Spencer Repeating Rifle

Spencer Repeating Rifle
Spencer repeating Rifle
Type	Manually cocked Lever Action Rifle
Place of origin	United States
Service history
Used by	United States Army United States Navy Confederate States of America Siam Japan Empire of Brazil
Wars	American Civil War Indian Wars Boshin War Paraguayan War Franco-Prussian War
Production history
Designer	Christopher Spencer
Designed	1860
Manufacturer	Spencer company, Burnside Rifle Co,Winchester
Produced	1860–1869
Number built	200,000 approx.
Specifications
Length	47 inches (1,200 mm) rifle with 30 inch barrel 39.25 inches (997 mm) carbine with 22 inch barrel
Barrel length	30 inches (760 mm) 22 inches (560 mm) 20 inches (510 mm)
Cartridge	.56-56 Spencer rimfire
Caliber	.52 inches (13 mm)
Action	Manually cocked hammer, lever action
Rate of fire	14 or 20 rounds per minute
Muzzle velocity	931 to 1,033 ft/s (284 to 315 m/s)
Effective firing range	500 yards
Feed system	7 round tube magazine

The Spencer repeating rifle was a manually operated lever-action, seven shot repeating rifle produced in the United States by three manufacturers between 1860 and 1869. Designed by Christopher Spencer, it was fed with cartridges from a tube magazine in the rifle's buttstock.

The Spencer repeating rifle was adopted by the Union Army, especially by the cavalry, during the American Civil War, but did not replace the standard issue muzzle-loading rifled muskets in use at the time. The Spencer carbine was a shorter and lighter version.

The design for a magazine-fed, lever-operated rifle chambered for the .56-56 Spencer rimfire cartridge was completed by Christopher Spencer in 1860. Called the Spencer Repeating Rifle, it was fired by cocking a lever to extract a used case and feed a new cartridge from a tube in the buttstock. Like most firearms of the time, the hammer had to be manually cocked in a separate action before the weapon could be fired. The weapon used copper rimfire cartridges based on the 1854 Smith & Wesson patent stored in a seven-round tube magazine. A spring in the tube enabled the rounds to be fired one after another. When empty, the spring had to be released and removed before dropping in fresh cartridges, then replaced before resuming firing. Rounds could be loaded individually or from a device called the Blakeslee Cartridge Box, which contained up to thirteen (also six and ten) tubes with seven cartridges each, which could be emptied into the magazine tube in the buttstock.

Unlike later cartridge designations, the .56-56 Spencer's first number referred to the diameter of the case just ahead of the rim, the second number the case diameter at the mouth; the actual bullet diameter was .52 inches. Cartridges were loaded with 45 grains (2.9 g) of black powder, and were also available as .56-52, .56-50, and a wildcat .56-46, a necked down version of the original .56-56. Cartridge length was limited by the action size to about 1.75 inches; later calibers used a smaller diameter, lighter bullet and larger powder charge to increase power and range over the original .56-56 cartridge, which was almost as powerful as the .58 caliber rifled musket of the time but underpowered by the standards of other early cartridges such as the .50–70 and .45-70.