.45 Colt Lever Rifles

N

Nightcrawler

New member
The Lever Rifle has been around for a good, long time. The .45 Colt catridge has been around since the 1870s. So, how come no one made a lever rifle in .45 Colt until the what, 1980s? I don't get it. .44-40 stopped being a common cartridge when? I mean, was there a time when one couldn't get a new production lever carbine in a revolver cartridge? When did they start making lever carbines in .44 Magnum and .357 Magnum?

Somebody fill me in, please.
 
I could be wrong about this but I'll take a stabe at it. It seems like there were extraction problems with 45 colt due to rim width. The 44-40, 32-20 and other cartridges of the day had wider rims. The current flood of lever action rifles chambered for pistol cartridges were mainly produced for cowboy action shooting. I'm not sure how they solved the earlier extraction problems.
 
Modern .45 Colt brass has a slightly different rim design. This was done for other reasons, but also solved the lever gun problem.

Rifles chambered in .38 Special appeared in the late 60's early 70's. The .357 came out in the mid to late 70's. The .44 Mag appeared in the late 70's early 80's. I'm not sure, but I think the M92 Rossi was the first .44 Mag, followed by the Browning M92.
 
The rim was certainly a factor, but in large part it was the fact that Winchester came up with the .44-40 and .38-40 rounds, and chambered their rifles in that.

Colt ended up chambering the .44-40 to capitalize on sales to those who wanted a handgun and rifle chambered for the same round.

Market share and position rules the roost, even back then.
 
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