Lever Gun Series: Why not the 1860 Spencer?

thank you for tuning in to another percent of in range this is I think officially the start of the what if lever gun project yeah we had one video before this about how to convert 45 670 brass and a forty five sixty but that was more on the technical side this is really the first time we're putting some of these lever guns in action right and when we did our first video just you know giving out that question what if what if the army had decided to adopt lever-action rifles instead of sticking with the trapdoor Springfield until it finally adopted the Krag yep which is interesting because there were repeaters of the time that were available at the same time actually earlier even that they sort of neglected except for the 1860 Spencer and we put that video out tons of comments came in because I was talking about the Henry why not the Spencer why not the Spencer the Spencer was a lever action why not the Spencer it's a valid question it is a valid question and I think the answer that is I think the people asking that question at least for the most part have never used a Spencer if I could reach through the screen and hand you this and say just cycle this a couple times the question would be immediately oh the minute you attended the minute you attempt to use the Spencer you're gonna realize why not the Spencer but this video today is we're going to demonstrate why not the Spencer right so the Spencer is going to be out of this conversation after this video yeah but we're gonna demonstrate both guns we're gonna have these loaded to capacity you got one with seven rounds yep this actually holds 13 now the original 1860 Henry held 15 plus 1 this is converted to 45 colt now by modern parlance 45 long colt this is an original Willis is a reproduction by the henry USA company they make a beautiful rifle this thing looks like art honestly with fire blue and brass that looks like a mirror in fact I can see myself in it yeah if you want the nicest in terms of quality of quality control version of a Henry reproduction on the market these guys are hit they are magnificent the Italians make them as well a birdie and such but they're really faithful replicas of the original design the toggle link loading from the front it only holds 13 instead of 15 and it's in 45 colt but what and the reason for that is 45 colt is a substantially longer cartridge than the original 44 Henry however 44 Henry was only avail only made as a rimfire cartridge well virtually they went to Center fire at one point but really 44 Henry was a rimfire cart and so that's not a viable option today because nobody makes that cartridge but a lot of people make 45 colt for the Cowboy Action community and so it was a natural conversion to just make a Henry and 45 colt and you only lose two rounds of magazine capacity so it's not really a big deal yeah now the original Spencer was 56 56 the designations are strange but it's a 350 grand bullet at roughly 1,200 feet per second forty-four Henry was a 200 grand bullet at roughly 1,200 feet per second now you have a bullet mass change but similar velocity right this has more energy no doubt about it's a bigger bullet with more mass which is a good part of why the US military during the Civil War and after decided to adopt these right and not those now the Spencer just like the Henry eventually became a centerfire cartridge and what we're using today is 5650 ballistically a dental identical to the original 56 56 and I loaded all this ammunition so we would have that we have matched velocities today we've got a 300 50 grand bullet a roughly 1150 1200 we've got a 200 green bullet even though it's in a 45 long colt case at 1200 so we're matching the original ballistics of these guns I've lost two rounds of capacity you have original capacity but we want to demonstrate today is not just that but how can we run these guns at speed yeah and what's the difference between them we've got a target at 25 yards this is not a marksman trim drill and you don't want to marksmanship drill with dispenser because the sights are apart terrible atrocious disgusting imaginable imagine a really shallow expressive V with a post and a little tiny notch at the bottom all but useless there is actually a notch in there there is good luck finding it very much so the sights on this RAK like there's a new notch and a post in the front if you've ever seen a sight picture except for sight radius of course really the same sight picture yeah much easier to get a citation kind of way ahead of its time in that regard too really yeah so my argument is the Henry will absolutely devastate the Spencer and it's the reason we're going with the winchester style of guns instead of the spencer type of heaters going on in the water project but let's get to some shooting and demonstrate this enough hypothesis let's find out for real yeah let's do it right seven these are big chunky rounds two five six and seven you can fit like ten probably in this tube but if you do that you will then not be able to actually get the follower all the way here and locked which will be a problem go all right follow us locked in place I've