I have had the Italian carbine in .56-50. Fun to shoot. But this rifle version is incredibly cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br5sxqKzzVA

Friend Bill: The Gemmer Spencers are really beautiful rifles. In 1974, my wife and I started The Mountain Man. A muzzleloading business in Manitou Springs Colorado. A very good friend had a real Gemmer Spencer. Sold it for big bucks but I got to fondle it quite q bit. Great Gun. We must have done something right. MY daughter still runs the business. CHEERS LUKE

I was disappointed that the close-up footage of repeat firing did not show the action being recycled, and wonder why.

quote:

Originally posted by sambarman338:
I was disappointed that the close-up footage of repeat firing did not show the action being recycled, and wonder why.

A few years ago InrangeTV did a comparison between a few of the early repeaters, including Winchesters, Spencers and the Trapdoor Springfield (which is of course a single-shot), and came to the conclusion that the Trapdoor is a better military rifle than the Spencer.
Seems it's quite fiddly to use.

Paul, good question. The Italian Spencers that I handled and shot weren't particularly "fiddly" but the sequence of having to cock the hammer and then firmly working the lever took some mental retraining to remember the extra step.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGSHapPH_f8

Thanks Bill and Peter, yes, that needing to cock first does takes something from the romance (or add it).

I guess the Spencer was at least a little more powerful than the Henry. One thing that turned me off Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove was the way he wrote of the Henry, as though it had the power of a big 50.

I watched the Inrange video. The Spencer was still faster. The opinion was the small increase in speed was not worth the logistics, training, and other perceived weaknesses of the Spencer over the Springfield Carbine.