Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today, courtesy of Legacy Collectibles,
we have a Luxembourg Gendarmerie
Model of 1884 Nagant revolver to take a look at.
Now obviously the Nagant revolver is a fantastically popular,
well-known, everyone's thrilled to find out more about
black powder Nagant revolvers, right?
Well, OK, maybe not so much. But, I think once you actually dig into the background of this,
it's really interesting how it fits into the whole pattern of black powder revolver development in Europe.
And ... it really gives you some insight into what the Nagant brothers were doing as a company.
And this is one of the guns that would lead to some revolvers that are very well known and popular,
like the Russian Model of 1895 Nagants.
So, ... let's just jump right in to the short version of the Nagant brother's history ...
... Their first work with revolvers basically was with the Model of 1872 Dutch military revolver,
which they probably were subcontractors on for some of the parts manufacture,
something along those lines, it's a little vague.
They developed their own first pattern in 1878, which was adopted by the Belgian military.
They simplified that to a single action only, like economy infantry model in 1883.
They then kind of came back and had a simpler double action trigger mechanism in the 1886 pattern.
All of these being adopted by the Belgian military.
They then ... transitioned from a large bore cartridge to a small bore cartridge,
going from 9.4mm down to 7.5mm.
The 7.5mm gun with this same basic design system
was sold to a bunch of other countries, including Norway and Sweden.
And that system would continue to progress and develop
and eventually become the Russian Model of 1895.
Now, if you want a detailed history of the Nagant brothers themselves
and the Belgian military patterns, which I think are a fantastic foundation
for really understanding where this one comes from,
I would highly recommend that you check out the C&Rsenal video on Belgian
World War One military revolvers.
Because Othais and Mae there go into significant detail in an hour long video about,
largely, those three models that I just mentioned.
They have examples of all three of them, they'll show you the internal lockwork of all three,
and if this interests you at all definitely check out that video.
Now, as this specifically applies to Luxembourg. Luxembourg is a tiny little Duchy.
They had at the time, their combined Army and Gendarmerie strength was like two companies of men.
Something like 500 guys. So
this isn't going to be an order that's going to make a great fortune for the Nagant brothers.
In fact, no one's going to make a whole lot of money arming the Luxembourg military forces.
But what's interesting is that Luxembourg ordered three different versions of this revolver,
and two different calibres.
So they had an Army version, which was 7.5mm and basically, as far as I can tell,
identical to the Swedish 1887 pattern.
They then had an Army version with a safety, ... and the safety was a cylinder lock,
very much like the Dutch police revolvers
(which I also have a video on, which I'll link at the end of this one).
Because those safety model guns were issued to, for example, prison guards.
And they were mandated to be loaded with a couple of blank cartridges first in the cylinder,
and then live ammunition.
And to ensure that you didn't mess up the order and accidentally shoot someone when you intended to fire a blank,
they put a cylinder locking safety on the guns, which is rather interesting.
And then the third pattern was the Gendarmerie model, which is this one,
which they kept the older, larger, 9.4mm cartridge, not entirely sure why.
They gave it a longer barrel so that they could fit a bayonet to it.
So let me show you this thing up close. Alas, I don't have a bayonet to show you,
but we do have a few pictures.
These are pretty big revolvers, but they feel quite good in the hand, they point well.
There are no specific Luxembourg markings to be found on these,
they don't have a crest or anything like that.
All we have is a little "Brevet Nagant", meaning Nagant patent,
and then serial numbers. And this is actually serial number 4. So just about one of the very first.
We have a serial number here on the barrel, as well as on the frame.
This little star over M that you see is an inspector's mark, approving that the gun is good to go.
These are double action guns, so ... self-cocking.
You can fire them by pulling the trigger or you can manually cock the hammer first.
Note that they have a rebounding hammer, so when I hold the trigger down,
the hammer goes all the way flush, and the firing pin's going to poke all the way through to fire the cartridge.
When I release the trigger the hammer will bounce back, just a little bit,
and that's just enough to keep the firing pin clear of any primer.
So that you can have the hammer down over a loaded chamber safely.
This is something that is being developed about this time.
So in fact some of the early Belgian Nagant revolvers did not have this feature,
but the 1884 Luxembourg contract does.
As for loading, there is a loading gate here that flips down.
This will continue almost unchanged through the Russian Nagants for World War One.
And then you just rotate the cylinder manually, load all 6 of your cartridges.
When you are done, you just flip that loading gate back up, keep them from falling out.
While the gate's down, trigger works, everything works.
Some guns have like an Abadie system, where the trigger disconnects from the hammer and ...
forget it, there's none of that fanciness on this. Just open gate, load cartridges.