got a timer and how are we starting this little ready empty chamber all right hammer down empty chamber are you ready yep stand by [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] all right seven hits all good hits yeah 25 yards 30 1.04 31 seconds 31.0 for good luck beating that with a Henry alright so just to make this equal I have seven rounds here and I'm gonna load the Henry there Henry loads differently you bring the follower up turn this to the side then tilt the gun so you're out dropping them on the primer and stick seven rounds on the tube dropping one on the ground which is normal that is a legit field goof to make lots of live rounds on Little Bighorn pick up the round put it in then do not drop the follower under spring pressure lower it slowly yep we now have seven rounds we're gonna run the same exact drill how fast can I get seven rounds on target alright don't forget your Henry hop right alright shooter ready yeah stand by [Music] all right I had to move the timer up to actually get the report eight point eight three seconds eight seconds and you were 31 yeah that is a dramatic difference approximately 1/4 the time all right so clearly the Henry just whaled on the Spencer however I can already hear people commenting that you know Carl you spent how many years in Cowboy Action Shooting like 10 some way back yeah and you've got the whole getup yeah that obviously is going to make you faster than me with a cowboy hat and jeans oh this is a force multiplier no doubt and a cool t-shirt but still so I think people are gonna want to see well am i incompetent or is the Spencer slow so let's have you shoot seven rounds on that target on the timer it and see how it goes I just put seven rounds in the tube all right you ready ready [Music] alright twenty three point seven five twenty three point seven five and I was what the Henry was eight so you at the Henry are four times faster than me with the Spencer you at the Henry are three times faster than you at this time and that was running that quite honestly as fast as I could yeah claim forcefully you saw in there some of the hiccups that are endemic to the Spencer that just don't happen on Henry no I mean every gun is capable of holding malfunctions those are not malfunctions it's just that this action lends itself to some bobbling right that we'll get into in just a few minutes okay yeah let's take a closer look at that all right to load this thing we're gonna pull the follower over 90 degrees pull it out and I'm just gonna put three rounds in this to demonstrate how it works one two got three then the follower has a spring-loaded plunger the original hole Spencer's did not have plastic that's okay that's gonna go in like that and then there is a little writ a little cutaway here you have to get that engaged with the latch on the inside of the butt here because if you don't push it in far enough it's really easy to be able to over rotate it and then you don't actually have this thing locked in place and you won't have adequate spring tension to feed so we want it in press down that's locked in place now start by cocking the hammer when I open the action you're going to get a little hook right there that is the extractor so the cartridge doesn't actually begin to extract until this point in the cycle you can see how far open lever already is and this little forked piece has dropped down and it just acts as a ramp that the cartridge is going to have to slide up in order to get out of the action so that hook pulls it all the way back to there there's no separate ejector normally you would have one mechanical feature to pull the cartridge out and then something else to give it a good kick out of the action on the Spencer your extractor is also your ejector and that's why it has a really weak extraction to it or ejection to it and while you basically have to bring this gun up and let gravity help pop cases out of the gun now once we've got it all the way open like this we're going to get a new cartridge released from the magazine which is down inside the buttstock you can see it right there under this little forked lever this forked piece now serves the second function preventing that cartridge from falling out because of gravity and as I close the bolt that cartridge is going to be pushed up and by the breech face there it snaps into alignment with the chamber if it's not quite aligned right you'll have to jiggle with it a little bit and then our breech face is right down in here pushing on the cartridge well this is spring-loaded Fork maintains control on it there it's popped out of control of this and now the breech closes lifts up and locks in place and you're ready to fire you can see right there it just it's not very energetic extraction even when I open the lever pretty forcefully it just kind of slides it off the back of the wrist let's go through how the Henry functions now to do this properly you actually close the action and lower the hammer on an empty chamber you could put a round in the chamber if you wanted to plus one but by having the lifter in line with the magazine when you put the first round and it'll actually drop on to the lifter