Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I am Ian McCollum, and today we are taking a look at
a Mauser 1878 "Zigzag" revolver.
But it's not just any standard one,
this is actually the patent model of the Mauser Zigzag.
So Paul and Wilhelm Mauser made their first pistol in 1877,
and it was a single shot pistol, which is not hugely exciting.
And in fact it failed to be hugely exciting to the commercial and military markets at the time.
They didn't manage to get any substantial contracts for it.
And they didn't give it all that long before they realised,
"You know what, what the market is much more likely to be interested in is a multi-shot revolver."
The German military was going to be looking for a new revolver,
and so Paul and Wilhelm Mauser went back and decided to design themselves one of those.
And what they came up with was this rather distinctive design.
So the way that the patenting system worked in Germany at that time is
they submitted their technical written up patent with its diagrams and explaining what it was
exactly that they wanted to patent. And along with it they submitted a model of the object itself,
this specific revolver.
That would be held by the patent office while they processed the patent application,
of course to make sure that there weren't any prior patents that already covered this material,
anything like that.
And then once they approved the patent, that of course would be sent to the Mauser brothers
along with their revolver, their ... patent model, being returned to them.
The patent office doesn't keep all of this sort of stuff or else they end up with giant warehouses
full of widgets and gadgets that they have nothing to do with.
So, there is one particular mechanical difference between this and the final production version of the gun.
But it's small, so I'm going to show you up close.
So at first glance this looks just like the standard gun,
however it has a longer barrel than what would ultimately be adopted
and there are a few other subtle differences.
The production model has a safety lever here at the back which is not present on the patent model.
The markings have moved, normally our markings would be up on the top of the barrel.
Instead the markings on this one are on the side of the frame.
Gebrüder Mauser and Company (et Cie.), in Oberndorf am Neckar in Germany.
And up on top of the barrel we simply have the word "Patent".
So the first Mauser patent for these revolvers was in March of 1878, and that was for a solid frame version of the gun.
This one of course is a break action gun, so I can engage the lock here,
and then pull this and the whole frame hinges open like so.
And that ... certainly was a much faster way to eject all the cartridges.
And in April of 1878, so barely a month after the first patent,
Mauser came back and had this design, and submitted it for patent.
... That's the patent this specific pistol was sent to the patent office for.
Now, what also makes this different from the standard production guns is the ammunition.
Of course Mauser had just recently designed the rifle that was accepted by the German military
as their new infantry rifle, the Gewehr 1871, and Mauser designed the cartridge that went into that rifle.
So when they went ahead and designed a revolver, what they did was took their ... 11mm Mauser
rifle cartridge, and they just scaled it down to pistol size.
So you can see that this is a ... bottlenecked cartridge.
That however only lasted just a couple months, because by June, or possibly July, of 1878
the German ... testing commission, the GPK,
told them that they really actually wanted this in a straight wall cartridge,
the standard German ordnance cartridge, not their fancy bottlenecked round.
Although frankly, there ... are reasons to go with a bottleneck round.
This would have actually obturated a little bit better than the straight wall case,
although of course I don't think this ended up being a big deal.
Anyway, at that point Mauser went back, redesigned the cylinder in the gun
to accommodate a straight wall 11mm, or 10.55mm, cartridge.
So, that's what they ended up using.
This is one of the original production bottlenecked Zigzag cartridges,
which is an extremely rare thing to find today. In fact this is the only example that I'm aware of.
If we look in the cylinder here, you can clearly see two rings in the cylinder.
The forward most one is the shoulder of the case, that's where the bullet starts.
And then for ... the early handful of revolvers made for the bottlenecked round,
you have that rearward ring which is where the ... neck in the case is, the bottleneck.
So there are a few other changes that were made to the design of the gun
between this patent model and the actual production, and that's certainly not uncommon.
So perhaps most significantly, the exact style of ... the zigzag pattern on the cylinder changed.
... The sections parallel to the barrel would get a little bit longer,
and they would become squared off instead of rounded at the ends.
The profile of the ... cylinder lock here, this would change so that it was just one parallel piece.
And instead of having a separate screw holding it in place, it would ... be pinned in place.
You can see that on the picture of the ... military production gun.
And the profile of the top of the barrel up here changed subtly.
So that's the sort of thing that often happens, and it's one of the things that makes
pre-production guns and patent models like this really interesting.
You can also see a screw here on the back of the frame which changed slightly,
and of course is now partially underneath the safety lever on the full production guns.
And then even little more minor things like the style, the size, of the grip screw changed.
Interestingly, we also have the original disassembly tool that was made for this revolver,
based on discussions and planning obviously between the Mauser brothers.
So this does a couple things, of course we have a screwdriver blade here for removing the grips,
as well as all of the other screws in the frame.
And then this end is a spring-loaded plunger,
which to be honest, I don't know exactly what one is supposed to do with it.
But it does fit very nicely into here, and I believe is used for part of the ... complete detail strip disassembly of the gun.
So the Mauser brothers submitted this not only to the German military,
but to the Russian military for trials, as well as some other countries.
And they never managed to get an actual military contract for the 1878,
but they got a lot of feedback from people who thought it was a pretty good revolver.
People who liked it, or at least liked elements of it. It was a stylish revolver,
it was an effective revolver, it was apparently a reliable revolver.
The problem was it was also pretty complex, and it was an expensive revolver.
And what the German military ultimately adopted was the 1879 Reichsrevolver,
which is the epitome of a simple revolver.
So simple it didn't even include an extraction mechanism, you kept an extractor rod in the holster.
So when you look at that as what the military was actually apparently looking for,
it's not surprising that they passed on the opportunity to buy a lot of Mauser 1878s. So.
Anyway, I have a separate video on the standard production version of the 1878,
because, of course, Mauser did attempt to sell this commercially after failing to get military contracts for it.
So if you're interested in more detail about these guns, check out that video.
But it's certainly been very cool to get a chance to ... take a look at the specific actual patent model of the gun,
and its variations and its different cartridge. So, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]