Winchester Model 50 ?

[gold40]

Anyone own or have experience with the Winchester Model 50 (12 ga. semi-auto) from the 1960's ?

[skeet]

Have owned quite a few of them from time to time. A nice gun but not one of the most reliable. 3 of the ones I had wouldn't cycle plastic shells reliably. Paper ones worked just fine. Could never figure it out. They work on the short recoil system(Benelli also) but with a floating chamber. Had them in 12 and 20 but the 12 is the most numerous. M-59 is the same gun but with a barrel that is a thin steel tube and then wound with fiberglass. Too bbl light for precision shooting but was ok on a field gun. The 50 featherweight had an aluminum receiver as did the 59. They cracked badly and have only seen 3 or 4 that weren't cracked. And they hadn't been shot enough to have it happen...yet. Surprisingly Winchester made some prototypes of the same gun in 14 ga made for aluminum shells. Didn't work out too well and they scrapped the project after making only 18-20 of the guns...maybe a few more. You see one of the 14 ga shells at gun shows every now and then. As an aside..I was given a gun at one time for a week that Winchester was considering selling. Wanted my evaluation of it. ( I used to shoot quite a lot). After using the gun for a few days mostly on clay targets I decided I really didn't like the gun all that much. Told the Winchester rep that it would probably make a nice field gun if they could get the little hump off of it. Also told him it wasn't a very good clay target gun(recoil was too sharp for an auto). It was also a short recoil operated shotgun. Turned out that it was a gun made by Benelli for them to market here in the US. This was also about the time that Winchester was selling the Perazzi O/U. Guess the gun didn't work out for Winchester. BTW the M-50 was made (I think) from about 1951 to 1962. I still have a couple of 59 receivers(cracked) in the inventory of gun parts in Maryland