[ Montenegrin Gasser M1870 Revolvers ]
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 they're going to be selling in their
upcoming June of 2016 Regional Auction.
And they had a pair of Gasser revolvers that I thought,
"Really shouldn't miss the opportunity to take a look at these."
Now these things are massively huge pistols,
one might compare them to, say, the Desert Eagles of their day.
But ... there are a couple of very interesting pieces of history to these.
So, of course when this gun was first developed it didn't have these ornate grips to it.
This was originally made for the Austro-Hungarian cavalry.
... These were designed in 1869, they were adopted by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1870.
And the reason that they are so huge
is they are actually chambered for the 11.25x36mm Werndl carbine cartridge.
And the idea here was actually this classic idea that we still talk about to this day
of cartridge interchangeability between a handgun and a rifle.
So, you see that in a lot of different places, you'll see it for example with the Spanish Guardia Civil
choosing their carbine based on their handgun cartridge.
You see a lot of it talked about in the Old West,
carbines and handgun cartridges again being
chosen so you only need to get one type of ammo, and you can use it in both guns.
Well, the same thing applied here, the idea was these cavalrymen had single-shot carbines
and they were using ammunition that was a bit smaller
than the standard Werndl rifle ammunition.
The US did the same thing with Trapdoor Springfields,
the carbines were issued a lighter load than the full-length rifles.
But since you've only got a single-shot carbine, you're going to have a sidearm with it.
Well, why not make it use the same ammo, save some logistical effort, that sort of thing.
So that's why these guns have such huge cylinders and long barrels
is to take advantage of the amount of black powder in that rather large cartridge.
So these cartridges originally fired about a 310 grain bullet at about 700 feet per second.
For non-American folks, that comes out to about 440 joules of muzzle energy.
Which on an energy scale that's a little bit low, that's about equivalent to a 9mm Parabellum.
But that's of course not necessarily the whole story
because this is a very large bullet going fairly slowly,
where muzzle energy tends to favour high-velocity bullets.
So, I would compare this to about a .45 ACP.
.45 was 230 grain bullet at 850, this is 310 at 700.
You don't want to get shot by one of these, let's just leave it at that.
So these were developed by a guy named Leupold Gasser, he founded the Gasser Company.
He actually died in 1871, just after these guns had been put on the market.
However, his son picked up the business,
and continued to work and developed a bunch of other revolver patterns.
Ultimately the most successful one would probably have been the 1898,
which was adopted and used by the Austro-Hungarian military as well.
And it was one of their standard sidearms through World War One.
Now, obviously this humongous black-powder revolver became obsolete,
and when that happened they were put on the surplus market.
This was a time when a lot of government military arms
were simply sold off when they were considered obsolete.
Now, around this time period we have the Kingdom of Montenegro.
It was an independent country until 1918, and it became part of Yugoslavia after World War One.
But going into the war, it was its own small independent country.
And it was ruled by King Nicholas. Now he ruled from 1910 to 1918.
And ... I'm sure he did some cool stuff, or maybe some terrible stuff.
I honestly don't know a whole lot about King Nicholas,
except the one thing that he's best known for in gun circles, which is
he decreed that every adult male in Montenegro must possess a Gasser pattern revolver.
Now ostensibly this was done for reasons of national security,
very much like the American Second Amendment,
the idea was the best way we can defend Montenegro from a whole bunch of
potentially territory hungry ... neighbours is to have everyone armed to the teeth. So.
It's also been suggested, although I haven't seen any actual proof,
that King Nicholas may also have had stock in the Gasser industrial concern.
So he might have been profiting directly from this.
At any rate, he declares that everyone has to own one of these,
and so there's a huge number of sales of these guns to Montenegro.
A lot of the Austro-Hungarian surplus guns ended up being sold there.
In addition there was this huge rush of commercial gun makers eager to fill this new demand.
And so you had a lot of Spanish and Belgian copies of these guns being sold as well.
So, the quality really totally runs the gamut from fantastic guns
(mostly Austrian made Gassers were very well-made guns),
all the way to total junk.
And you'll see a huge variety of patterns.
These are both open frame and they have loading gates on them, which we'll take a look at in a moment.
You'll see solid frame ones, you'll see side loading gates, you'll see horizontal loading gates.
You'll see different finishes, blued, nickelled, engraved,
fancy grips, silver-plated sometimes.
... These guns became a status symbol.
If ... every male is required to own one,
the people who have more money and are a little better off
are going to use this as a way to show that.
Something pretty typical through human history.
So the result was really big revolvers.
This one actually has engraving on it that 100 years ago looked really nice.
It's pretty heavily worn but the engraving, to me, is actually way more tasteful than the grips.
But you get this sort of thing.
So why don't we go ahead and take a closer look at these, because
your day is not going to be complete until you see this up close.
These things are pretty darn humongous.
They do to some extent illustrate some of the differences.
For example, we have one barrel length here, we have a slightly shorter barrel here.
These are both open top, fixed frame guns with loading gates.
They are not hinged guns, although you do see those being made as well from time to time.
And these are both actually made by Gasser.
So if I take a look at the markings.
You can see here, L. Gasser, Leupold Gasser, Patent, in Wein, which would be Vienna, Austria.
Serial number there, Guss-Stahl is a type of steel.
And there's our serial number down there as well.
And we will have a serial number on the cylinder, there it is.
So while this gun is pretty heavily worn, it is all matching and original.
And of course the part that you are really interested in is this grip.
That grip really is something else.
Now the other one at first glance looks pretty similar, it's actually in a bit nicer condition.
... That shorter gun has a clipped firing pin, and the spring on its loading gate is not functioning.
This one is much better.
You can see this is also L. Gasser, Patent, in Vienna, serial number there as well.
And like I mentioned, you can see the remnants here
of what appears to be pretty well done embellishment actually.
It's unfortunate that this has faded and become so heavily worn over time.
Now mechanically the way these guys worked, they are double-action guns.
So I can cock the hammer just by pulling the trigger.
You had a loading gate here on the back, which is held in place by this little flat spring.
You open the loading gate, put the hammer at half-cock, which it is right now,
and then you can cycle through and load the cartridges.
You can see in here, nice, this is one of the features from Gasser
being a high quality revolver, it has countersunk chambers.
So the rim of the cartridge sits all the way down inside the chamber.
That's a definite safety improvement.
If you should have a case fail, that does a much better job of containing the gas
and making sure that it goes forward and not backward at the shooter.
... You have an ejector rod here.
Now it's kind of funny, this is actually a set screw that holds the ejector rod in place.
There's a little detent hole in the rod itself.
So once I open up that thumb screw, then I can use the ejector rod here
to punch out all of my empty casings.
When I'm done, I pull it all the way back out,
and then just tighten down that thumb screw, and that holds it in place.
Sights on these guys are actually mounted on the barrel, which is interesting.
Often you'll find that on the back of the frame, or even on the hammer itself.
But on these guys, the sight is mounted right to the barrel.
See if I can get you a view of that sight picture.
Pretty basic, pretty standard sort of thing.
Well, thanks for watching guys, hope you enjoyed the video.
I really always like seeing guns that look like trends
that we think are from today, but are in fact very much older.
And I think these illustrate that point very well.
People have always ... treated weapons as status symbols on occasion.
Here you go, here's the example of it.
If you'd like to get one of these because you're interested in Montenegro,
or you like this sort of decoration,
or you just need something to hang next to your tiger stripe Desert Eagle,
well, check the description text below.
You'll find a link to Rock Island's catalogue page on these two,
they're actually being sold as a pair together.
And if you like them, you can go ahead and place a bid right there on Rock Island's website.
Thanks for watching.