what technology was used to whittle down quickly & economically the thousands of tiny ivory beads & posts required for these sights.
As a side note the earliest Lyman #3 sights do not say Lyman on them. But there is a Patent date underneath. It looked 5 years to find one of these for a gun that lettered with one that would be date appropriate. Patent Oct 9 85.
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