Cool Guns Of The Week - August 18th, 2016

[Corlanes]

This week's theme:

Old-School Cool

Here comes a wall of text!

Despite now being on the forefront of firearms innovation and design, The U.S.'s gun industry was, for a long time, a fairly slow moving thing. While the Europeans were experimenting with pinfires, needle guns, and other early predecessors to modern metallic cartridges, the Americans predominately stuck to their cap and ball and muzzle loading designs, with a few exceptions such as the U.S.-designed, foreign-produced pinfire LeMat revolver. After the introduction of what most of us would recognize as modern metallic ammunition in the mid-1840s, the U.S. firearms industry finally got on-board with the introduction of guns such as the Henry Repeater and the Spencer Carbine.

While guns such as these did see limited use in the U.S. Military, their utility being somewhat hard to deny, the vast majority of soldiers in contemporary conflicts, from the Mexican-American War, to the Civil War, to all the smaller, lesser known actions in between, still carried muzzleloading weapons. When it became very evident an upgrade was needed, the question remained as to what to do with all the old designs floating around the country. The guns featured this week are some of the answers to that question.

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Uberti 1884 Springfield Trapdoor

What is it?

A clever replacement for the assortment of U.S. muzzleloading service guns. In 1863, the Army started looking into phasing out their old arsenal in favor of something more modern. A few attempts were made at converting old muzzleloaders into cartridge guns, with varying degrees of success, but the Civil War prevented any serious efforts from materializing. In the early 1870s, the concept was revisited properly, and a series of tests including designs from quite a few of the big names, both domestic and international, were given a shot. Despite many much more advanced designs being included, the No. 99 Springfield Rifle was eventually declared the winner, owing to it's simplicity, reliability, familiarity relative to percussion cap rifles, and ease of manufacturing using components that were already available. This then became the 1873 Springfield rifle. The concept was pretty simple - larger calibre muskets and rifles had their barrels lined down to .45 calibre, actions cut open, and a simple latching mechanism was installed, allowing the user to open up the top of the gun and insert a cartridge. With this, a skilled user could achieve an impressive 15 round per minute rate of fire.

While many of the early renditions of these rifles were conversions from muzzleloaders, by the time this particular model came into production, the guns were being manufactured from new parts specifically designed for this purpose.

Why is it cool?

- It's a clever idea, and was very effective for it's time.
- These guns are one of the pioneers of American long-distance shooting. While the bullet they fire is slow and heavy by any modern standard, the 405 grain bullet they fired could penetrate 17 inches of pine at 100 yards, and soft targets much, much furthur out there than modern sensibilities would expect from a blackpowder cartridge. If you don't believe me, just ask the buffaloes.
- It's thanks to this rifle that we have the awesome, venerable .45-70 cartridge.

What's it worth?

$1799.99, plus your appropriate provincial sales taxes.
Product code for this is 037084710075

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Uberti 1860 Richards-Mason Conversion

What is it?

While the U.S. Army was busy debating how best to chop up or replace their old muskets, Colt and other cap-and-ball pistol manufacturers were facing the same issues - what to do with the thousands of pistols that were floating around and rapidly becoming obsolete. Smith and Wesson's response was to simply drop the production of cap and balls, sell off the old stock, and introduce the revolutionary Model 1 revolver. Colt's response, which was in many ways far more clever, was to find a way to keep their existing designs relevant. As a result of the innovation of two Colt employees, Charles Richards and William Mason, a patent was filed in 1871 that allowed the simple conversion of any of their old designs to a more modern breech-loading pistol.

Conceptually, it was fairly simple - at the factory, a simple replacement cylinder was put into the frame of older 1851 and 1860 designs, the ramrod removed, and a simple loading game and ejector added to the frame. For existing guns, the conversion was also fairly simple - the back of the cylinder was drilled out, a collar added, and an ejector added. Presto - your gun could now fire self-contained cartridges.

