Extra-Fancy 20 Shot Pinfire Revolver
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I am here today at the Rock Island Auction House
checking out some of the guns that they are going to be
selling in their April of 2016 Premier auction.
And this is an example of a gun that I actually have been
kind of wanting to find a good example of to show you guys.
This is a 20 shot, 2 barrelled, pinfire revolver,
which actually has some neat mechanics to it.
And what I found in this particular auction is this example,
which is also completely covered in
extremely fancy gold engraving and inlaying.
This is, I think without a doubt, the fanciest looking pinfire I have ever seen.
Normally when you find these things they're usually pretty darn beat-up.
This one is exactly the opposite, this is completely over the top.
So, why don't I bring the camera back here, because I know you can't see anything from that view,
and the whole point of this is to take a look at this impressive thing.
So let me begin by saying, "Good grief." That's quite the pinfire here.
Someone went to an incredible amount of work making something this ornate.
Now you can see we have tools here, we have a cleaning rod, a screwdriver for disassembly,
and this is an oil bottle
(like so), and then the gun itself.
Two barrels and 20 chambers.
Alright, let's start with some of the really ornate decoration that has been added here.
This whole thing is covered with this engraving, coupled with gold inlay
and these gold studs over, like, the entire surface of the gun.
Gold plated front sight.
We've got a manufacturer, "E.L.Malherbe & Cie. Liège", so Malherbe and company.
Liège, of course is Liège, Belgium, which was a major firearms manufacturing city.
Including, in particular, a lot of pinfire manufacture. I wasn't able to find any other information
on this company, although I found several other well-documented
manufacturers in Liège with the same last name, just not the same initials.
This is a folding trigger model, which is not uncommon for pinfires like this one,
well, mechanically like this one. I have not seen any other pinfires like this one as far as decoration goes.
Cool feathery looking thing on the hammer there.
And then the grip of course is right up to the same standards. This is either engraved or moulded.
What do you need to top it off, but a gold-plated lanyard ring?
Now the mechanics of this thing are also really cool. In order to get 20 shots
they had to have two barrels, because a ... cylinder with 20 shots that are all in a single
circle would be just really huge and impractical. So what they did is they have two actual
layers of chambers in there, and the inner round here, these match up with the bottom barrel. And the outer
circumference match up with the top barrel. Now in order to do this with just one hammer
what they did was they put two ... firing pins on the hammer.
This is a pinfire gun. You'll notice that there are these little notches on each of the chambers,
so a pin sticks out of each one of those and hitting the pin straight in is what fires the cartridge.
So you'll see that these ... firing pins have angled surfaces on the back. That is so that when they impact
they will drive the pin
directly down into the cartridge and set it off.
Now the way this works is you've got one ratchet on the back of this cylinder and it rotates the cylinder
what looks like from the top about half a position ... each time you cock the hammer.
So you can see that this chamber is lined up with the barrel. Okay, that's great. When I cock the hammer,
oh, now nothing is lined up with the barrel.
That's because one of our inner ring of chambers is lined up with the bottom barrel.
So when I pulled the trigger this top firing pin hits nothing right there,
but the bottom firing pin is going to go inside and hit that pin right there.
(This is a little finicky, there we go.)
Now, when I cock the hammer again
it rotates another kind of what looks like half position,
and now we have nothing lined up with the bottom [firing pin],
but we have this chamber lined up with the top [firing pin].
So you get 20 shots and the system mechanically deals with
these two separate rings of chambers automatically all by itself, which is pretty slick.
A clever bit of design there.
Now in order to load and unload this, we have a loading gate here.
So your ejector rod actually lines up with both sets of chambers. When you have it pushed in against the frame like this
you can punch out cartridges from the inner ring, and then you can just pop it out
away from the frame and now it lines up with your outer ring of cartridges.
And then you can of course reload everything through that loading gate,
close it when you're done, and you're ready to fire.
This type of gun, this two barrel, 20 shot, mechanically really neat pistol was made,
in fact the vast, vast majority of them were just basic, plain, undecorated examples.
And they're out there, they're a little difficult to find because they're considered pretty collectible, pretty desirable,
just because of the size and the kind of the wow factor with a gun like this.
Finding one that's engraved, massively decorated, like this example is really pretty darn unusual.
But it's really cool that I can actually show you both the really over the top decoration
and the really neat mechanical function all at the same time in one gun.
Thanks for watching guys, I hope you enjoyed the video. I don't think you'll ever get to see another
20 shot pinfire quite like this one, so I definitely wanted to take the chance to check it out while we could.
If you'd like to have the chance to check this thing out every day,
it is, of course, coming up for sale, you can own it yourself.
Take a look at the description text below the video and you'll find a link to Rock Island's
catalogue page on this piece. You can see their pictures and their description,
and place a bid right there on-line, or come up here to Rock Island and participate live.
Thanks for watching.