Colt-Burgess Rifle
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The Colt-Burgess rifle, also known as the 1883 Burgess rifle or simply the Burgess rifle, is a lever-action repeating rifle produced by Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company between 1883 and 1885. The Burgess
rifle A rifle is a long gun, long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting and higher stopping power, with a gun barrel, barrel that has a helical or spiralling pattern of grooves (rifling) cut into the bore wall. In keeping with their focus o ...
was Colt's only entrance into the lever-action rifle market, produced to compete with
Winchester Repeating Arms Company The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was a prominent American manufacturer of repeating firearms and ammunition. The firm was established in 1866 by Oliver Winchester and was located in New Haven, Connecticut. The firm went into receivership ...
's line of popular rifles. The 1883 Burgess rifle was designed and patented by Andrew Burgess, an American firearms designer and photographer, who sold the design to Colt.


Overview

The Colt-Burgess rifle is similar in design to Winchester's lever-action rifles, such as the Winchester Model 1873. It was produced in two versions chambered for the .44-40 Winchester cartridge: a rifle version with a
barrel A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They are traditionally made of wooden stave (wood), staves and bound by wooden or metal hoops. The word vat is often used for large containers ...
, and a
carbine A carbine ( or ) is a long gun that has a barrel shortened from its original length. Most modern carbines are rifles that are compact versions of a longer rifle or are rifles chambered for less powerful cartridges. The smaller size and ligh ...
with a barrel. The rifle features either a full
octagon In geometry, an octagon () is an eight-sided polygon or 8-gon. A '' regular octagon'' has Schläfli symbol and can also be constructed as a quasiregular truncated square, t, which alternates two types of edges. A truncated octagon, t is a ...
, half-octagon, or round barrel, with the full octagon barrels being the most numerously produced among rifle variants. A
tubular magazine A magazine, often simply called a mag, is an ammunition storage and feeding device for a repeating firearm, either integral within the gun (internal/fixed magazine) or externally attached (detachable magazine). The magazine functions by holdi ...
is located under the barrel in similar fashion to other lever-action rifles with a capacity of 15 rounds in the rifle version or 12 rounds in the carbine version. The receiver on the Burgess rifle is smaller than the Winchester 1873's, providing for a lighter firearm. The rifle's action, though similar to the Winchester 1873's, is considered to be a stronger design. The action utilizes a toggle-joint system to lock the breechblock. The extension of the loading lever is the lower part of the toggle-joint; the upper part of the toggle-joint is linked to the breechblock. Located on the receiver is a sliding loading gate from which cartridges are fed into the magazine; the sliding gate design is in contrast to Winchester's tilting gate. Burgess rifles were finished with either a blued or browned barrel, blued receiver, casehardened hammer and lever, and walnut stock. Current reproduction Burgess rifles are also available with casehardened frames.


Production

Although Colt predominantly was a manufacturer of popular
revolver A revolver is a repeating handgun with at least one barrel and a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers (each holding a single cartridge) for firing. Because most revolver models hold six cartridges before needing to be reloaded, ...
s, such as the
Colt Single Action Army The Colt Single Action Army (also known as the SAA, Model P, Peacemaker, or M1873) is a Trigger (firearms)#Single-action, single-action revolver handgun. It was designed for the U.S. government service revolver trials of 1872 by Colt's Patent Fi ...
, the company began in the 1880s to seek to compete against Winchester in the rifle market. In 1882, Colt contacted Andrew Burgess to design a lever-action rifle. Factory records list two entries for serial number 1: a rifle shipped to Hartley & Graham in New York on May 4, 1883, and a saddle ring carbine shipped two weeks later.Letter from Beverly Jean Haynes, Office of the Colt Historian, May 3, 2024. A total of 6,403 Colt Burgess rifles and carbines were manufactured before production ended in 1885. Approximately 60% of these were of the rifle variation. When compared to production figures of Winchester's 1873 rifle, the Colt-Burgess failed as a serious competitor to Winchester. From 1873 to 1919, Winchester manufactured 720,610 Model 1873 rifles, or an average of over 15,000 per year. The short production history of the Colt-Burgess has led to much speculation as to the reason of its demise. According to legend, upon hearing of Colt's entrance into the lever-action rifle market, Winchester began to develop a prototype revolver to compete with Colt's market. A " gentleman's agreement" then followed between Colt and Winchester, with Colt agreeing to drop production of the Burgess and Winchester abandoning its plans to develop a revolver. The truth of this story has never been fully verified, and as such, the reason for the Burgess rifle's short production history is unknown. Colt notably introduced the Lightning Magazine Rifle in 1884 and may have been focusing their attention on their new product. Replicas of the Burgess rifle and carbine are currently produced by the Italian manufacturer Uberti chambered for the .45 Colt cartridge.


See also

* Colt Lightning Carbine


References


External links

* {{Colt's Manufacturing Company Colt rifles Lever-action rifles Rifles of the United States Guns of the American West Hunting rifles