Does anyone know why like 3/4ths of 1866 winchester rifles sold were carbines where as 2/3rds of winchester 1873 rifles sold were rifles and 1/3rd were carbines? they were sold concurrently for a while, the 1866 was sold from 1866-1899 and the 1873 was old from 1873 until like the 1920s. my best guess is that since the 1866 was cheaper and used cheaper materials it filtered out to the west/poorer people more and they actually carried the damn thing so they preferred carbines whereas the 1873 had a much better marketing campaign>the rifle that won the westeven though the west was largely settled by then with only like 1 major injun victory at bighorn after 1873 and a lot of the notable outlaws/gun fighters dead before 1880.So because the 1873 had a much better marketing campaign and was more expensive it was sold more to guys back east who had money who wanted nice fancy rifles and weren't necessarily using them for work or to subsistence hunt like the pioneers were.apparently the 1892s were also 2/3rds rifles to carbines, which I was not expecting because modern hunting lever guns are almost always carbines and you started to see more hunting oriented design choices like button mags after 1900 before the bolt action surplus market displaced the lever guns
>posting gun questions on the >look at this planeboard
>>64719688Questions? Looks more like unsourced schizoid rambing from someone who can't be bothered to read even the most basic sources on the topic to me.
>>64720228looks like you're a homo to me
I have also wondered this, and thought about the same things you have, so heres my take. ALOT of 66s went to Mexico and frontier regions, areas where trains and coach lines hadnt fully reached yet, and a carbine handles better on a horse. Now people used the 66 for deer, but the 73 was the go to deer rifle for anyone who wanted more than a shotgun prior to the 94. With deer in mind, recall the huge amount of Civil War surplus going out as well that make perfect deer rifles. Now with the barrels getting shorter through the 20th century, I think that is both velocity based, with ammo getting better as time goes on, and the need for barrel length being less than people used to assume it would need to be. If you read old American Rifleman from like the 20s they will be saying things like "a 30-06 is basically useless in a barrel shorter than 24 inches, but you should really try for 26." This was a lot of off the head rambling, but yeah I think the 66 carbine vs the 73 rifle is kinda like an AK vs AR situation. This is entirely going off just contextual speculation based on things ive read here and there, but Id love if we could somehow find era sources explaining why this was the case
>>64720261>omehow find era sources explaining why this was the caseYou act like it's impossible to read old books, magazines and newspapers. Yet, these things are easily researched. Now I know that doing the job most effectively requires actually getting your ass out of the chair and to a physical library, but you can at least start by searching online.
>>64720306I just talked about reading about barrel length in American Rifleman issues from the 20s, I read a ton of old books and magazines and newspapers about all kinds of old gun stuff, I just have never seen OPs very specific question about the 66 vs the 73 answered in any of them
>>64720306keep seething, dutch homo>>64720261>>64720315the other major benefit of barrel length that went away was sight radius which isn't a thing now that most durr guns are scoped anyway. I'm really surprised by the 1892 also being long barreled. I was going to chalk it up to the 73 being a rich fag gun but a million 92s were sold and they ended up being farm guns. modern marlin 94s, 336s and winchester 94s are almost always carbines all of the ruger stuff and most if not all of the henry stuff has carbine length barrels even if they put rifle barrel caps on the handguards
>>64720343That is a good point with the scopes, and I think part of the move to carbines in the 20th century is cause the niche of a longer ranged lever action got overshadowed by bolt actions. Like if its 1950 and you need a longer range high velocity round, you end up would end up with a 24" bolt action, but if you needed something to use in a tree stand in the close dense woods or to sit in the saddle scabbard on a ranch, a lever action carbine is what you would lean to. So the niche that a long barreled lever action used to fill got dominated by bolt actions
I am looking at lever guns in .357, does 20 inch barrel have any advantage over 16 inch one?
>>64722591Sight radius and capacity should be better. Handling might feel better depending what you're doing. Don't expect a velocity benefit.
>>64722591for what purpose?
>>64726271Alright, I think I’ll go with the 20 inch then>>64726909Cowboy larping
>>64726271what is with velocities dipping down at 17"also why would you even have a 17" barrel
>>64718640>why like 3/4ths of 1866 winchester rifles sold were carbines where as 2/3rds of winchester 1873 rifles sold were rifles and 1/3rd were carbines?It's like, a math thing. It's "advanced fractional computing", very high level. I'm not sure how they did it without computers?
>>64731907the 1866, 1873 and 1892 are all basically the same gun. all they did with the 1866 was make the receiver out of iron and later steel and change the cartridge from .44 rimfire to .44 center fire and that's the 1873 and the 1892, despite being a different action, is a replacement for the 1873 being in the same .44-40, .38-40 and .32-20 cartridges so it's weird that the preference flipped from carbine to rifle
>>64718640Well, maybe by the time the '73 came around everyone who wanted a carbine already had a '66, so you had a different buyer profile
>>64731874They use a thompson center and cut the barrel down one inch at a time for science. Maybe they did the 17” barrel test on a cold morning or something.>>64722591Just capacity and sight radius as the other anon said, but it will always be a shorter range rifle because it’s using pistol ammo, so the lighter weight and shorter length of the 16” could be more useful. As a percentage of the muzzle energy, at 100y that .357 bullet is going to lose a lot more energy than a rifle bullet will at 100y. But hitting someone with a lever .357 at 100y is about the same energy as hitting them with a revolver .357 at a couple yards so it’s not nothing though.
"The rifle that won the west" is just a tagline, it's like when people say the 1911 "won 2 world wars" like nobody actually thinks that's the case
>>64726271How about for .45 colt or .44-40?
