[ Müller 1895 Prototype Pistol ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I am here today at the Rock Island Auction Company.
I'm taking a look at some of the guns that are coming up for sale
in their September of 2016 Premier Auction.
And one of them is this very interesting and unusual early prototype pistol.
This is an 1895 Müller pistol,
made by a Swiss gunsmith by the name of Bernhard Müller, he lived in Zürich.
He has helpfully printed that information on the side of the pistol,
because there's very little other information available on this thing.
It is a 7.5mm pistol, which makes sense for Switzerland.
The Swiss revolvers around this time period were all 7.5mm.
The Swiss rifles at this point were 7.5mm.
The Swiss kind of liked 7.5mm for whatever reason.
At any rate, I was expecting to find at least some reference to this
in German or Austrian or Swiss pistol trials, and I have not been able to.
So I don't know if it was simply not recorded
in the admittedly limited information I've been able to find,
or perhaps this pistol wasn't submitted to those trials.
I don't know, it is however an interesting design.
It's a simple blowback pistol, but it has a ...
(what's the best way to put it?) sort of rotating, sort of pivoting bolt
Why don't we just take a look at the inside.
Here we have it from the side, you can see written there:
Patent B. Müller, that's Bernhard Müller out of Zürich, Switzerland, 1895.
Now the cool part is to open it up and take a look inside.
You'll notice there is a screw here, and this whole side plate hinges open.
Kind of like a French 1873 revolver or several other designs.
I'm going to take the grips off first. Then I just have to remove this screw
which is what locks the side plate in place, and then we can just open it up.
There's the grip panel.
And there we have the internals of the Müller pistol.
So this is a simple blowback pistol, it is single action only.
You can see I can cock the hammer there, we've got a little sear catch.
We've got the trigger mechanism here.
Pretty simple trigger mechanism.
And then the bolt, when it cycles, rotates down and into the grip.
So the whole bolt assembly is this curved piece, and it's all one piece.
You can see it's cut out here so that the hammer axis pin
can stay in position and not have to move. And that's supported by the other side plate.
Our charging handle is located right here on the top of the bolt.
You grab it and pull it against the rear sight.
Now this pistol is missing its front sight blade.
And it is also missing a follower and magazine spring, which would have originally been in here.
So as is, it's just kind of an empty box in the magazine which doesn't really do anything.
However, when you had this complete,
when you pull the bolt back you can see that there's a little square cutout here.
That would be for a clip, probably they are 5 or 6 rounds.
And you would use ... the clip in place to hold the bolt open
because there is no automatic bolt hold open.
Put the clip in there to do it, load your magazine with 5 or 6 rounds,
and then pull the clip out, and the bolt will automatically close and chamber the first round.
Really not a whole lot else going on here.
This curved spring right here is the bolt mainspring.
And then this V-spring is what connects to the hammer.
You can see it kind of moving there.
And then the cocking mechanism is simply that when the bolt comes back,
it pushes on the hammer and forces it to re-cock.
When I hold the bolt back here, you can see the end of the V-spring
hooking onto this tail on the hammer.
So that's it, mechanically a pretty darn simple little pistol.
I'm a little surprised I couldn't find any reference to this
in any of the trials around at the time, but there it is.
Thanks for watching guys, I hope you enjoyed the video.
It's a cool chance to take a look at a neat pistol
that there's extremely little information out there on.
And it's also a great example of this fact
that there really is nothing fundamentally new in firearms design.
Even when you have things like the Kriss Vector that people think of as very innovative.
Well, you know what, they really are pretty heavily tied to stuff that was made 120 years ago.
So, if you'd like to add this to your own collection,
maybe set it next to a Kriss Vector on your wall and make the Vector all sad,
take a look at the description text below.
You'll find a link there to Rock Island's catalogue page on this pistol,
where you can see their pictures and their description.
And if you're interested in the pistol you can place a bid online or over the phone.
Or come right up here to Rock Island and participate in the auction live.
Thanks for watching.