If you want to empty the gun after firing cartridges, you would take your ejector rod here,
pull it out, you can then rotate this lug over to the side,
and then you can manually line up the cylinder and punch out each cartridge in turn.
It's a relatively slow process, but there's not a whole lot to go wrong.
Now the Gendarmerie model here is in 9.4mm, that was a 189 grain bullet travelling at 650 feet per second.
So kind of typical. This was a black powder cartridge, never did get a smokeless iteration as far as I am aware.
The Army guns were in 7.5mm, and the other difference between the two,
really the only other difference between the two, is that the Gendarmerie guns had a substantially longer barrel.
20mm longer, so almost an inch longer.
And a slightly different shape to the front sight.
And the reason for this was to be able to mount
a sort of a detachable bayonet lug that clamped on behind this front sight.
Hence the wide base and the ... sharp square corner at the back of the ... sight.
You could clamp on a little holder, and then there was a little tiny bayonet that stuck in,
maybe 4 inches long, that snapped in under the barrel.
And if you had a regular Army length barrel, the ejector rod would not clear that bayonet lug.
So in order to make them both work, they left the ejector rod the same,
but they lengthened the barrel out so you could clamp the bayonet on and have just enough room
to pull this ... ejector rod all the way out.
Disassembly of Nagant revolvers is pretty easy. We'll start by taking out the cylinder
which requires ... pulling out the ejector rod, pivot this out,
and then we pull out the cylinder axis pin.
There is a little spring-loaded latch on the axis pin, right there,
that locks it in place to prevent it from accidentally coming out.
This is something that was on the very first pattern of Belgian Nagant
that they ditched on later patterns in the interests of economy.
But the Luxembourg Gendarmerie kept it.
So once we depress that little latch we can pull the axis pin.
Then you just open the loading gate and the cylinder drops right out.
Six shots. We have a Belgian proof mark
you can see it, there it is. ELG in a circle there.
And an inspector's mark, but nothing else on the cylinder.
Point out here that there are no flutes in the cylinder, it's just smooth.
That is an efficiency thing, it makes the cylinder a little bit heavier but a little bit cheaper.
So, as you can see we've got a mixture of features that were removed
for economisation in the Belgian guns, and features that weren't.
Now the rest of disassembly I think is pretty cool.
We've got this screw here which has a little letter "A" above it.
That is not an inspector's mark, that is the beginning of your disassembly instructions.
So let me take that screw out and I'll show you.
Alright, with this removed we can then pull off the side plate of the gun.
So that comes off.
If you were wondering how they did that like wood veneer checkering on the front strap and the back strap,
it's simple: they had a big slab of wood ... through the whole centre of the grip there.
Now here's our lockwork, and if you go watch Othais's video, you'll see that this is the 1886 pattern
of lockwork. And there are a few interesting hold overs here.
It only has a single spring that acts as both trigger spring and hammer spring.
... Actually there is a second little tiny flat spring in there
to allow it to function in double action.
But there is a screw here, and in the original version of Nagant's revolver
you could take out this screw and the whole trigger guard hinges down,
and that would relieve tension on the mainspring.
On this pattern the mainspring is actually hooked up inside the trigger.
So the mechanism for pivoting this down is still there, but it doesn't actually do anything useful,
except allowing you to disassemble the gun.
Now, speaking of that, you might wonder what is the next step if we want to completely strip this thing?
And you don't actually have to just try to remember it, because there is a little "B"
marked right there, under the main spring, the main spring is your second piece to remove.
Your third piece is the hammer, labelled "C".
The fourth piece is the hand, labelled "D".
Fifth piece is the trigger, "E".
Sixth piece is the screw holding the trigger guard in place, that's "F".
And then we have the trigger guard itself, which is "G".
And once we're done with that, you are left with a completely detail stripped revolver.
So, I think it's really cool that they went through and just lettered each part,
so that you didn't have to try and remember, like it's got its own built-in disassembly instructions.
The best number I've been able to find for these was a total production of 190 guns.
I can't confirm it, but that kind of makes sense given the size of the Luxembourg Gendarmerie at the time,
which was really, really small compared to anybody else in Europe.
So they are very rare guns. I have actually not encountered either of the Army models yet,
but I'm keeping my eye out for those, because they will make very nice companion videos for this one.
This is definitely, I think, the most interesting of the Luxembourg Nagant revolvers.
So hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
A big thanks to Legacy Collectibles for loaning me this one to bring to you guys on film.
If you're interested in interesting and unusual collectable firearms,
or just the hobby itself, definitely check out their YouTube channel,
I'll have a link for that in the description below.
Thanks for watching.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]