Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the Rock Island Auction
Company taking a look at a transitional English revolver
that is going to be coming up in their April of 2020 Premier Auction.
... It's a really cool, as the name implies, transitional style
of pistol in between the pepperbox and the true revolver.
So let's take a closer look.
Before the advent of affordable mass-produced true revolvers,
pepperboxes were a very common, relatively low cost defensive firearm.
And the idea of a pepperbox is basically the back half of this gun.
You have a barrel cluster, typically 6 shots but it varied: 5, 4, 5, 7, 6.
Some as low as 3, some really huge ludicrous ones up to like 24 barrels, but typically 6.
You have a double action hammer, and pulling the trigger will
lift the hammer, rotate the cylinder and then drop the hammer down.
Now because the original pepperboxes didn't have a single barrel, they had a cluster of barrels,
they didn't need a cylinder stop because you didn't have to line the cylinder up with anything.
And that helped make them relatively inexpensive guns to manufacture.
They were often smoothbore, they were not particularly accurate,
Mark Twain has written some pretty hilarious stuff about their actual use.
But, you know what, they were cheap, they were accessible, and they would do the job, especially up close.
Now when proper revolvers came out, they really kind of put pepperboxes to shame in almost all practical ways.
But there was a transitional period before
... well once ... true revolvers had been invented and their concepts patented,
but before they really became successful as an affordable mass produced item.
That's something that Sam Colt did that a lot of people may not really give him credit for is
he brought the assembly line sort of American mentality to revolver production.
A lot of guns of this type that predate Colt's revolvers were basically hand made,
and fancy stuff like this especially is fairly expensive.
British revolvers were certainly available before the Colt, but they were relatively expensive.
Colt sort of ... , well, democratised the revolver for personal defence.
At any rate, if one wanted ... some of the advantages of a true revolver, but without
... risking infringing on Colt's patents, you would get something like this sort of transitional model.
Where they have taken the concept of a pepperbox, but they've shortened the barrel cluster to be just chambers.
So there's no rifling, there's not intended to be, this acts like a revolver cylinder,
and then they've added a single rifled barrel with sights, which is relatively novel for a pepperbox,
onto the front of the assembly.
They have not infringed on Colt's patents, which means that
you can build these things without getting into legal trouble,
however they have a number of disadvantages.
The lock-up is quite insecure, you can't fire this single action, there is no way to cock it without using the trigger.
And they are very weak frames. You can see there is an axis that comes through the centre into the barrel.
... I would assume that this is a post-Colt example because it's held together with this wedge and screw
that are virtually identical to the system that Colt used.
But then there's just a strap at the bottom, there's nothing up here on the top.
Now that's the same as early Colts, but this style of frame is a relatively weak one.
This style of transitional pepperbox or transitional revolver was more popular in England
than it was in the United States, in fact we didn't have much of this in the US.
We had a lot of proper pepperboxes, but we transitioned over to revolvers fairly distinctly
without going through this transitional phase like they did in Europe, and particularly the UK.
So you saw the markings on the top strap already, James Beattie, Regent Street, London.
I will point out that this is proofed as it should be.
This is a fairly high end one, it also has a loading lever built into it, ... that's cool.
So we want that, there we go.
That drops down, then you can use this to recharge the cylinder.
This one has a bunch of engraving on the various elements of it, you can see it there. The grips are in really nice condition.
And this is your intermediate style of firearm.
This one even has a rudimentary safety. If I use the trigger to lift the hammer a bit, and I run this latch forward,
it will prevent the hammer from coming down far enough to actually hit a percussion cap.
So, you can use that to load this safely and put percussion caps on all the cylinders,
and then you can stick it in between chambers, pull that lever back, and you're ready to go.
The way that these work, you don't have to actually index the hammer directly over one of the chambers before firing.
When you pull the trigger it will index, there it goes, I don't want to dry fire this
but it will index the cylinder down to the next firing chamber and then drop the hammer.
And as long as you are holding the trigger back there is a cylinder stop, it's just a relatively weak one.
This is a little bit loose. Didn't hold up as well as cylinder stops of Colt's design.
I mentioned that sights were a rarity on pepperboxes. They are a little more common on these.
On a pepperbox it's hard to have sights because your barrel cluster, where you'd mount them, is always rotating.
This guy has some pretty darn tiny little baby sights on it.
Given that one of the main attractions of this sort of transitional style of revolver was its low cost,
it's a little unusual to run into one that is as fancy and really well made as this guy.
So, I thought this would be pretty cool to take a look at, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
If you'd like to add something like this to your own collection, well, this one is coming up for sale here at Rock Island.
Along with a whole bunch of other cool stuff, so check out their catalogue
for full pictures, descriptions and more about everything that they've got in the auction.
Thanks for watching.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]