Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at RIA
with a box of grungy old bullets. This is actually
a very cool, very exciting, box of grungy old bullets,
because this is original Volcanic ammunition.
And there is extremely little of that still around today.
And even better, we have the original box that it came in.
Now, I'll try to make this a little quick because
there's nothing you can see from back there.
A short version is there are two different cartridges that the Volcanic was chambered for.
One was a .31 calibre, and one was a .41 calibre.
The .31 was Cartridge Number 1, .41 was Cartridge Number 2.
And Cartridge Number 2 is what we have here.
Ballistically this was a 100 grain projectile with a 6.5 grain charge of black powder, which is pathetically tiny.
This generated out of a Volcanic pistol a muzzle velocity of approximately 260 feet per second,
which is going to be, off the top of my head, something like 80 metres per second.
This is extremely under-powered ammunition, which would be one of its primary faults.
However, one of the things that makes it very cool is it is completely self-contained ammunition.
This came before the successful development of the metallic cartridge case,
where you could use a material like brass that would expand upon firing,
seal all the gas pressure in the back end of the gun, force it to only propel the bullet forward.
And then retract down at least partially towards its original size,
so that it could be easily removed from the chamber.
That's what brass does, it obturates the back of the gun, and it does a great job at it.
But before people had developed that technology, well, what are you going to do?
This is one of your options for having what is in effect a cartridge.
There's nothing else to it. You take that, and you put it in the gun, and you fire it and boom, it works.
In fact, it is a caseless cartridge, there's nothing ... left after you fire that you have to pull out of the gun.
So, let me show you exactly what this looks like,
because this is actually the first time I've laid eyes on real Volcanic ammo.
You think that cool extra-large like 250 round value pack of ammunition they sell today is some new idea?
Yeah, not so much. Volcanic ammunition was sold in boxes of 200 rounds.
Interestingly, it was sold in tin boxes.
I don't know if you can actually hear that, but.
This particular one the label has been preserved with a piece of Plexiglas on top, which is a really good idea,
as that's the sort of thing that isn't likely to survive over a long period of time.
You can see the label there says,
"The ammunition should be kept in a box, and well greased. If for some reason it fails to fire,
you should carefully push it back with a rod, a cleaning rod or a stick, leaving the bolt down."
So, there was no extractor in the Volcanic because this is caseless ammunition,
and then after you fire there's nothing to extract.
So if you had a misfire, you couldn't just open the bolt and pull the cartridge out.
You had to open it and then like use a rod to push it back. Or leave the bolt closed, use a rod to push the cartridge
firmly down onto the bolt, and then try firing it a second time.
This does also suggest that dry firing a Volcanic could potentially damage the firing pin.
Good to know, if you have a Volcanic don't dry fire it.
So one last thing you'll notice, this is patented 1854.
Until [1856] they used cork in these. After [1856], and this is a post-[1856] box,
they transitioned ... to using a brass disk in the bottom.
So the way this stuff works is you have obviously a bullet here.
It is hollow on the inside with a charge of 6.5 grains of black powder in there.
There is then an anvil, and a sealing cup, and some fulminate primer.
And when the firing pin hits that, ... the primer will get hit against the anvil,
that will cause it to detonate, which will ignite the black powder and throw the bullet downrange.
So the way they manufactured this, they would produce the bullets.
They would fill them with powder, set the base cap and the primer in them.
They would then go ahead and grease these grooves, so you have some lubrication built into the bullets.
They would then swage the whole thing down to the proper diameter,
and then lacquer the thing so that the grease wouldn't come out,
you know, help seal this against any intake of water or excess humidity.
If you're counting these cartridges, you may notice that this is nowhere near 200.
That is because this box has two layers of ammunition in it.
You can see the base that these are all sitting on down there.
So I pulled this one out so that we could take a look at it.
There are a couple of different variations.
They went through a couple of different number and size of lubricating grooves in there.
As I said, this one you can see it actually kind of looks like a modern primer,
that indicates that it is one of the brass bases.
If it was one of the cork based cartridges it would be solid.
In fact, well, solid cork, but it wouldn't have this obvious primer in the centre.
Now there were some real advantages to this ammunition compared to the muzzle loaders of the time.
This was self-contained, it was largely waterproof,
certainly a lot more waterproof than loose powder or paper cartridges.
But it had a number of downsides. It was under-powered when it worked.
If you had malfunctions, they were kind of difficult to deal with.
It was possible to have magazine tube detonations with these ...
because these are all lined up nose to [primer] in the magazine tube. ...
And ... under the right circumstances they could detonate that way.
It was also possible for these to misfeed in such a way
that the pressure from the bolt trying to close and push them into the chamber
would cause them to detonate out of battery. That's not good.
But it's at least ameliorated by the fact that there's only a really small amount of powder in them.
There were some potential issues, ...
because the inside is hollow, it would occasionally happen that the front of the bullet would separate from the base
(kind of the equivalent of a separated case head today),
and you'd get the ... bullet tip flying downrange
but you were left with this ring of lead stuck in the chamber.
And you'd have to figure out how to get that out before you could fire again.
It was far from a perfect system.
And for that reason, of course, the Volcanic wouldn't be a long-term successful design.
Its descendants, however, would be the entire line of Winchester lever action rifles,
so really quite a substantial lineage for the first version.
And, of course, it had a cool name, because who wouldn't want a 'Volcanic' pistol?
Like, seriously.
These cartridges were almost certainly made by a company called Crittenden & Tibbals in South Coventry.
They're known to have supplied ammunition components for the Hunt Volitional Repeater,
and for early Smith & Wesson developmental work.
No one has found a box of these cartridges that actually says Crittenden & Tibbals on it,
because they were all remarked by resellers, or by Volcanic, or New Haven Arms Company.
But there's very little doubt that that's who actually made these.
It is interesting, you've almost certainly never heard of Crittenden & Tibbals.
Well, the company changed hands in the 1800s and became ... the Union Metallic Cartridge and Cap Company, or UMC.
Which was later merged with Remington, and UMC is still a major manufacturer of ammunition today. So,
same company that you might buy your ammo from today,
made this stuff back in the 1850s, which I think is really cool.
So also interesting to note that this stuff has gone up slightly in value since it was originally made.
The original price was 10 dollars per 1,000 for Number 1 cartridges,
and 12 dollars per 1,000 for Number 2 cartridges.
So this box originally would have cost two dollars and 40 cents, unless someone was marking it up.
Today it has an estimated value of about $20,000, based on having probably 180 cartridges in it.
I didn't pull the rest of these out. I don't want to touch any more of these then I absolutely have to
because they are rare, fragile, and extremely valuable.
So anyway, if you wanted to make some money back in 1855,
buying yourself a couple cases of Volcanic ammo and sitting on them for almost two centuries
could have been a good way to do it. But probably a little late to act on that now.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. I think it's very cool to actually see this stuff
for real for the first time, because you don't often get a chance to.
Thanks for watching.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]