Old-Win wrote on Apr 28
th, 2018 at 6:24pm:
So according to Campbell, to be a true Winder, the rifle has to be barreled in a .22 RF cartridge. It also was made up of cut down high wall receivers with the large barrel shank and same tang thickness.
No--only the 3rd model, the so-called Model 87, was built with a cut down high wall receiver. (
Should have been done at the outset of the Winder saga, because chambering a HW for .22 RF is idiotic.) WRA did this, rather than use LW rcvrs., because, it is believed, there was a surplus of unfinished HW rcvrs. in the parts bins, and the 87 was seen as a way to use them up, despite the extra machine work required.
Campbell described all this in Vol. 1 of his two SS books. However, a better account of the whole Winder story is found in M. D. Waite's March, 1978, Rifleman article, "Col. Winder and His Musket." (Waite was the best of the Rifleman's technical writers from the '60s to the '80s. No Campbellian speculations, just the facts.)