Saturday, April 4, 2009

Neat old rifle


I always thought that revolver designs made a whole lot of sense for rifles, as well as pistols. Of course, there were very few of these - first supplanted by lever guns, and then bolt action designs. I've always wondered why.

Probably you can get higher pressures in the other designs. Higher pressures mean higher velocity. Anyone know?

The photographer is trying to identify the rifle. If you know, take a stroll over there and leave a comment.

4 comments:

West, By God said...

God, that is a beautiful gun. I've been very tempted by over-priced newer manufacture carbines like that at gun shows before. Old ones like this are even cooler.

none said...

Looks like a remington 1875 revolving carbine.

It might be an uberti reprduction made to look old.

Still a great design.

These black powder guns still had some oomph.

I red an article recently that compared an old .36 caliber percussion dragoon revolver to a
.357 with standard factory loads. Similar bullet weight, similar penetration and velocities.

Jay G said...

The biggest problem with revolver-action rifles is that you cannot - ESPECIALLY with black powder - grip the gun ahead of the cylinder.

With a smokeless cartridge, there's still a lot of powder burned forward of the cylinder. Touching off a .44 Magnum round with your hand in front of the cylinder is a one-way ticket to BBQ'd fingers.

And if it's blackpowder, then you run the risk of chain-firing, which will actually launch projectiles at said hand...

Try holding a rifle with no hand in front of your trigger finger sometimes.

Then you'll see why these never really caught on...

chrisb said...

Jay hit the nail on the head. There was an image floating around some months back that showed a guys blown apart finger. He had gripped his revolver in a way so that his finger was resting on the front of the cylinder. The escaping gasses tore it to pieces.