As we've said before the Franco-Prussian War ended with a sense of unfinished business.
And so France and Germany would be locked into an arms race for decades.
By 1873, the French had adopted a Chamelot-Delvigne revolver chambering an 11 mm black powder cartridge.
Germany, in turn, adopted a massive single-action only revolver, which was obsolete the day
it was introduced. Its cartridge, however, was copied from the superior Smith and Wesson .44 Russian.
France didn't feel the need to respond right away, but then the Serbo-Bulgarian War of
1885 threatened to drag Europe into another conflict. While facing this possible escalation,
the invention of smokeless gunpowder pushed France to turn to fresh small arms development and
they sought a new revolver.
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Hi, I'm Othais and this is the French Modèle 1892 Revolver, sometimes mistakenly called
the Lebel Revolver, although that's a misnomer. Let's throw up a bigger picture.
This handgun measures 9.3 inches in length, weighs just shy of 2 pounds and chambers six
8mm ordinance cartridges.
When we talk about this revolver we actually have to talk about another one as well. Now
our friend, Boulanger, remember him from the Lebel, he wants France to hurry up and adopt
some new small arms. He wants to make a name for himself.
So, the French have a hold of some Swiss revolvers, the Model 1882. These are fantastic Schmidt-Galand
action revolvers: double-single, they use a great simple mechanism and most of the
features of this gun get carried over to the French's next adopted revolver, as we're going to see
The borrowed Swiss system had a loading gate that when open would disconnect the hammer
from the cylinder. And, in fairness, this was also borrowed over from the Portuguese
Abadie before it. The Swiss system also had a fantastic rebound, which means that
when we fire the gun if we let go, our hammer comes back and is kept from going forward
again. This prevents that old cowboy problem of having to leave an empty cylinder.
Now the gun wasn't a direct copy at this point, alright? They introduced a couple of new concepts.
One was French 8mm cartridge that we see in this handgun. And two was a really easy disassembly
gate. Previously they were losing the plates on the side of the revolvers whenever they were
serviced in the field. This gun has a hinge system, so we'll take a look, and it's so
quick that I can show you on camera right away.
We undo this big large screw right here, real obvious guy. A couple of twists, pops out
real easy on its own. And then we get our fingernails in here, pop open the side. Let
me turn it around for you. We'll lift that grip out of the way, and BOOM we're in the
action. Very quick, very easy to service. And by the way, if you're a collector, this
is a terrific feature for the revolver because you get to see the action work. Now, we got
an animation coming, so don't worry about looking too hard at this, or squinting your eyes,
but all of that combined is now what's known as the Modele 1887 not the 1892, okay so we're
still 1887. This gun is missing one key feature that we're about to see. Alright?
The 1887 is actually technically produced for a few years, but in very low numbers because
Lebel production has just taken over the factories. And handguns are really a secondary issue.
In the interim, over at Colt, they've released the Model 1889. Now, this gun is important
as it has a swing-out cylinder and simultaneous eject. This is a tremendous feature and we
see it in pretty much every revolver today.
So, the French say "We want this, too." Well, in 1892, they have an upgraded version of
the 1887 and lo and behold, over on our side camera here, we now have a swing out cylinder
with simultaneous eject. You're going to notice one odd feature though, which is that this
is swung out to the right. Now, on a normal revolver we're going to see it swing out through
the left, which concedes that most people are right handed and they want to load with
their non-dominant hand.
Now, the reason the French went with this is because they wanted to give these to cavalrymen
and cavalrymen were being trained to shoot with their dominant hand, true, but
then while they're shooting or using a sword they have their reigns taken up in their left hand
So, if they went to load, the thought was that'd they use their finer dexterity in their
dominant hand to manipulate the ammo for single loading on the revolver. So, that means,
we're going to move this over to the non-dominant hand along with the reigns and open her up,
leaving all that fine manipulation for your dominant hand, and we're going to grab our
ammo and load with our dominant hand. Once ready, seal everything up and transfer over.
