Winchester 1903 .22 Win Auto Takedown 20″ Standard

Beautiful example of a Winchester 1903. Nice patina throughout. The walnut shows no major gouges but there are some light scratches. There are also a few white marks on the walnut that can probably be removed. The serial number puts this rifle at being made in the second year of production of 1904 along with 6944 other 1903s that year. Tubular magazine in the butt stock. The magazine holds ten cartridges, and is loaded through a slot in the right side of the butt stock. The takedown mechanism on the Model 1903 requires the user to press the takedown screw-lock down through a slot in the tang to release the lock from the ratchet. The self-loading feature of the Model 1903 is accomplished by use of a simple blow-back operated mechanism. This mechanism features a balanced breech bolt, meaning that the breech bolt contained a quantity of metal proportioned to the weight and velocity of the bullet. This balances the recoil forces so that the breech bolt does not move rearward until the bullet has left the muzzle of the barrel, and therefore allows the bullet to be fired with no loss of energy. The original design of this self-loading mechanism required Winchester to design a custom cartridge (the .22 Winchester Automatic) to go along with it. This mechanism was redesigned for the Model 63 to allow it to fire the .22 Long Rifle cartridge, which by then had become much more popular. The Model 1903 was advertised as an "automatic rifle". In modern times, it is more appropriately referred to as a semi-automatic rifle since the loading mechanism required the trigger to be pulled for each shot.