Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm joined today by Mr. Jonathan Ferguson
who is the author of the upcoming Headstamp book on British bullpup rifles.
And you might be wondering ...
(By the way, the book is currently available for pre-sale, check out the link in the description text below.)
Now, you might be wondering why do we have this,
I think this is actually like a floor jack, right?
Why we have this thing and why are you here talking about it? What is this?
- I am going to be completely honest and admit that when I first came here
two something years ago, I completely missed this.
It was only when Matthew Moss did his very good video and article on the Armourer's Bench
Which in fact check that out for more detail on this. - Also a link to that in the description below.
- That I realised, "Oh", and then I thought, "OK, that must have been in storage."
But it was on display all the time, and I'm just a bad firearms curator.
- We are, by the way, at the Cody Firearms Museum, where this is still on display right now. So.
- When we put it back. - Yes, yeah, because it's not on display at this very moment because it's right here.
Now what's interesting about this is they have it on display in conjunction with the Winchester 1893
and the Spencer/Bannerman pump shotguns because ... this is really interesting in that it is both
the first documented bullpup, and it's part of Winchester's attempt to win a patent infringement case about a slide action.
So do you want me to give some background on this, or do you want to?
- I can jump in. Yeah, it's so ... two different time frames separated by a few decades.
1866 is when William Curtis (who's British, so he fits the book nicely),
patents this, whatever this is. - A thing.
- And then flash-forward to 1895 when you have this court case that Matt goes into about
Bannerman's trying to sue Winchester for two of their new products that have a pump or slide action.
So they then go scouring patent archives to try to prove that wrong.
- Basically if Bannerman's patent, or Spencer's patent,
isn't valid because someone had already invented the slide action.
- Multiple times. So what we're interested about is the bullpuppiness of this,
I've just invented that word, I'm going to stick with it.
And you look at it and you think, "What? How is that a bullpup?"
- However, it's one of those over the shoulder bullpups, kind of like the French Faucon where what we have here,
it's folded up, but you have basically a shoulder strap.
... You know what else this reminds me of? The early Carl Gustav recoilless rifles,
they have a similar thing. So your shoulder sits here.
... This by the way is a drum magazine and your firing action which extends back over your shoulder.
In fact we have a drawing of how this was intended to be used.
And then you hold it up here kind of like a P90 with your firing hand there and your front hand like that.
- It is in fact very bullpup.
- Yeah, like everything is behind your grip, because your grip's at the front six inches of the thing.
- Yeah, if we use that as the definition, which is broadly what I'm going with in the book,
yeah, it couldn't be more bullpup. It's got the gun sticking out that way.
So ... we should say actually this is not the first bullpup,
it's the first repeating bullpup as far as anyone knows. And of course we can always be proved wrong.
But yeah, it's a repeater. You pump the cocking handle if you'd call it that.
- This guy slides back, we unfortunately can't really do it because this gun is all sticky,
and this is a very prototype y sort of thing. So when did Curtis build this one?
- Well, you threw me right off there. ...
I've already spoken about the two time frames. He never built it.
This was a patent, really good actually set of patent drawings, quite realistic ones, not these kind of aspirational ones.
... But the other day, ... this is one for another day, but
somebody sent me a patent for a fully automatic revolver, 1839.
- Interesting. - That's not feasible in 1839. This was feasible in 1866,
without going into the details of what metallic cartridges they would have used at that time.
So the guys that actually build it are Winchester guys.
- Right, so Winchester goes to Europe looking for slide action guns. And they ... find this patent document,
but they can't find an actual example of it. ... Do we know if Curtis ever actually built one?
- I don't believe so, ... check out the article I mentioned for more details.
- There are lots of guns, ... lots of everything, that get patented but never actually get produced,
because the guy who designs this in his shed can't find anyone who's going to finance building it.
So Winchester has the patent, but they need to prove that it's actually a viable thing for their court case.
So they take this patent back, give it to the guys at the Winchester tool shop and say,
"Build us one of these so that we can take it into court and prove that it works,
and that the slide action has been around for 50, 40 years."
So this was actually manufactured by Winchester. Like the first British repeating bullpup, brought to you by Winchester.
Which didn't quite exist when this was designed. - That's a very good point, yeah.
Yes, it's the first repeating bullpup, full stop. So this sits alongside
the ... mid-1860s design that was built as a one-off,
also British, as a bench-rest type rifle, muzzleloading, by Isaac Riviere in the UK.
So these are the two earliest designs, albeit this one wasn't built until 1895. But even when it was built it was still the earliest.
- That's true. That predates all the Thorneycrofts, doesn't it? - The earliest magazine bullpup, definitely.
Well, magazine and repeating kind of go together.