The problem with that is, not everyone is a cavalryman, so now when you want to use
these things, there's a bit of a hand change on the range. It's a very awkward feeling,
we're not used to this sort of thing, especially with modern safety practices. But it works,
and it works for what they designed it for.
Okay, now we'll get over to the animation. Turning the gate back freezes the cylinder
and an extension presses the sear, and attached hammer, rearward, disconnecting them from the trigger.
Six rounds can loaded singularly and the cylinder pressed back into the action.
The 1892 is both single and double-action. We'll demonstrate the single-action first:
The shooter thumbs back the hammer which tips up the rear of the trigger, as it tilts, the
bolt stop extension on its front lowers as the hand, attached to its rear,
rises. The hammer slips past the tip of the trigger's rear extension into a notch just
below. It is now held to the rear. A pull of the trigger frees the hammer to fall.
Let's see it again.
Now watch the single main spring. It simultaneously presses the hammer forward and pushes down
on the hand. In double-action, we'll pull the trigger straight through to fire the gun.
Here the trigger extension lifts on the sear attached to the hammer. There is no catch
at the end. Once the trigger is far enough back, the hammer falls. This cylinder stop
extension on the trigger halts the cylinder between shots. But when fired, the cylinder
is locked in place by the raised shoulder at the middle of the trigger and by the hand.
Once all six shot have been dischanrged, the gate can be dropped again, the cylinder slung
back out, and the ejector rod pressed quickly, tossing the spent casings simultaneously.
Alright, let's get Mae to shoot this thing.
Again, the weird gate means we switch hands as it opens to the right, this is a little awkward.
Load up six rounds.
And close the action.
First, we'll see single-action.
Now, double-action.
Terrific, thanks Mae.
Service life for the 1892 Revolvers would be fairly long. These things were produced
all the way up to 1924 although the bulk were done by the end of 1903. You would think that
most would be produced during World War I, but the factories were overwhelmed with rifles
and machine guns and so France outsourced a lot of the handgun production to Spain.
We're actually going to see that in our next episode. So, spoiler alert.
Now, these did serve on like we said through World War I and through World War II. They
were even used by the German occupying forces. They stayed in inventory after 1945, but that
was really sort of the end of their heyday.
The 1945 is nothing to sneeze at for a handgun from 1892. Think of all the designs that came
after that date, I mean this precedes the Luger, this precedes the C96, and yet it's
still in service at the end of World War II. That's terrific!
The gun itself is robust, I mean we enjoyed shooting at the range. Although, with the
limitation on ammo, Mae was the only one that got to actually fire any rounds, it worked
perfectly. Which is more than we can say for a lot of the other designs that we've had
to sorta play with over and over and over again, to get you guys the best shot. There
won't be a blooper reel on this one.
What you see is what we shot.
Now, these guns are usually dated on the barrel, right about here, and I know it's not going
to show up well on our camera but that's alright, you can trust me and check your own if you find one.
The other thing is, they're acquired by the Navy through the Army. These will be specially
marked, again probably not going to show up well on our camera, but here's a photo of
the naval anchor. Beautiful.
The guns were also sold to Romania, who adopted them. They were produced in Belgium, clones
were rather produced in Belgium. And there were more clones out of Spain.
So it wasn't an unknown revolver, and it's not as obscure as we tend to think of it.
It's actually a front-line military weapon with a proud history, but before I start,
you know, giving this too much personality, let's take it over to Mae and get her opinions,
since she's the only one on our team that's actually got to shoot it.
Alright, we rearranged the room, and we have Mae here to talk about the 1892. Alright, walk
us through. It's a revolver, I know you like those, so let's get your impressions of the
double-single action, just sort of holding it and shooting it as a revolver before getting
into the details about this gun.
Okay, well actually I found that gun naturally makes me want to grip up high, so that was
a bit nicer, just it felt comfortable in my hand, first of all.
