Winchester 1876 Long Range .45-90

[w44wcf]

John Boy mentioned the .45-90  1876 WInchester in a previous post. There was a .45-90 cartridge made for the '76 Winchester but it was not the .45-90 cartridge made for the '86. 

Stu Miller, who wrote the "Cartridge Corner" section in the early days of "Shooting Times", said this:
"There is one other cartridge in this .45-75 caliber that is even more sought after. In the 1878 Winchester catalog they showed the Winchester 1876 Long Range with a powder load of 90 grs. and a 450 gr. paper patched bullet.This was the regular .45-75 cartridge case, but because of the longer overall cartridge dimensions of the loaded round, it was impossible to load it from the magazine. The catalog stated that these cartridges appeared in only one edition of WInchester's  catalog, so it must have proved unpopular."

Interesting.
w44wcf

[john boy]

... w44wcf's historical knowledge prevails again! 
Gent's, w44cwcf and I made it up to the Ridgeway, PA 1000yd range a couple of times together last year.  John with his trunk full of levers and me with a passel of everything but primarily BPCR single shots.

When the 45-75 PP's fly in the Spring, there will be good or bad news to post cause w44wcf being the great person behind the spotting scope that he is ... will be a partner in this test 

[Fox Creek Kid]

In the Houze book on the '76 (HIGHLY recommended ) there is mention of a special order of 45-75 cartridges loaded with 90 gr. of BP as special order for a customer. I didn't know that they were marketed in a catalog however. 

[Hobie]

Orville C. Loomis in his 2001 article for Blackpowder Cartridge News, "Shooting the .45-75 Model 1876" mentions the order for a Mr. C. M. Skinner or Minneapolis, Minnesota for 1000 of the .45-75 case loaded with 90 gr. powder and 300 gr. bullet.

[w44wcf]

Hobie,
An interesting bit of history. Thank you.  It seems that Mr. Skinner wanted to duplicate the ballistics of the .45-90 '86 cartridge in his '76. No doubt, there was a bit more compression than normal to seat a 300 gr. bullet on 90 grs. of b.p. in the .45-75 case at an OAL to feed through the magazine.

w44wcf   

[Hobie]

Well, there is another fellow mentioned in that same article who was loading "hard" naked (IIRC) 300 gr. bullets over 95 gr. of BP!  He shot those in a Whitney-Kennedy (which was chambered for the .45-75 WCF).  Now, I imagine there was some compression with that load!