Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Who invented the 270 Win?

Nah, ingwe just perfected it.

The 270 Winchester was actually the result of an idea by freethinker and sometimes inventor, Benjamin K. Tibbey, from Kentucky. He called it, appropriately enough, the 'Tibbey Wetless Combuster'. It actually predated black powder cartridge rifles.



It was an enclosed breech system that used a .275 inch bullet, pushed by black powder. Everything was held in place with a copper cylinder. It was called 'wetless' because the combuster sat inside a sealed chamber, protected from inclement weather and rough handling. No more wet powder! It used a skinny, nail shaped flint for a firing pin which struck a metal mesh screen located at the base of a black powder filled, copper cylinder. That created the spark which ignited the powder.

At first blush, many 19th century shooters suggested that the Tibbey Wetless Combuster was a forerunner of the BP cartridge loading rifles.

Later BP cartridge guns shared one or two of the same characteristics as Tibbey’s Wetless Combuster. The trouble was, while Ben Tibbey was known as a sometimes inventor, he was also known locally as a ‘really bad’ sometimes inventor.

Here’s an example.

One of Ben’s bad inventions was the Tibbey Apple Corer. It was a simple machine - a spinning drill bit, mounted to a table. A foot pump caused the bit to rotate. While boring out the core was smart, the execution was poor. The operator had to hold the apple in the palm of her hand and push it onto the rotating bit.

Needless to say, most of the corers had accidents. All were women, and became known as Tibbey’s Maidens. No man wanted to marry a woman with only one good hand.

But I digress. Tibbey's Wetless Combuster was a very inefficient system that went the way of the Dodo. Still, one has to wonder...

Tibbey tried unsuccessfully to sue the manufacturers of several early bolt action rifles. His reputation as a really bad inventor preceeded him however, and that had a huge influence on the court's rulings.

He died at the age of 51, killed by a spinster who had worked for him years earlier, coring apples. He was stabbed in the heart with a rusty bit from a Tibbey Apple Corer. The fatal blow was delivered using the woman’s good hand.