Hey guys thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com
I'm Ian and you may have seen this before
We have talked about these before
This is an 1883 pattern German Reichsrevolver
This particular one was manufactured at the Erfurt factory in 1894
So it is a very old firearm
I've done videos on these before
You may have also seen the C&Rsenal video on the Reichsrevolver with Othais and Mae
But, until now, I've never had the chance to shoot one
So, I now have a 1883 pattern here that I can use and I have a box full of ammo
And I am curious to see what these actually shoot like
So a little bit of background info in case you don't want to sit through all the other material out there
The Germans adopted this revolver in slightly less modern form in 1879
Updated it in 1883
And it would serve as the standard German military sidearm until the adoption of the Luger in 1908
And what's interesting about this is that it is a just massively obsolete revolver
It's single action only, it actually has a manual safety on it
Which only functions if the hammer is down
And then all the safety does is prevent you from cocking the hammer
So the safety is basically useless
This was made for durability and reliability on top of all other considerations
So the trigger pull sucks, the force required to cock the hammer is substantial and it sucks
The sights pretty much suck, the handling kind of sucks
Really what this has going for it is its like the Toyota Hilux of revolvers
It, presumably, just won't ever break
Which is kind of substantiated by the fact that I have an 1894 one here that is entirely brown and devoid of finish
And, presumably, it is still going to work for me
Now these fire the 10.6 or 10.55 millimeter German ordinance cartridge
Which is basically equivalent to the .455 Webley
It's about a 250 or 260 grain bullet moving at about 650 feet per second
So, definitely a member of the heavy and slow school of thought of revolver ammunition or handgun ammunition in general
These were originally black powder, in fact this ammo is black powder as well
And that pretty much covers it
It's a six shot gun, does not, oh the one thing I left out, has no ejector
So you have to use a separate manual ejector
Which is basically technical speak for a stick, and I brought a little plastic punch with me to do that job
Just, wow, a fantastically under thought revolver
It does have recessed chambers, which is nice
I've got it at half cock right now
I'm only gonna load five in this thing
Because, I guess I'm shooting all six
I don't know that I would carry this with a round under the hammer
Alright, got five there
Close our loading gate
And then, it is single action only
Remember this is 1879 and 1883 are the two adoption dates on these guns
Six years before this the American army adopted a much better single action revolver
In 1873 the French army adopted a double action revolver that's quite good
There's really no good reason for them to have left out all the useful bits on this gun
And gone with something as bare bones and primitive as this is
But, lets see how it handles
Nice old black powder smoke cloud there
This actually has some kick to it
That big bullet, it may be going slow but that's gonna have some heft to it you don't want to get hit by this
Alright, now that I've finished firing all the rounds in the cylinder, to unload I'm going to pop the loading gate open
Put the hammer at half cock, that allows it to spin freely, although only in one direction
And then
I need my manual ejection rod, so got this little plastic punch
That one's kind of tight, oh there we go, just didn't have it lined up quite right
That's the empty one I left
There we go
Now, to reload it I just leave it like this
And then I can load
Now I mentioned that this has recessed chambers
What I mean by that is that the rim of the cartridge is sunk down into the face of the chamber
And that's a good thing for safety, which kind of is what this revolver has going for it
So, because that's nice and deep, if you did have a failure in the case
It's not going to vent out, it's going to be contained by the cylinder
Alright, since I'm shooting this right now I'm going to load all six
There we go, you'll notice that these case heads are marked 44 Remington magnum
That is what you can make the brass out of should you be so inclined
There's your sight picture, not much of one
But
Alright, I want to see if I can actually hit anything with this
No, pretty much not
Shoots substantially high for me at about 50 yards
Heavy trigger certainly doesn't help that
But, you know what, up close this thing would get the job done
I kind of anticipated that this would be another wimpy, you know, late 1800's European revolver cartridge
Like so many of them were
Pretty much everyone except the Americans, the Brits and the Germans
You know what, this things got some substantial recoil to it
Got some heft to it
As long as you only need six rounds and you're okay with manually cocking the hammer and not having double action
This isn't actually as bad as I thought
I'd regulate the sights a little bit better but that may be a function of the more modern hand loaded ammunition I'm using
Which isn't of course German army standard because none of that exists anymore except in very rare collectors circles
There you go guys, German 1883 Reichsrevolver
One of those cool revolvers that does, in fact, have a manual safety on it
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It the support from folks there that makes me able to go out and get stuff like 10.6 millimeter German ordinance ammunition
To share with you guys
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