which gives you one extra round retract the follower all the way up and turn this that way now this is under a lot of spring pressure at this point we're gonna get into that in a moment then you slowly drop rounds into the magazine you don't want to drop them into the force of gravity rimfire not as much but would Center fire if you have a high primer these rounds striking on top of one another actually could detonate so you lower them in at a relatively shallow angle and I'm not loading this to full capacity only three rounds so here's another thing that's extremely important when you turn this do not let this lower under its spring pressure this will fall down under a lot of force strike the cartridges and actually could detonate them so you want to lower this under hand pressure like this I think it's important to point out that it can detonate them with flat fat flat bullets and properly seated primers just the impact from that can set them off not as much with rimfire but we're not dealing with rimfire any centerfire cartridge lower this under hand pressure softly onto the tip of the first cartridge in the magazine this was remediated with the 1866 with the Kingsgate loading patent but we're not dealing with that now let's go ahead and show how this actually works so right now the bolt is closed on an empty chamber and the lifter is down in its retracted position hammer is uncocked as I move the lever you will see that the bolt retracts also cocking the hammer and you'll see that the lifter lifted around in line with the chamber now when I close the lever the bolt will actually go into battery and the lifter will drop down and another round is slid from the magazine on to the lifter so you have a round in the chamber one round on the lifter another round in the magazine now if I were to fire the gun that would drop the hammer I'm not going to you however when I run the lever again you'll see that the lifter now also acts as the ejector quite forcefully based on the leverage I have with the actual lever itself realigning a cartridge with the chamber closing the bolt lifter drops cycle it again same thing until you're empty now this is a centerfire version this firing pin fires obviously a centerfire a firing pin for a centerfire cartridge the original Henry was rimfire and actually had two firing pins and it's struck on both sides of the rim to his sure detonation was an interesting feature of the 1860 Henry in the 66 and they went away with that when they got away from rimfire obviously but senator fire we don't have that going on here all right so in the first drill I imagine your capacity of seven rounds right we just wanted to demonstrate how fast could each gun be now what you're gonna do is reverse this and you're gonna match my capacity of 13 rounds oh okay so the original Henry was 15 I'm down to 13 because it's a slightly different cartridge but here's the reality I will have to reload because of the higher capacity magazine you're gonna have to you've got seven and you're gonna have to put rounds it yep I'm have to load another six now in theory there was a faster way for your Spencer which were these Blakeslee tubes yeah aluminum tubes or metal tubes aluminum steel at the time that it would hold seven rounds and you pull it out of this box and just dump them in the butt basically just like a three gun shotgun speedloader dude today kind of similar now these never saw a lot of real-world use no they really didn't yeah most people kept their ammunition in a canvas bag or something on their on their body this is obviously a Czech bread bag but here's the deal a canvas sack was certainly period-correct in terms of it being something they had available to them and I didn't have a leather bag but they would have in a sack like this just pull ammunition out or maybe a little cartridge box and load from that these Blakesley tubes are an idea that never really manifested very well I'm not sure why until we tried to use them today they're fairly thin metal and some of them are a little bent or warped and when you started putting cartridges in here you get four in here me well one of them I can get I think three rounds in all right yep oh that stopped about there - that's it so we got three in here and it's kind of stuck and by the way if I jam them down in there they'll never come back out no they need to follow up on the force of gravity right which okay now they did but that is not how you could reload the gun and I'm sure that that was one of the reasons that these very thin sheet metal tubes were very fragile yeah they probably weren't reliable enough and not one of these six not one was usable today right we should point out this is a reproduction kit obviously I bought it through buffalo arms and that that one that you pulled out by random was the best one the others I generally can't even get a single round in - yeah that one I can't get one in that one jams right there so if you plan to shoot a Spencer with Blakeslee tubes you will need to get some sort of like solid bar the size of a 56 Spencer case head and straighten these things honestly it's kind of swage it out a little bit ya know now