Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, and today I'm here at the Rock Island Auction House taking a look at some of the guns
that are available for sale in their upcoming December of 2014 Premier Auction.
I was looking through, and I always try to find some kind of interesting novelty guns to take a look at.
And that's what attracted me to these three initially.
But then when I started handling them I really got a totally different appreciation
for just the quality and the workmanship in these guns. They're really cool.
So all three of these are Lancaster break-action pistols.
These were developed in the late 1800s,
they were all made by a gunsmith by the name of Charles Lancaster in England.
And they were made for a variety of cartridges, actually very typical British cartridges of the period.
They were made for the .380. That's not the same as the .380 ACP, it's a British rimmed revolver cartridge.
Also the .450 Adams, the .455 Webley, the .476 ... Enfield, and the .577 cartridge.
Lancaster made a variety of guns in these cartridges, and they were both two barrel and four barrel.
And then these guns were all kind of custom made to order.
So they have a wide variety of trigger guard styles, a couple different types of trigger to them,
different grip styles. There's a lot of customisation involved.
These are guns that were made to order for pretty well-to-do clients.
They were never officially purchased or officially adopted by the British military,
But a lot of British officers did choose to bring these pistols on their own,
purchase them personally and use them in the field.
In the early part of their use, these guns had some legitimate advantages over service revolvers.
They were potentially more reliable.
There's not really anything to go wrong with one of these as far as jamming it up.
There is a mechanism inside that has a rotating striker with four firing pins,
we'll show you what the breech face looks like in a moment.
But pretty much you load four cartridges in here, and you're ready to go.
Nothing's going to stop those four from all firing.
So they were popular, ... they made it to a number of British colonial areas.
They were used in the Indian Mutinies. They were used in the Sudan.
Basically everywhere that British officers went, some of Lancaster's pistols probably went as well.
Alright, let's bring the camera round here and take a closer look at
just some of the gorgeous markings and finish, and the mechanism on these guns.
So we'll start with this one. This is a mid-range. This is a pretty typical example of a Lancaster four-barrel pistol.
This particular one is in the .476 centrefire cartridge.
Take a look at the barrel markings there.
A little hard to make out with the reflection from the lights here, but you can see
.476 CF, that's centrefire, there in between the barrels.
And then each one of the barrels has been proofed.
As has each of the breech faces.
So there are a whole mess of proof marks on here.
This is marked, again this is a little difficult to see in the reflection of the lights here,
but we have Charles Lancaster, Patent, and then his address, 151 New Bond Street, London.
Now a couple things that we can look at in particular on this gun.
First off, let's take a look at how the gun locks up, it is a break action.
And we have a hinge pin on the bottom here, and then we have a pair of locking lugs on the top.
These are connected on the left and right, and there's a single operating lever.
When we pull this lever down,
disconnects,
and then the barrel assembly pivots open.
You can see there's an automatic extractor there. When the gun is fully open the extractor snaps back into place.
You would load your four cartridges there.
Lock the gun up, and it's ready to go.
Looking at the breech face, you can see that there are four firing pin holes there.
There's a rotating striker that fires one after another. So it will fire all four in succession,
starting with wherever the firing pin [striker] happens to be when you start pulling the trigger.
So as you can see there's one, and go from there to the bottom,
to that one, to that one.
And you can see that the firing pin is retracted back for safety's sake when you're not actively pulling the trigger.
So these are safe to carry fully loaded.
A couple other features. Let's go look at the sights.
They have a really nice big rear notch and a nice big front post.
These point very nicely in the hand and they give a nice big, quick, sight picture.
So in addition to being used as military sidearms, these were also of course used as backup guns by British big-game hunters.
And if something nasty is charging at you, you don't want a little tiny target sight,
you want to be able to bring the gun up and hit what's coming at you quickly and easily.
And these sights do make that very practical.
Now the trigger is very interesting on these I think.
Not all Lancaster pistols have this style of trigger, but two of the ones we have here to look at today do.
You can see that the trigger folds, or rather the bottom half of the trigger folds.
Now you can fire the gun normally just by pulling the trigger.
It's a pretty heavy trigger pull, both heavy in weight and fairly long.
What this allows you to do is pull the bottom trigger with your middle finger.
And you can see at the bottom of travel this little plate
extends up off the surface of the main trigger, this acts as a set trigger.
So I am in effect cocking the piece by holding this bottom part back,
and just a little bit of pressure on that top trigger is enough to fire the gun.
Really, I think a pretty cool idea.
So for target work you actually have the option of a nice crisp and light trigger pull.
But if you're ... faced with an emergency
and you simply need to put rounds downrange under stress quickly, you have a regular trigger pull.
This is kind of cool. Similar in practice to a double action versus single action revolver.
Now like I said, this version is in [.476] centrefire.
Oh, one other thing I should mention. If we take a look down the bores,
you can see that they appear to be smooth. They are smooth, but yet they're also rifled in a manner of speaking.
