The Rifleman's Rifle
Encyclopedia
The Rifleman
The Rifleman is an American Western television program that starred Chuck Connors as homesteader Lucas McCain and Johnny Crawford as his son, Mark McCain. It was set in the 1880s in the town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory. The show, filmed in black-and-white with a half hour running time, ran...
. As with the guns in many Western movies, it is anachronistic as it is shown being used before it was manufactured in reality (in this case about twenty years before).
The Rifleman
The RiflemanThe Rifleman
The Rifleman is an American Western television program that starred Chuck Connors as homesteader Lucas McCain and Johnny Crawford as his son, Mark McCain. It was set in the 1880s in the town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory. The show, filmed in black-and-white with a half hour running time, ran...
was the saga of Lucas McCain, a homesteader in the Old West struggling to make a living off his ranch and make a man out of his son, Mark. Chuck Connors
Chuck Connors
Chuck Connors was an American actor, writer, and professional basketball and baseball player. His best known role from his forty-year film career was Lucas McCain in the 1960s ABC hit Western series The Rifleman....
, a former professional baseball player, won critical acclaim for his portrayal of Lucas, and young Johnny Crawford
Johnny Crawford
John Ernest "Johnny" Crawford is a prolific American character actor, singer and musician. At 12, Crawford rose to fame for playing Mark McCain, the son of the Lucas McCain character , in the popular 1960s ABC western series, The Rifleman, which aired from 1958 to 1963...
, a former Mousketeer, was also started on a successful career by this series. The series ran from September 30, 1958 to July 1, 1963 for a total of 168 episodes and the rifle was a key feature in each episode.
The setting was the town of North Fork, New Mexico, whose Marshall Micah Torrance (Paul Fix
Paul Fix
Paul Fix was an American film and television character actor, best known for his work in westerns. Fix appeared in more than a hundred movies and dozens of television shows over a 56-year career spanning from 1925 to 1981...
) seemed incapable of handling any of the numerous desperadoes who infested the series (as they did all western series) without the help of Lucas. Unlike most men of the era who would have handled the situation with a six shooter, Lucas McCain chose to use his modified Winchester
Winchester Repeating Arms Company
The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was a prominent American maker of repeating firearms, located in New Haven, Connecticut. The Winchester brand is today used under license by two subsidiaries of the Herstal Group, Fabrique Nationale of Belgium and the Browning Arms Company of Morgan, Utah.-...
with a large ring which cocked as he drew. Supposedly, he could fire off his first round in three-tenths of a second, which certainly helped in a showdown.
Modified Winchester 1892
The 1892 Winchester caliber .44-40.44-40 Winchester
The .44-40 Winchester, also known as the .44 Winchester, the .44 WCF , and the .44 Largo was introduced in 1873 by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. It was the first centerfire metallic cartridge offered by Winchester,and was brought out as the standard chambering for the new Winchester Model...
carbine with a standard 20” barrel that was used on the set of The Rifleman
The Rifleman
The Rifleman is an American Western television program that starred Chuck Connors as homesteader Lucas McCain and Johnny Crawford as his son, Mark McCain. It was set in the 1880s in the town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory. The show, filmed in black-and-white with a half hour running time, ran...
appeared in basically two different style levers. The backwards round D style loop was used in the early episodes. Sometimes the rifle he used had a saddle ring.
The style changed to a more flattened lever instead of the large circle loop. This one had no saddle ring. The 8-32 set screw that was tapped through the trigger guard for the rapid fire action also came in different styles. Some were silver; others were black with a silver nut under the head of the screw. Sometimes Chuck Connors
Chuck Connors
Chuck Connors was an American actor, writer, and professional basketball and baseball player. His best known role from his forty-year film career was Lucas McCain in the 1960s ABC hit Western series The Rifleman....
had the screw head turned inside close to the trigger. Most of the times he had it on the outside of the trigger guard. In some of the episodes the screw was taken out completely when rapid fire action was not needed.
This rapid fire mechanism was designed originally just to keep Chuck Connor's finger from getting punctured by the trigger as he fired and cocked the rifle very fast. The role demanded that. To have a rifle modified in this way certainly presents a safety hazard since the gun will fire in a semiautomatic fashion as the lever is cocked if the screw is turned in to initiate the trigger. The Rifleman cocked the rifle in two unique fashions. He spin cocked it and swing cocked it. These two cocking methods enabled Chuck Connors
Chuck Connors
Chuck Connors was an American actor, writer, and professional basketball and baseball player. His best known role from his forty-year film career was Lucas McCain in the 1960s ABC hit Western series The Rifleman....
to cock the rifle using only one hand. The rifle for the show was designed by the Stembridge Gunsmiths (no longer in existence). Ammunition used on the show was also made by Stembridge. They were five in one quarter load blanks. Most, if not all the sound effects for the rifle shots were dubbed into the footage which is why the rifle sounded so different from the other gunshots on the show. The 1892 Winchester rifle holds eleven shots, although a twelfth shot was dubbed in to the famous opening scene of the show.
Another modification was needed since the '92 rifle is a top eject and the top is completely open when the lever is cocked forward. The empty shells are then ejected straight up in the air when the lever is pulled towards you. When the rifle was swing cocked down by Chuck Connors
Chuck Connors
Chuck Connors was an American actor, writer, and professional basketball and baseball player. His best known role from his forty-year film career was Lucas McCain in the 1960s ABC hit Western series The Rifleman....
side the rifle cartridges would have fallen to the ground when he had it upside down. So they had a rifle with a special plunger built inside that would hold a bullet in place for this trick. The 1892 Winchester rifle, a descendant of the Henry rifle
Henry rifle
The Henry repeating rifle was a lever-action, breech-loading, tubular magazine rifle.-History:The original Henry rifle was a .44 caliber rimfire, lever-action, breech-loading rifle designed by Benjamin Tyler Henry in the late 1850s. The Henry rifle was an improved version of the earlier Volcanic...
and 1866 "Yellow Boy" rifles were made from 1892 until 1941 and total production was in excess of one million pieces. Many variations and calibers were introduced over the course of the 50 years production, but the basic design was largely unaltered. Winchester made 27 different variations of their 1892 rifle. Like the earlier model 1873, the light and handy Model 1892 was chambered for what are thought of today as handgun power cartridges.