that's not to say that the originals had that problem right out of the box but the minute you use these you can actually smush these with your fingers easily it's like a soda can yeah very easy to crush and I think that a probably reliability was one of the challenges and guys just went back to ye old campus sack so I'm gonna get off the camera here I'm gonna run the timer and you're gonna get 13 hits on that 25 yard target already we're using the shot timer on this we are the little sand trickling no shot timer go to low ready and let me know all right are you ready yep stand by [Music] [Music] alright there's no good place to put that 79.1 8 it's actually not too terrible no not compared to a muzzleloader right yeah yeah for all the problems with this I'd much rather have this than a muzzle loader and honestly I felt reasonably smooth to me that is about as good as I think it would get yeah let's move on to the Henry all right you really think you can beat that I think I can spray it on I think it's possible now let's maybe what's interesting about this people are also gonna ask why are you not using a cartridge bill yeah now there's actually a reason for that do a little research on this cartridge belts didn't exist now let's think about this rim are actual metallic cartridges became a thing right at the end of the Civil War don't really became something in the field yeah and so bags and cartridge boxes were the norm people use what they were used to but as early as 1860 162 you start seeing cartridge belt which is essentially a piece of leather or cloth with little loops hold your ammunition yeah classic movies however those are just as rare or quite almost as rare as those Blakeslee tubes we're not really the thing until the 1870s when metallic cartridges became far more common an actual 44 henry became chambered in pistols as well as rifles and so guys in the field found that to be a very convenient way to keep their ammunition on them that's why I'm not using one today to be period-correct so we're just using the same canvas sack although I shouldn't you don't have to reload unless you miss so let's not miss don't miss exactly do you want to mention the Henry hop okay there the Henry hop so one more thing about that now this is a real thing that happens on any Henry whether it's 15 rounds or 13 rounds you hold here by the way this gets really hot with black powder gets hot even with smokeless powder but as the follower comes down your hand will be in the way of the follower and you have to know that when you feel it there you have to be cognizant of this to move your hand out of the way as you cycle the lever so that you don't impede the fall or otherwise you're gonna have essentially an empty chamber for that round right if you hold that follower back with your hand you're removing all the spring tension and it won't feed anything so that's called the Henry hop you just move out of the way now if you if you happen to actually impede that it's not the end of the world you get out of the way then cycle the action again and it won't cause a malfunction that's catastrophic okay but it will mean that you get a click instead of a bang right yeah all right let's do it all right are you ready was a little faster fourteen point nine to fourteen point nine two and you were 70 to 79 79 you know I'm gonna go ahead and make the argument that the slightly less powerful 44 Henry rimfire cartridge makes up for that speed difference in magnificent ways yes if you're on the battlefield would you rather have that kind of suppressive power suppressive firepower would you rather have seven rounds slower that just has a little more energy right there are a couple valid reasons why this got adopted by the military the Union military and then after the war the United States cavalry used this as their standard carbine for some time let's talk about that so both these guns come out in 1860 right both are vying for military contracts let's be realistic about that the Spencer gets one and officially is adopted and pushes in relatively small numbers compared to everything else but compared to muzzle loaders but compared to other repeating rifles this was the carbine of the cavalry this did not make it officially into military service but it did make it in the military service because a lot of guys purchased them privately yes realizing what the capabilities were of the Henry and brought them to the battlefield anyway I believe there are a couple units state militia unit where the commanders arrange to have Henry's for everybody in the unit it was a couple guys that went hmm I want my guys to survive right they found a way to film them and they actually feel that these even though it wasn't officially adopted right yep so the question is why wouldn't why didn't the Union buy those two well I think there's some reasons to think about there I think in my opinion my opinion is this in one argument they said this was more rugged I have a hard time believing that magazine tube can get dented on those this can get into there is a difference between a modern reproduction Henry and an original Henry and having handled some originals there they