Lever action

A Winchester Rifle, circa 1894

File:Winchester Model 1873 Short Rifle 1495.jpg

A Winchester Rifle, circa 1873

A lever-action is a type of firearm which uses a lever located around the trigger guard area (often including the trigger guard itself) to load fresh cartridges into the chamber of the barrel when the lever is cranked. One of the most famous lever-action firearm is undoubtedly the Winchester rifle, but many manufacturers produce lever-action rifles. While the term lever-action generally implies a repeating firearm, it is also sometimes applied to a variety of single-shot actions that use a lever for cycling, such as the Martini-Henry or the falling-block action.

History

The first significant lever-action design was the Spencer repeating rifle. The design was completed by Christopher Spencer in 1860 and was a magazine-fed lever-operated breechloader rifle. It was fed from a removable seven-round tube magazine, enabling the rounds to be fired one after another, and which, when emptied, could be exchanged for another. It was adopted by the United States and used during the American Civil War, with over 20,000 made. This marked the first adoption of a removable-magazine-fed infantry-and-cavalry rifle by any country.

Unlike later designs, operating the Spencer's lever only served to unlock the falling-block action and load a new cartridge from the magazine; it did not cock the hammer, and thus the hammer had to be cocked after the lever was operated to prepare the rifle to fire. The Henry rifle, produced by Oliver Winchester in 1860, used a centrally-located hammer rather than the offset hammer typical of muzzleloading rifles, and this hammer was cocked by the rearward movement of the Henry's bolt. The Henry also placed the magazine under the barrel, rather than in the buttstock, a trend followed by most tubular magazines since.

John Marlin, founder of Marlin Firearms Company, New Haven, Connecticut, introduced Marlin's first lever-action repeating rifle as the Model 1881. Its successor was the Marlin Model 1894.

By the 1890s, lever-actions had evolved into a form that would last for over a century. Both Marlin and Winchester released new model lever-action rifles in 1894. The Marlin rifle is still in production. (Production of the Winchester 94 ceased in 2006.) The same year fledgling Savage Arms Company was put on a solid financial footing with the development of it's popular hammerless Savage Model 99 lever action sporting rifle, also of .30 caliber. The former two models, and various copies of them, make up the bulk of the lever-action rifles made, while the somewhat odd .303 Savage cartridge gradually erroded the Model 99's popularity and production was eventually abandoned.

While externally similar, the Marlin and Winchester rifles are quite different internally, as the Marlin has a single-stage lever action, and the Winchester has a double-stage. The double-stage action is easily seen when the Winchester's lever is operated, as first the entire trigger group drops down, unlocking the bolt, and then the bolt is moved rearward to eject the fired cartridge.

Disadvantages

While lever-action rifles were popular with civilians, they were not widely accepted by the military. One significant reason for this was that it is harder to fire a lever-action from the prone position than straight-pull or bolt-action rifles. From other positions, they were faster than either to reload, but the fact that they could not easily be fired from cover resulted in a gradual phase-out from military use in the early 1900s. Lever-actions are also generally fed from a tubular magazine, which for the most part limits the ammunition that can be used to round nose bullet designs. Pointed, centerfire bullets, for example, can cause explosions in a tubular magazine because the point of each bullet rests on the primer of the next cartridge in the magazine. The tubular magazine also negatively impacts the harmonics of the barrel, which limits the potential accuracy of the rifle (see accurize). Because a tubular magazine under the barrel pushes the center of gravity forward, it can alter the balance of the rifle in ways undesirable to some shooters.

Due to the higher rate of fire than bolt-action rifles, lever-actions have remained popular to this day for civilian rifles, especially those for short- and medium-range hunting. Sturm, Ruger introduced a number of new lever-action designs in the 1990s. That is unusual because most lever action designs date back to before World War II, when reliable semi-automatic rifles became widely available. There are also a number of lever-action shotguns, though these are far less common than the popular pump-action.

Calibers

Most lever-action designs are not as strong as the bolt-action design, so lever-action rifles are generally found in low- and medium-pressure cartridges, although the Marlin Model 1894 is available in three high-pressure magnum calibers. The most common caliber is by far the .30-30, which was introduced by Winchester with the Model, 1894. Other common calibers, some of which are still available in the Marlin Model 1894, are the .38 Special/.357 Magnum, .44 Special/.44 Magnum, .41 Magnum, .45-70, .32-20 Winchester, and .22 caliber rimfire. Lever-action shotguns such as the Winchester Model 1887 and Model 1901 were available up to 10 gauge, and the current Winchester Model 1894 shotgun is available in .410 bore. Lever action designs that use stronger, rotary locking bolts, such as the Browning BLR, are usually fed from box magazines and use modern bolt action rimless calibers, and are not limited to round nose bullet designs.

See also

• Spencer repeating rifle
• Winchester rifle
• Antique guns