[ Reiger Model 1889 ]
Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at RIA
taking a look at another Austrian
late 1880s manually operated pistol.
Now a couple of days ago we did a video
on a Passler model very similar to this.
And this is a Reiger Model of 1889,
which is essentially a Passler, or Passler & Seidl, action
that has been redesigned with a new feed system, a really cool feed system.
It was designed by a guy named Edwin Reiger, about whom we know nothing.
So I really got nothing to add there,
so let's just go ahead and take a close look at this feed system.
Alright, we have no markings whatsoever to show you,
so we can skip past that part.
We do have a very cool looking brass frame on this, ... that's just awesome.
Brass ring trigger on it as well.
The basic features here are going to be the same style of rotating bolt for locking as the Passler.
We'll take the side plate off in a moment, and I'll show you that.
The same style of ring trigger, you can close it and then fire with that trigger.
Or the way it was kind of intended to be used in rapid fire
is you actually kind of shoot it like an open bolt gun.
Close it, immediately hit the trigger, and it fires.
There is a safety on the back here, right there.
This operates just like the Passler was supposed to,
but the Passler we saw in video didn't quite work.
And what I mean by that is the safety actually locks into the striker.
So it's physically sitting behind the bolt, it prevents the bolt from moving,
and it prevents the striker from dropping,
because the striker is being held in place by the safety.
We do have a rear sight on this one,
which is cool because it's actually a range adjustable rear sight. Neat.
But the part that I was piping up is of course the magazine.
So, we can slide this door open, and drop out this awesome little, 6 shot, sheet metal clip.
One of these is unfortunately broken away.
But the rest of this is, well, the closest thing I can compare it to is a Blake rifle charger.
It's actually very, very similar in concept to the Blake rifle.
And it's sort of, think of it like a detachable revolver cylinder.
So you've got cuts back here that are operated by a hand to cycle this as the pistol is fired,
just like a revolver cylinder.
And then each one of these little sheet metal spaces you clip a cartridge into.
So inside here - this is actually sort of, I think, part of a feed lip,
basically to help control the cartridge.
But when you open the bolt, you have a hand that's going to lift up,
and that's going to cycle this.
It's going to push on one of these cuts here and rotate it.
And then it drops back out of the way when the bolt is closed.
There's a little cut in the front, and another cut in the back,
for the two sort of pegs at the front and back of this.
So this drops right in there.
You load it up with 6 rounds, drop it in, once it's empty you can just drop it out
and replace it with a new loaded one.
This screw is just a stop so that the door doesn't come all the way off.
And we can then actually see that clip rotating as the action cycles.
Well, most of the time it's properly rotating, there we go.
It's a little old, you've got to cut it a little bit of slack there.
So that is how you take one of these ring-trigger pistols
and, in addition to it having like a fast double-action style of trigger,
also giving it an easily reloadable detachable magazine.
Right, I did also say I would take the side plate off and show you the internals.
So this is like the Passler, when you take this screw out
the ring trigger is actually ... under spring tension already in its at rest state,
and that screw is the axis pin that's holding it in position.
So when I take this out the ... ring is going to kind of bounce out of place.
Now if I pull that side plate off.
We've got some extra trigger bits on here, and I'm going to leave this in place.
You can clearly see that this is exactly the same mechanism as the Passler.
So it's got a single peg there for the ring trigger to control.
A rotating bolt, there's your ... primary locking lug.
The trigger mechanism itself in there is identical to the Passler.
So if you want to see exactly how this functions, go take a look at the Passler video.
I don't want to risk pulling this one apart and having some spring fly out of place.
This is one of those guns that just ... it's so steampunky.
It would be awesome to get a reproduction of it, the brass frame, ...
the little detachable Blake-style clip, the ring trigger, it's fantastic.
Unfortunately, there are only two of them known to exist, and this is one of the two.
It was possibly trialled by the French military.
That notion is based on the fact that there are some drawings of its cartridge
which is basically the .320 Short Revolver cartridge, just like the Passler,
but redesignated 8mm Reiger.
Anyway, there are drawings of this in the archives of Gévelot, the French cartridge manufacturing company.
That doesn't mean they actually made it, but it means they looked at it,
and possibly for military testing.
We know the Passler was actually tested by the French military,
it's entirely possible that this was done at the same time.
Probably not this exact pistol.
But that's kind of all I got on this, there's not a whole lot of other documentation.
It's just a really neat manually operated pistol.
We've got one more of these coming, and that'll be in a couple more days.
And that is the absolute beautiful Cadillac of manually operated Austrian pistols,
so stick around for that.
Thanks for watching.