are more fragile some of the materials are not as stiff not as sturdy all right they were built around a black powder 44 rimfire cartridge yes this is built around something that has to be able to contain theoretically for liabilities sake a pretty stout loading a 45 colt that some idiot might drop I'm true all true so there were some durability issues there were some like reliability issues there is this big open slot on the bottom of the magazine tube necessitated by the follower that's something that dirt can easily get into you don't have this is a bad example because I've got the action wide open here but with this closed you don't have that kind of ability for crap to get into the action of these you know I hate to say that this would be a good mud test yeah actually it would be yeah that's something else to think it would be but anyways there's no cover on the top of the action of that so that's a that's a valid that's one of those things where in the civilian role that maybe isn't an issue but in a military role it can become more of an issue and then there was the issue of cartridge power and the military wanted something especially for the cavalry that they thought could reliably take down a horse yes true and 350 grains is going to be a lot better at doing that than 200 grams and this was a huge improvement over a muslin Oh immense 70 71 cents for 13 rounds on target compared to a muzzle loader right when they look at this this is like living in the future yes and this might have been a little too far into the future exactly this is like the gamer gun the military's like we're not quite ready for that we've got some issues that we want to work out we'll take these they may be a little slower but as you said they're better than everything else that we currently have and they would remain that way for a couple years now the other interesting thing that we can see is where were these decisions right there are certainly justifiable you can look at these reasons and go okay I can understand how that could be considered a good reason hindsight's almost always 20/20 right and in hindsight what we see is these guys figured it out yeah when you look at the Native American warriors at the time they had they were able to buy Henry's and Winchester's oh yeah no they were they were able to get pretty much anything they wanted and they could have bought Spencer's to a clan someone who did after the war this disparity became very clear during the war and Spencer was out of business by 1868 Henry was just getting going and they improved the gun the 66 changed the loading system the 73 added some dust covers and a safety mechanism they improved the power of the cartridge with 44 40 yep but the Henry had the Henry and the Winchester actually had a long future in front of it right the Spencer did not did not and for example there has been some battlefield archeology from the Little Bighorn which was 1876 so we're talking ten years well 16 years after these were both invented but a significant number something like a third of the Indian forces that the Little Bighorn had Henry and Winchester repeating rifles yeah there's already a video on end range all about this being the first real effective combat repeater yeah and I've got I'll link to that in our in our description there but you know it is interesting to me that the supposedly primitive savages realize that which was the better technology and embraced it more depth and the supposedly advanced civilization they were in combat with right I think we can agree that especially with the improvements to the Henry getting rid of things like the open magazine well for the open magazine slot when you're actually comparing the cartridge you didn't need the heavier cartridge no the smaller 44 rim rimfire cartridge was just perfectly fine I mean I you know I realized by modern intents and purposes the 44 Henry rimfire is essentially a pistol cartridge I mean you're looking at something that's effectively 44 Smith & Wesson yeah and but when you're looking at putting into context for the amount of firepower this brings and that you can still engage reliably with a rifle sighting system up to 200 yards and get hits I don't think it matters that much yeah and two hundred grains on a horse is still a problem this is kind of equivalent to an argument of five five six versus seven six two by thirty nine oh very similar because this was not a rifle cartridge this is like the intermediate cartridge of its period would anyone really argue that seven sixty by thirty nine is that much substantially more effective of a cartridge in combat today than five five six I don't I don't see that argument just like I don't see an argument for fifty six Spencer being substantially better than forty four Henry no I agree entirely I'm gonna going throw one more thing into this though I think one other thing you deal with here when it comes to military on occasion is that there's always they're going to shoot too many bullets we can't feel them in the field we can't resupply we need to actually intentionally decrease their ability to increase their firepower so that we can keep them supplied yeah