Lancaster decided that he liked the idea of what he called oval rifling,
where these bores are not actually perfectly cylindrical, they are in fact slightly ovoid.
And you'd use a special ... diameter bullet that would seal properly.
And the oval bore as it rotated down the length of the barrel would impart a spin to the bullet,
and it had the same effect as rifling as far as accuracy, or mostly so.
But at the same time it was also far more resistant to fouling.
And as you can see, there are no sharp surfaces in there to collect powder residue.
These were far easier to clean, far easier to keep maintained than a traditional rifled bore.
Now experiments today, the British actually experimented with oval rifling in rifles,
and what they found was that the accuracy wasn't quite up to par. The guns would throw flyers, kind of inexplicably but regularly.
And ... the world has kind of turned away from oval rifling for that reason since.
But frankly with black powder cartridges like these guns were made to use, it kind of makes a lot of sense.
Now the next one I figured we'd take a look at is this guy. Let's go ahead and compare the two.
So this is the little sister,
see, significantly smaller.
This one is chambered for the .380 inch cartridge. This again is another rimmed revolver cartridge.
Our action operates the same way.
Let's zoom in on this guy.
We have the exact same style of locking lever there.
We have an automatic ejector or extractor. There's our breech plate.
We have the four firing pins here. If we zoom in, this is marked
for Lancaster.
There you can see it, Charles Lancaster Patent.
He attempted to patent the oval bore, but he was turned down because the concept was already
well in existence and understanding. What he ended up patenting was actually a progressive twist oval bore.
The progressive twist wasn't really necessary for the gun,
but it was necessary to get him the patent, so that's what he did.
As with the other gun, you can see we have a whole series of proof marks on
... all four of the barrels and both sides of the breech face.
This, like the other, is marked with its calibre, .380 CF there in between the barrels.
I should point out these do have serial numbers on the bottom of the trigger guards, right there.
Alright, the third and final one of these Lancaster pistols that we have to look at today
is an absolute monster of a handgun.
It is only a two barrel gun, and yet heavier than the four barrel .476 piece.
This one is in .577 calibre.
Humongous muzzles there.
... It's two barrel. Other than that it retains the exact same style of action.
You can see the locking latches here, we have them on both sides.
As before the calibre is marked in between the barrels,
there it is, .577 CF.
We have two sets of proof marks on the barrels,
and two proof marks back here for the breech faces.
And you'll notice there is a bit of extra mechanical stuff on the outside of the gun.
This operates the extractor.
It is unlike the previous two where the extractor is operated internally, on this one the extractor is operated externally.
So you can see that there's a pin on the extractor that acts in this bar,
Works just like that.
On the inside we have our Charles Lancaster Patent,
right there.
Two firing pin holes top and bottom, one for each barrel.
I'll be honest, I am not sure what that third firing pin hole in the middle is for.
It does display the firing pin each time the gun is fired.
So we have the bottom set,
and the top set.
Like I said, not sure what that middle one's for.
Now this model does have the same set trigger mechanism that the .476 does.
... When this reaches
full travel backwards, you can see the plate at the front of the trigger sets forward just slightly,
and that acts as our, we could call it single action firing trigger.
The grip style on this is also a bit different.
It has what appears to be much more of a traditional revolver grip instead of a bird's head grip.
And it does have the top brace there to hold
the top of your hand. That's going to help to control the pistol under recoil.
Recoil which will be quite substantial in .577 calibre.
Now, I should also point out, since this is the auction,
that this .577 example comes with its original packing case.
Which has a medallion on the front for Captain J. Straker.
Take a closer look at that.
The 3rd Regiment, W.Y.R.
This case still has some of its original goodies. You have the ramrod, a little glass oil vial, screwdriver.
What's particularly cool is under this plate we have
space for 8 cartridges, and two of these cartridges are actually included and are unfired.
So Kynoch .577s. You can see this is a massive cartridge.
Short, but I certainly don't want to get hit by one of those guys.
There's the other one. You can imagine the barrels probably echo like caverns when you drop those cartridges in there.
So these Lancaster pistols weren't really something that was on my radar before I encountered these three here.
And I have to say I'm coming away really impressed by these guns. I need to get me one of these someday.
I think of these three my choice would probably be this, what we could call Mama Bear here,
the .476 four barrel. I like the fact that it has this nicely patinated finish.
It's not pitted, but it's also not something that's so pristine that I'd be worried about scratching it up.
It's just the right size too, the .380 is a little small for me, the .577 is kind of bordering on ridiculous.
.476 is just right. The grip feels fantastic, these point very well.
These are really amazing guns.
And of course they are for sale. Sadly I will not be taking any of them home myself.
But that means anyone out there watching this, you could make any one, or all three of these yours.
If you check the links below, those will take you to the catalogue pages at Rock Island for all three guns.
You can take a look at Rock Island's descriptions, their pictures, etc.
And place a bid on-line or make some arrangements to come out here for the auction live in December.
So good luck to anyone who decides to bid on these, I think whoever wins them will be very happy with them.
And thanks for watching.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]