Older Gun With Newer Ammo: A Centerfire Winchester 1866
Forgotten Weapons
•
6m 46s
The Winchester 1866 was chambered for the .44 Henry rimfire cartridge, like the Henry rifle before it. Before too long, however, centerfire ammunition began to take over as the best and most common type of cartridge. The Model 1866 continued to sell for decades, but some buyers wanted to use centerfire ammunition in them. A centerfire version of the .44 Henry was developed, and conversions of the 1866 were done by both the Winchester factory and professional gunsmiths. Mechanically, the change was quite simple; just replacing the two rimfire firing pins with a single central one, and replacing the bolt face with an insert with a hole for that new firing pin.
Winchester factory example are typically found in the 140,000 serial number range and later. The best-documented batch was a sale of 1,020 centerfire 1866 rifles to Brazil in 1891, with numbers in the 167,000-169,000 range.
Up Next in Forgotten Weapons
-
Beretta 38/42 at the Range
The pre-war Beretta Model 38A was a magnificent SMG, but it included a fair number of fancy elements that would prove to costly to justify once wartime production needs grew. Beretta would simplify the design progressively over the course of the war. What we have today is a Model 38/42 with a muc...
-
Beretta 38/42: Simplified But Still E...
The Beretta Model 38A was an outstanding SMG at the beginning of World War Two, loaded with features and very easy to shoot. However, it was expensive and complex to produce, and pressures of war forced Beretta to progressively simplify its construction. This happened incrementally, but the most ...
-
Water-Cooled .50s: The US Navy Mk22 P...
In 1942, the US Navy adopted the Mk22 Pedestal mount, which fitted a pair of water-cooled Browning M2 machine guns (one left-hand feed and one right-hand). It was used for antiaircraft use primarily, and was also adopted by the Army as the M46 in 1943. The mount was an update to the previous sing...
