The .40-65 Winchester was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 rifle

Rifle

A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves cut into the barrel walls. The raised areas of the rifling are called "lands," which make contact with the projectile , imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the...

 cartridge

Cartridge (firearms)

A cartridge, also called a round, packages the bullet, gunpowder and primer into a single metallic case precisely made to fit the firing chamber of a firearm. The primer is a small charge of impact-sensitive chemical that may be located at the center of the case head or at its rim . Electrically...

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Introduced with the 1887 Winchester

Winchester Repeating Arms Company

The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was a prominent American maker of repeating firearms, located in New Haven, Connecticut. The Winchester brand is today used under license by two subsidiaries of the Herstal Group, Fabrique Nationale of Belgium and the Browning Arms Company of Morgan, Utah.-...

 Model 86, and available in Winchester single shots and in the Marlin

Marlin Firearms

Marlin Firearms Co., formerly of North Haven, Connecticut, is a manufacturer of high power, center fire, lever action, and .22 caliber rimfire rifles. In the past, the company made shotguns, derringers and revolvers...

 Model 95, it was "a further effort to put more steam" in repeating rifle

Repeating rifle

A repeating rifle is a single barreled rifle containing multiple rounds of ammunition. These rounds are loaded from a magazine by means of a manual or automatic mechanism, and the action that reloads the rifle also typically recocks the firing action...

 cartridges.

It was commercially available in black

Gunpowder

Gunpowder, also known since in the late 19th century as black powder, was the first chemical explosive and the only one known until the mid 1800s. It is a mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate - with the sulfur and charcoal acting as fuels, while the saltpeter works as an oxidizer...

 and smokeless varieties until around 1935, and can be handloaded

Handloading

Handloading or reloading is the process of loading firearm cartridges or shotgun shells by assembling the individual components , rather than purchasing completely assembled, factory-loaded cartridges...

 by fire-forming .45-70

.45-70

The .45-70 rifle cartridge, also known as .45-70 Government, was developed at the U.S. Army's Springfield Armory for use in the Springfield Model 1873...

 brass

Brass

Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc; the proportions of zinc and copper can be varied to create a range of brasses with varying properties.In comparison, bronze is principally an alloy of copper and tin...

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Nomenclature

The nomenclature of the period was based on several properties of the cartridge:

• .40: nominal caliber in inches: 0.40 inches (10.2 mm); actual caliber was .406 in ( mm)
• 65 : weight of propellant (black powder) charge, in grains
  Grain (measure)
  A grain is a unit of measurement of mass that is nominally based upon the mass of a single seed of a cereal. From the Bronze Age into the Renaissance the average masses of wheat and barley grains were part of the legal definition of units of mass. However, there is no evidence of any country ever...
  
  : 65 grains (4.2 g)

See also

• List of cartridges by caliber
• List of rifle cartridges
• Marlin Model 1895
• 13 mm caliber
  13 mm caliber
  This article lists firearm cartridges which have a bullet in the caliber range and greater.*Length refers to the cartridge case length.*OAL refers to the overall length of the cartridge.*Bullet refers to the diameter of the bullet....