Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at RIA
taking a look at a very cool experimental
toolroom Smith & Wesson revolver. This is a Model 3 revolver,
and it is Smith & Wesson's kind of classic original
large, top-break revolver.
And one of the things about firearms development,
and really about all industrial development,
all mechanical design and development, is that
it's often a series of trial and error. You come up with an idea,
it might work, it might not, the only way to find out is to actually try it and see what happens.
And this is a gun that is based very specifically on a patent that Daniel Wesson took out in 1873
for a different way of opening up the cylinder. Let me show you.
Just as a quick refresher I have a regular Number 3 Russian Model here,
and the way this opens, we have a little catch there to lock it.
Unlock it, and as you pivot the barrel down around this hinge point,
the extractor is pushed up. When it reaches full travel,
it's released, and the spring snaps the extractor back down.
So, there is a way to open this without the extractor moving,
you can take your latch here, hold it backwards,
and that allows you to keep the extractor down.
But this is the ... design that Wesson was attempting to improve when he ... patented this guy.
Now this has a different style of catch, it is a spring-loaded latch, right there.
And in the patent Wesson specifically says that the exact mechanism of locking the frame together
doesn't matter, because there are lots of things that are possible,
and this I think was just a simple thing to use for this experimental revolver.
But once you unlock it, you actually pivot the barrel off to the side.
... The frame is cut right there, and there's a pin that allows it to pivot like that.
Then, and only then, (that falls back in), then you can open it up like this
like a traditional regular Number 3.
And there's no spring in here anymore, so the extractor stays open,
even when this thing's all the way opened up.
So this would extract your cases, and then you have to bring it down to here,
that closes the extractor, and then you can load the cartridges one at a time
with the cylinder swivelled out to the side.
Once it's loaded, then you can lock it back in place.
Now, what Wesson was attempting to do (and it's really cool, his patent explains his justification for these things),
is he wanted to, first off, make it easier to load the gun without having to deal with a
manual extractor like override button.
So, he didn't want people to go through the process of like,
"Oh, I just want to reload this. I'll open it up and I got this far and like half the cartridges fell out
because the extractor's lifting them out already."
That was perceived as a problem, or rather a potential problem, like, "Maybe I can improve on this."
That's how things improve is taking chances and experimenting.
The other couple of issues that he points out are
this ... design allows a simplification of the manufacture and a reduction of cost.
You have fewer moving parts because you don't have a spring assembly in here.
You can make these ratchet teeth basically one solid part that doesn't move.
On the standard guns this bit has to rotate to release the extractor
once it's reached full travel. So you can simplify that.
And this also potentially solves an issue of what if the extractor gets stuck?
What if the spring-loaded assembly in here that's supposed to snap the extractor back down doesn't work?
There's no good way to try to force it back in.
Well, with this system ... you have basically direct control over that extractor.
... The gear teeth here force it open when you tilt the barrel down,
and they equally force it closed when you tilt the barrel up.
So you're ... going to have far fewer issues with the extractor getting stuck.
And then, once again, you load it from this position.
Now sorry to give away the spoilers, but this didn't turn out to really actually be an improvement to the gun,
which ought to be obvious because this is a toolroom prototype and you don't see this system in actual production.
And I suspect that is because really this is kind of,
I don't know, I would not choose this system myself.
I think people probably wouldn't like the ... restricted access it gives to the cylinder.
Being able to break the cylinder completely open
and have much easier access to, say, load two cartridges at a time,
or the ability to use something like a speed loader
(which wasn't a thing at the time, but it would be before all that much longer),
that's a real advantage. And I think the perceived disadvantage that this thing is solving
isn't really all that substantial.
Most of the time, if you're unloading the gun, you do want it to just throw out
all the cases in one easy quick motion without having to pivot first, and then open.
There are some other issues to this, like once you open it up like this
you can straighten the whole revolver out, so it'll tilt, but it'll also be straight,
you cannot close the gun simply by doing this, because the extractor hits on the breech face.
You have to have it pivoted over in order to fully close the extractor, and then latch it.
So it has to be over, up, down, over.
Where on the regular gun, it's just open, closed.
Guns like this are extremely cool for people who are serious collectors of,
well, any particular brand, or type, or pattern of firearm.
Because this is the sort of thing that gives you some insight into exactly what the designers were thinking about,
what the inventors were thinking about when they were trying to improve the guns.
And being able to find toolroom prototypes like this is always really the high point of any particular collection.
So this is a really neat one to see. It's also really cool,
of course, that it is so specifically connected to a specific patent.
The patent explains exactly why the conversion was done, why the different mechanism was tried.
And so we can understand like, "Ahh, that's what he was doing.
That's why it didn't work. And that's why other systems were adopted in its place."
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.
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