Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at RIA taking a look at,
well, this is like a knife gun on steroids.
I think this is someone's fun time project.
Let me show this thing to you.
First off, it's really quite huge. So just for comparison's sake there's a Colt 1903 Pocket Hammer,
which is not exactly a small gun.
This thing has a 4.5 inch barrel, and it's kind of about the same size.
In fact, the knife gun is actually a little bit bigger.
In particular the knife gun is significantly wider.
Now, let's consider where these show up historically. Because there are absolutely
authentic, vintage (these are typically late 1800s) knife guns.
Some of them are pinfire, some of them are percussion like this one.
And usually what they are is a single barrel with a small knife,
and then sometimes a few other little accoutrements. And some of the really cool ones have corkscrews,
which this does as well.
Now, the difference is those are actually intended to fold up and be really pretty small little pocket sorts of things.
You'll see some of them where they actually, instead of having a grip,
they have a set of basically knuckle duster knuckles, brass knuckles,
that will fold under to make the whole thing into a rather compact package to stuff in your pocket,
and that'll allow you to either use it as a weighted fist,
or open the knuckles up and use them as a grip.
Part of what makes me think this is somebody's fun time project, is that the material here is
obviously made to be reminiscent of the sort of old style of stag handle pocket knife.
Especially when you look at the texturing up here,
like this immediately reminds me of old vintage pocket knives.
But of course that's because ... that was set up there with a couple of knife blades and your other tools to fold in.
And you would have this same sort of cap at the other end.
Here, this thing has been made permanently with a pistol style of grip to it,
and you can actually hold this thing way better than most historical knife guns.
The blade itself is a little funky. It folds in like that, but that's ... like as far as it'll go.
And someone has absolutely sharpened this.
It's very pointy, and the top edge (which is now on the bottom) is fairly sharp.
I have not figured out a good way to actually open it.
Once it's in this locked position it's kind of stuck there, unless you pry up on this lever to let it out.
Now we have two gun barrels here. They're both smoothbore, and they're approximately 12mm.
There are no proof marks on it anywhere.
This is not a historical design of any type that I'm familiar with.
And if it were, typically the historical versions of these come out of a place like Liège,
and they will have Belgian proof marks on them. This one does not.
Now the two gun barrels are both percussion fired.
So you have a hammer back here, and when you cock the hammer the trigger drops.
And there are two triggers, one for each barrel.
So when I cock this hammer it will pop out that trigger as well.
And the triggers look like sort of corkscrews. And that is a callback to the original versions,
... at least one, I've got a good video on one of these where the corkscrew was like this, the trigger.
However, I don't really see this being in any way a functional corkscrew,
where on the historical ones they at least sort of plausibly are.
You have of course your two spots for two percussion caps there.
There's no safe way to carry this thing capped, because once you pull the trigger
(and these have very stiff hammer springs),
once you pull the trigger that drops.
In theory, you could cock it, put on a percussion cap, and then fold the trigger up.
But if you do that you don't have any way to open the trigger
without like getting a real screwdriver and lifting it out.
There's no leverage, like once I do that, there's no way to get that trigger down again,
short of taking my screwdriver,
and ... popping it open like so.
Once you have fired, you can then flip the triggers up because when you re-cock the hammer, they'll drop down again.
One of the cool things about Rock Island here is that everything shows up there.
Everything from projects like this,
to the really the rarest and most obscure, interesting, historical prototype firearms.
That's a thing all right. But you know that there is somebody out there who sees this,
and maybe it's you, and goes, "Oh my god, that's the coolest thing ever. I must have it."
So, what can I say? It's certainly different.
Thanks for watching.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]