- OK, let's go ahead and take a closer look at a couple of these elements.
So ... there's not much we can show you about it functioning, but we can look at it up close.
Alright, so if we start at the front of the thing here.
This grip is actually fixed in place and it's pinned onto the barrel, you can see it there.
This is just for stabilising and holding the thing. That's your actual trigger.
And you can see when I pull on that we're going to tension this wire.
You think that modern bullpups have like crummy triggers because they have crummy connecting rods,
well, this has a literal piece of fine wire that's going to run all the way back along the gun to the sear.
So to fire it you pull that, pulls the wire forward, we'll touch on what that does at the back in a moment.
Then you have this is your bolt handle and like I said, unfortunately
this is pretty well jammed in place right now, because it has not been used and needs a little bit of restoration to it.
But you unlock this by pulling the bolt handle back and then this whole thing cycles backward like a slide action.
In fact Winchester might tell you exactly like a Bannerman/Spencer slide action.
So as we move backwards here you can see we've still got our trigger wire here.
This is the actual shoulder stock. Now it's folded up, and unfortunately
because of the condition of the leather here I can't fold it down.
But this bar folds down to about a 45 degree angle, and then you had a leather strap right there that acted as an
effective shoulder stock. Now like I said, very much like the Gustav, the m/42 Carl Gustav recoilless was like this.
How's that for a connection? - Very good.
- Then we come back to this guy, this brass fixture is actually a drum magazine.
So Winchester made this for .32 Winchester centrefire. The original patent of course doesn't specify a cartridge,
it also doesn't specify the mag, but you could count the magazine capacity on the original patent drawing. But
Winchester changed this up a bit to make it for a modern cartridge that's ... in the 1890s.
It holds about a dozen rounds. But there's a spring inside here that is constantly putting tension on
this coil of cartridges inside.
And what's kind of unique about this is we typically think of a drum magazine as feeding,
you know, from the centre pushing rounds out to some feed thing on the outside periphery of the drum.
On this, this centre axis is the barrel itself, so the chamber is right there.
This drum magazine actually pushes cartridges into the centre, where they get shoved into the chamber by the bolt.
Now you can see this string on here. That is basically your magazine spring override,
you use that to wind up the ... drum and hold tension on it while you actually load it.
And then when you're firing it's constantly pushing cartridges in.
Now our bolt is right here, connected to this rod.
This is the bolt handle, this connects to the bolt handle up front.
So when this comes back it's going to pull the bolt back with it, which will pull the empty case out,
eject it somehow (it's not entirely clear how that gets ejected).
And then when the bolt goes back forward, the spring tension in the drum will have pushed a round into the centre,
when you push the bolt forward it pushes it into the chamber up here, and you're ready to fire again.
So speaking of which, the firing string, the firing wire,
comes back through the drum here to this spot right there. And when you pull the trigger
this lifts up on that sear, which allows a striker to go forward and actually fire the gun.
So it's a pretty ad-hoc design.
- It's worth remembering that this is not even a prototype. This is effectively a patent model.
So it has no sights. The ergonomics: well ergonomics weren't really a thing in 1866,
but even Victorian ergonomics are not actually factored in yet. - Right.
This is to prove the mechanism, and presumably had they found a manufacturer willing to build it
... this would have been the core idea built into a functional firearm.
- And like the Faucon, ... well that at least had a role in the trenches in theory. It was conceived in that kind of direction.
- This doesn't even have a role ... in any clear way. - Yeah, it doesn't. - Yeah, possibly ever.
- So, there you go. I think this is a fascinating piece because it's tied into like three different parts of firearms history.
You know standing alone it's the first repeating bullpup. British-designed,
1860s, like jeez, that's right ... at the cusp of truly practical metallic cartridges.
But then it's equally interesting from the perspective of the pump action lawsuit controversy between Bannerman and ...
Bannerman bought the Spencer patents for guns between
the lawsuit between them and Winchester for the first really successful pump action shotgun, the Winchester 93s.
And it's just so weird looking on top of all that.
A truely very cool piece of firearms history here.
So as I mentioned at the beginning, this is on display at the Cody Firearms Museum where you can come in and
take a look at it alongside all of the guns that were relevant as well to the Winchester court case.
And, more importantly, this is featured in Jonathan's book which is currently on pre-sale,
being published by Headstamp, a book on British bullpup rifles, 1901 to 2018.
It is currently being pre-sold, so price is a little bit less than it will be retail. There's some cool extra perks, stretch goals, and
extra bonus stuff that you can get for being part of the pre-sale. It's a fantastic book.
We're really looking forward to getting it into print, and you should definitely check it out,
link in the description below to the Kickstarter pre-sale. And make Jonathan very happy. - It will.
- Thanks for watching guys.
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