Lever-action
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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". The most famous of such lever-action firearms is the Winchester rifle, but many manufacturers produce lever-action rifles. See Martini-Henry for a description of the mechanism of a breech-loading lever-action.
Both Marlin and Winchester have a model 1894 lever action rifle, as both manufacturers released them in that year. The Marlin has a single stage lever action, and the Winchester has a double stage. This is hard to describe, but is easy to notice when the two are compared.
A very signigicant 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. The firing system had to be independently primed, a lever had to be cocked, and it used copper rimfire cartridges. It was fed from a removalable 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 rifle by any country.
Lever-action rifles were popular, but less so among the military because they were harder to fire from the prone position than straight pull or bolt-action rifles. From other positions they were faster then either to reload, but they they were gradually phased out in the early 1900s.
They have remained popular for civilian rifles up to the present, and there are also many lever-action shotguns.
Common calibres are .38 Special/.357 Magnum, .44 Special/.44 Magnum and .45-70, and some shotguns can be found with a lever action, as seen used by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
External links
Lever-action rifle manufacturers
- Winchester Rifles (http://www.winchester-guns.com/homepage/index.asp)
- Marlin Rifles (http://www.marlinfirearms.com)
- Henry Rifles (http://www.henryrepeating.com)
- Uberti Rifles (http://www.uberti.com)
- Photos and information about current production Marlin lever-action rifles (http://www.gunshopfinder.com/marlinrifles.html)