Interestingly, when another Richards-Mason design was introduced in 1873 as the Colt Model P, more commonly known as the Single Action Army, the conversion design still remained very popular. Besides being able to be performed on a gun you already owned by any competent gunsmith, the conversion style and new production open top guns were significantly cheaper than the new 1873 - $7 versus a whopping $20 - bearing in mind an ounce of gold was worth just over $20 in 1873.

While the originals fired a rimfire round of appropriate diameter, this particular gun takes .44 Special, which is maybe a bit easier to find.

Why is it cool?

- Well, all of the above. It represents a very old-school way of thinking - nowadays, it would likely be cheaper and easier to just make a whole new pistol than to convert one over in this manner. Back then, common sense said "waste not, want not".
- .44 Special is in and of itself a pretty neat little round.
- These handle exactly like a cap-and-ball pistol, and have an elegance that just isn't present in 1873 SAAs.

What's it worth?

$700.00, plus your appropriate provincial sales taxes. This particular gun is an unfired demo model, and is in 100% brand new shape.

Product code on this one is X11659

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And as a extra, since you were kind enough to sit through the history lesson:

The Savage Model 1899

What is it?

A bit of a departure from this week's theme. The other guns here are attempts to catch up to cutting edge technology, whereas this rifle is, arguably, far ahead of it's time.

Once opon a time, Savage was famous as more than just a producer of entry-level, inexpensively manufactured firearms. A bit of a late-comer in terms of U.S. brands, Savage was founded in 1894, and was almost instantly renowned as an innovator in firearms design. Unfortunately, most of those innovations somewhat failed to take off in their intended market - their excellent 1895 rifle, designed as a replacement for the Trapdoor featured above, lost out to the borderline obsolete Krag-Jorgensen rifle, surprising pretty much everyone including the designers of the Krag. Similarly, their very advanced entry into the U.S. service pistol contest held in the early 1900s lost out to the simpler, more functional Colt design which would eventually be adopted as the 1911. Perhaps a little less surprising there.

That said, despite these failings, Savage rifles had no problem finding popularity in the civilian market. The model 1899 was no exception, and was for a long time the flagship of the Savage line. A revision of the 1895 rifle, the '99 was a tremendously clever rifle, with features not found on any other contemporary lever action. A shell counter, a cocking indicator, and a rotary magazine stand out as excellent ideas unheard of in the early 1900s, and still not common on rifles today. Arguably the biggest advantage it offered was the capability to chamber proper spitzer bullets, most famously the .300 Savage, which far outclassed other lever gun chamberings available at the time, and would eventually form the basis of the .308 Win.

For such a popular, revolutionary gun, the 99 series eventually met a pretty inglorious end - in 1997, after hanging around for 98 years, production was dropped because the gun had simply become too expensive to produce. Savage, perhaps having learned from their constant failures to get most of their more creative firearms noticed, officially became a producer of mostly unremarkable, simple rifles.

Why is it cool?
- Rotary magazines, shell counters, cocking indicators. Really, up until pretty recently, no other common rifle featured this sort of stuff.
- While most other U.S. companies were screwing around with updating blackpowder cartridges to smokeless loadings, the 99 was coming out in pretty remarkable chamberings. Besides the .300 Savage, it was also the first rifle available in .250 Savage - the first cartridge to break 3000 fps.
- These were a rare exception in the gun world as having never gained a bad reputation throughout it's production life. Guns such as the Winchester 94, Marlin 336, etc. may still be produced, and have been around just as long as the 99 was, but have you ever heard anyone legitimately complain about their 1980 production 99 being inferior to a pre-64 model or one built after a factory got relocated?
- The fact that these aren't horribly collectable means that the prices they usually go for are within the reach of most of us.

What's it worth?

$600, plus your appropriate provincial sales tax. This gun is a .300 Savage 1970s production model, but we also have a much older 1909 .30-30 version here for $250. It fires, but needs a bit of work to be considered "safe".

The product codes are 655013 and GUN 1949, respectively

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That's it for this week. As always, buy one of these rifles, and receive a knickknack!

If anyone has any suggestions for a theme they'd like to see, please comment below, and I'll see if I can oblige.