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THE CARTRIDGE COLLECTOR'S EXCHANGE |
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Home of the Old Ammo Guy's Virtual
Cartridge Trading Table
Picture Page October 2015 Please note: Unless otherwise indicated, the pictures on this web site are my property, and should not be used by anyone without my permission. A .44 WCF cartridge box for the Spanish El Tigre rifle...
I recently purchased a number of empty cartridge boxes from a lady in Spain.
I don't typically buy empty boxes (as I have of late found myself literally
swimming in empty
To anyone not familiar with the El Tigre carbine, it is a Spanish-made version of the
Winchester Model 1892 carbine. I have had a couple of these carbines in the
past and found them to be very well made, accurate, and surprisingly similar to their Winchester
cousins. The
The El Tigre
carbine was a Spanish copy of the Winchester Model 1892 made
by Garate, Anitua y Cia., an Eibar based arms manufacturer. Ironically, it may have been the intensive marketing efforts of the
Winchester company's agent in Spain during the 1870s and 1880s that led to
the El Tigre's development and resulting popularity in Spain. These
marketing efforts included a visit by Oliver
Winchester to Spain. After exhaustive testing and many
design changes, 230 Winchester Model 1873 carbines with 22 inch barrels,
metric sights, full length cleaning rod and full stocks were sold to the
Spanish Military for use by the Cavalry and Royal Bodyguard in the 1870s.
These are considered to be evolutionary predecessors of the Winchester 1876
carbines, most famously supplied to the North-West Mounted Police. More than
2,500 were later made under license by the Spanish arsenal at Oviedo in the
1890s to keep staff working while awaiting the arrival of modern machinery
required for the production of the Mauser Model 1893 rifle. These utilized some
improvements made in the Winchester 1876, but were chambered in .44
Winchester centerfire, which is nown in Spain as .44 largo, thus
allowing a slimmer action. Carbine variants were made for the Cavalry, and
the 14th regiment of the Guardia Civil (the National Police force of Spain). Musket variants were made for some
other users, such as military academies and sentries. After 1893 a further
unknown number of carbines were sourced from Eibar based firms, but these,
according to George Madis (author of The Winchester Rifle), were of lower
quality than the Oviedo made models. The first m
. The El Tigre cartridges were loaded with flat nose lead bullets, Shown here are photos of the contents of a full box, as well as a typical headstamp as would be found in one of these boxes (FN 19 32 T). . . . . . These caridges were also made in Spain for the civilian market, as evidenced by the Eibar-made box shown below.
. . . .
References: Photo of the El Tigre carbine and the barrel markings are from Lot #5 of the Rock Island Auction Company's Premier Collectors Firearms Auction of December 2, 3, and 4, 2011:: http://www.rockislandauction.com/viewitem/aid/54/lid/5
Photo of Lucas McCain from The Rifleman is from the Internet Movie Firearms Database site: :http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Winchester_Model_1892
Photo of the Eibar-made box from the Spanish Cartridge Collectors Association web site: http://www.municion.org/44_40/44_40.htm . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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boxes), but this group included several that I had not seen before.
One of these was a .44 Largo (.44 long aka .44 WCF) box labeled for the El Tigre rifle.
Labeling of the box indicates also that the cartridges were loaded at the
National factory in Toledo, Spain in August of 1933. 
following information regarding these firearms was copied pretty much word for word from Wikipedia;
it provides an excellent summary on the carbines:: 
odels of the
El Tigre
carbine
were produced by Garate y Anitua in 1915, but production was presumably
interrupted by World War I. Having spent most of the war supplying the
Allies with large-framed revolvers based on Smith & Wesson designs and the
7.65mm Browning caliber self-loading Ruby pistols, the company began to
market the first El Tigre carbines in 1923. The El Tigre carbines were again
chambered for the Winchester .44-40 cartridge (known in Spain as the .44
Largo) and had a 22 inch round profiled barrel (like the previous 1873/1876
carbines) marked with the makers name, caliber, and the trademark image of a
Tiger. The stock was of Spanish walnut with a 12 3⁄4" length of pull and a
crescent shaped metal butt plate with a trapdoor fitted for storage of a
jointed cleaning rod in the butt. A drift-adjusted blade front site was
fitted, usually attached to the front barrel band in accordance with old
Spanish practice. A military tangent leaf rear sight was fitted which was
similar to those on the Mauser 1893 rifle and sighted to 1000 meters. The El
Tigre was made for both Civilian and Police use, but apart from its
emergency use during the Spanish Civil War it was never issued as a military
weapon. Over one million were eventually produced for private sale (mainly
hunters), forest rangers, and for police, prison or private security guards
who needed a compact but long-ranged weapon for use in confined spaces (e.g.
the Railway division of the Guardia Civil). Certainly the .44-40 cartridge
was adequate for hunting most Spanish game animals. Many were also exported
to Latin American police agencies or prisons, leading to the widespread
misconception that the El Tigre was made in Mexico or some other Latin
American country. The El Tigre was replaced in service starting in the 1940s
by bolt action carbines such as the Destroyer carbine and submachine guns
which were chambered for the 9mm Largo service cartridge. Large numbers of
the El Tigre carbines were
exported as surplus to the US in the 1950s and 1960s, corresponding with and
perhaps fueling the
growth of interest in Western history and arms collecting. El Tigre
carbines
often appear in photographs of the Spanish Civil War, usually in the hands
of Militia, Police or rear echelon forces.
The
Internet Movie Firearms Database web site provides a listing of movies and
television shows in which El Tigre carbines appeared. One that I was
particularly fond of was the television series The Rifleman, in which an El
Tigre was typically used as a stand-in for the production's two Winchester
carbines when the scene called for the firearm to be handled in a rough
manner.
