Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here at Morphy's
and we're taking a look at a little
.41 calibre rimfire Derringer today.
Specifically, this is a Ballard's patent Derringer.
Charles H. Ballard of Worcester, Massachusetts,
is really much better known for his rifles than he is for his Derringers.
But he and his company decided to get into
manufacturing a little tiny pocket pistol, so let's take a closer look.
In order to open this up we have a spring latch here.
Pull that forward and you can lift the barrel up,
so that latch just locks into this notch in the frame.
And then we have an extractor here that is mechanically cammed.
So it's not spring-loaded like the Colt 3rd Model,
it's not a knife blade like the Moore/Colt 1st Model,
it is mechanically connected to the hinge pin.
So that's nice. If you have a stuck case that'll give you a fair amount of leverage
using the barrel to crank the case out of the chamber.
It's not a full-on ejector, it's not going to throw the case out of the gun for you.
None of these were really meant to be reloaded very quickly.
But that's a pretty good extractor design.
These were manufactured in the early 1870s.
I don't have any really good serial number data for you on them,
but this guy is number 3,600 and change.
Best information I have is that "several thousand" were manufactured.
And of course like other Derringers of the time,
once you fire it and it's empty, you can grasp it this way.
The grip's really better for doing this than it is for actually shooting.
So in this position it becomes a single brass knuckle,
and if the bullet didn't do the job you can hit somebody with it as well.
There is a front sight on here, but I don't know
that it's going to do you a whole lot of good, there's no rear sight.
I guess you'd line that up with the top of the barrel.
If you're using this in a situation where you have to take close aim
and make use of that front sight, I think you are kind of doing it wrong.
I'll take the grip panel off just so you can get a view inside.
There we go. That's the lug that the grip screw attaches into.
You've got a little steel pin there (possibly iron pin) just to locate the grip and keep it in position.
And then that "S" curve there is the main spring.
You can see it contracting when I cock the hammer.
So pretty standard stuff for a Derringer, very simple guns.
While the vast majority of these were in .41 rimfire,
there were also a small number made in .30 rimfire, those are quite scarce today.
People often denigrate the effectiveness of the .41 rimfire cartridge,
but it really was more practical and more dangerous than a lot of people give it credit for.
Original loaded black-powder ammunition used 12 or 13 grains of black powder
under a 130 (approximately) grain bullet.
And they were getting muzzle velocities of 500, maybe 550 feet per second,
and that's not really anything to scoff at.
Now what's interesting is when smokeless powder took over in the market
there were still a lot of .41 rimfire Derringers being sold.
Colt's 3rd pattern would go on to be manufactured until 1912,
well into the smokeless powder era.
And in order to keep things safe,
some of the ammunition manufacturers actually reduced their bullet diameter
from .405 to .407 in the original ammunition to something like .399
... and then loaded it with smokeless powder.
And the idea was that this would ... add a safety factor for older guns.
They also reduced the bore diameter of their modern production Derringers.
So ... if you took the modern cartridge, the smokeless cartridge,
and fired it in a black powder gun, you'd get a lot of blow-by, reduce the amount of pressure.
And I think that's one of the things that primarily led to the reporting of
these cartridges having muzzle velocities in the high 300 feet per second.
It was actually a mismatch of small diameter bullets
in large bore early production black-powder Derringers.
Anyway, I think the variety in these is interesting to me,
even if the guns are all relatively similar.
It's neat to see how there were different mechanisms that were being used,
and lots of people trying to get into this market.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.