And when pulling through on single and double action, I noticed that while its easier than
the more standard revolvers, it's not a heavy trigger, it's very mushy. So, I found that
it was not the best, most comfortable trigger to pull. The hammer is easy to pull back,
though, I can easily do it one-handed and even let the hammer down. So, overall it feels
very comfortable for me as a shooter.
Okay, so you wouldn't say it's crisp, though?
No, it's definitely not crisp at all.
And I should probably tell everyone at home, Mae is a Smith & Wesson fan, so if you have
a K-frame, that's sort of her gun, that's what she defines as being middle-of-the-road in
terms of crisp and smooth. Which, actually, when you get into old military revolvers,
it's not middle-of-the-road. It's actually very good. It's exceptional to Smith & Wesson's, but
that's the reference point. And I kinda agree with you, I think it's kinda mushy. Everything's
light, everything breaks, it's just it's almost like there is mud in it.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay, so, let's get int some specifics. How do you feel about this loading system?
It was the most awkward revolver I have loaded to date. So, okay, you're supposed to lift
the gate back, which honestly, for me, it didn't seem like it was a necessary feature.
Why not have something simple like with the Colts, where it was a simple pull-back.
I'll say on these, if I borrow this for a moment, one of the reasons they retained this gate,
and I'm trying not to point it at you, one of the reasons they retained this gate appears to be because they
wanted the hammer disconnect. So, again like we showed you before there are safety features
built into the Colts at the time, but I guess that they went with what they knew.
Although, like you said it's awkward because if anybody out there is used to a gate-loader,
once you open the gate, you want to load through the gate, but now we're bumping the cylinder
out, so I agree with you. It's kinda odd if you have any other experience. But if this
was the only revolver you were given, probably not that weird. Although, again, handing it
between hands, did that bother you?
Yeah, actually, it was pretty awkward. Even on camera, it looks like I'm doing it awkwardly
because that's how I can imagine having to do it on the battlefield, let alone on horseback,
that I can't imagine at all.
Yeah, they had lanyards, thankfully, so if you dropped it you had a chance to pull it
back in. But, still changing hands just doesn't seem tactically sound, but we have the benefit
of hindsight. Think again, 1892 and the first spring-out cylinder that were seing in Europe.
Okay so, more specifics about this gun. I'm going to throw up an image over this. Let's
look at that rear sight. There we go. It has a round sort of globe front post and a round notch in the back.
How did you feel about that shooting?
I actually though that it looks really easy to line up the sights for this one, because
not only was I able to line it up vertically, but also horizontally, very quickly and easily
as well. So, when I was pulling up for the dead-on shot, it just wanted to line itself up.
Okay, so you'd say kinda like an aperture sight?
Exactly, yeah!
Okay, cool. Um...
Working through it real quick, is there anything else about this gun that you want to describe?
I guess we should ask the classic question: would you take it to war?
I would say "yes", but two things are bothering me with it. One is the loading system that
we already talked about. It would just be a little too awkward for me to handle in a
battle. And the other thing is how light the round it. I can't really see that having enough
stopping power for me.
You're talking about 8mm ordinance?
Exactly
Okay, it's not the heaviest revolver in the world, how would you say the recoil was, though?
It was mild, I was very surprised with it. I've never had a revolver with that light
of a recoil before.
We were not using light loads, by the way, as far as we know. I actually used a mix of
two ammos just to be able to get as much 8mm ordinance as we could, and it just seemed
like... we really had to adjust our mics , we had to get dialed in on it... it was very
mild. So, you don't have any confidence in that cartridge?
No, I do not.
Alright, I think that about covers it, is anything else on your mind?
I've got nothing else for this gun, we've covered it.
So, we'll see you guys again in two weeks. Thanks again for watching, and while we're
both sitting here, we went ahead and launched a Patreon. There's detail down on the bottom
of the video, and over on Facebook, and just about everywhere. We don't want to beg, but,
literally, if a quarter of the people watching this gave one dollar, we would be able to
sustain the show just fine. Otherwise, we're currently in the red, we can't keep making
them in the red. We don't make a lot of money.
Alright, thanks guys, have a good one.
Thanks!
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