and that was again that is a potentially legitimate argument if you're out here in 1862 well you can't just run down to the shop to get some more ammo and and one of the worst conceivable things that could happen to a military force is being out in the field on patrol and have a no ammunition left what you saw with the Indian forces is they would leverage this until it was empty reload if they had ammunition digits which to some sort of malaya weapon or pick up the weapon of the foe that they dispatched yeah yeah they had a loser logistical constraint then the army did in fact there's even I've even seen actual photographic evidence of them making bullets out of lead by chewing it and swaging the bullet with their teeth to fit their rifle there were a number of examples at Little Bighorn of 50 50 70 cases where I'm sorry 45 70 cases being fired in 50 70 carbines yep adapting ammo where would even if you could jam it in there and get the thing closed hey that's good enough it'll work desperation enquire it requires you to adapt and overcome right and that's where they were at yeah but in regards to our discussion today Spenser versus Henry and why dispenser is not going to be included in the greater what if lever gun project I think we've nailed that coffin shut pretty hard if we haven't by now I don't know what you guys have been watching don't get us wrong it's not a bad rifle it's an interesting rifle it's a fun rifle to shoot really actually is a very fun rifle to shoot it you're shooting a big honkin bullet but it's got basically no felt recoil yeah this is what a seven or eight pound right little carbine very pleasant to shoot a lot of fun to shoot if you're not out there actually trying to race someone with a Henry or fight for your life against a horde of attacking people it's a great fun little gun yeah so with that in mind this was the future yes and what is that one again now this one is from Henry USA there's a reproduction of the 1860 and that thing is quite the what oh yeah no fire blue it's go literally is a piece of art if you want to spend a little less and buy one that's not quite the piece of art you can get the Italian replicas yeah but what I will say is the one made from Henry and this sounds like a product placement but it's not intending to be the one from Henry USA actually the sights were regulated right out of the box and it just worked nice the Italian ones are sometimes iffy maybe you can make them work and I've used them very effectively but their quality control is not quite the same yeah but with that said you're gonna see a lot more of the Winchester style toggling action in the future what if flubber gun project all the way up into the 1876 gun which is a whole other discussion entirely so guys please stay tuned we're gonna have a lot more of this water lever gun project on the channel intermittently throughout the 2018 series all right I'm looking forward to it I do too it's really it's a fun project if you like this stuff please consider supporting us on patreon patreon is what funds us the ability to do this at all I bought this with my own money yeah Henry USA provided that one they did but you've bought more than one hand right before yes I so and a lot of the other guns that we're gonna be using in this series in fact I think every other firearm we're using in this series is one that we have purchased ourselves every other gun besides this Henry I'm using here on this video was purchased through in range funds yeah this one was provided by Henry USA so and all the ammunition was provided by in range as well yes which is of course here the patreon supporter so if you can't support us please do we really appreciate it if you can't do that we totally understand subscribe to our channels we're on five if not 6-7 distribution points at this point stay subscribe share with your friends thanks a lot you

Channel: InRangeTV

Views: 402,835

Rating: 4.9437256 out of 5

Keywords: 1860, 1860 henry, henry rifle, spencer, spencer carbine, what if?, lever guns, lever gun, 44 henry, 56-50, indian wars, old west, kasarda, mccollum, inrangetv, forgotten weapons

Id: T8eQmTUHzeU

Length: 30min 26sec (1826 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 13 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/thom430]

Ian and Karl generally have an excellent understanding of firearms, but I think they are ignoring some of the realities of that time period when they went on the whole "what if" train.

Logistics is of course the first issue, as much as it might have increased firepower, so too would it have increased consumption of ammo, albeit a shorter cartridge. That's a big issue for any horse-drawn army of the 1860s and 1870s.

It's interesting how the only country that adopted a repeater in that era was Switzerland, a country that never exactly intended to go on long drawn out foreign campaigns.

There's the issue of range and ballistics, at the end of the day, the round had to be able to stop both a man and a horse, the latter being a good bit of a heavier target. Plus these rifles need to do that at extended ranges, with entire battalions doing the job later done by machine guns.