In order to participate in the GunBroker Member forums, you must be logged in with your GunBroker.com account. Click the sign-in button at the top right of the forums page to get connected.
Looking to see if anyone can help
dtbriten
Member Posts: 3 ✭✭
I have a revolver that I am trying to identify so i can learn more about it. The information I do know is:
Colt Revolver
Black Powder
SN # 259350
Has a 7 sided barrel
Can someone suggest how I can find out more about this revolver. It's been in the family forever... Thanks
Colt Revolver
Black Powder
SN # 259350
Has a 7 sided barrel
Can someone suggest how I can find out more about this revolver. It's been in the family forever... Thanks
Comments
What's the barrel length? Is there a loading lever underneath the barrel? Is the triggerguard round, or squared at the back? And, like Spider asked, is there a stagecoach scene pressed into the cylinder?
The only original, octagonal-barrelled Colt with a serial number range as high as yours would be an 1849 Pocket, made over a 23-year period ending in 1873. The only other model that came close to this production total was the 1851 Navy, of which some 215,000 were made in the United States (plus another 42,000 or so, in London, but these featured their own serial number range starting at 1 -- so there would be no Navies with serial numbers as high as yours). Assuming yours to be an original 1849, photographs or a more detailed description would help establish exactly which variation you have.
I know nothing about guns and already understand one error. When I said 7 sided barrel, what I meant was the inside not the outside. The outside is 8 but the inside isn't round. The ammunition would have to be 7 sided also. Engravings are hard to make out but it appears to be a stagecoach with 4 men in the front. One laying down, two running and the fourth near the horse. Sorry, I don't know what a loading lever is. The trigger guard is not square or round. Kind of a U shape. I don't know how to do a picture. Forum doesn't allow attachments and i can't copy it into message.The barrel, if I'm measuring it correctly, is 6 inches. How do i do a picture?
[:D] I know guns and history, not computers, so how you post pictures here is out of my realm.
A loading lever is a pair of metal rods hinged together and mounted underneath the barrel. The shorter one will slide into the chambers of the cylinder as the longer one is swivelled down. It's used to ram the lead balls into the mouths of the chambers, when the gun is at half-cock and each chamber is rotated by hand into line with the rammer. The balls, or bullets, by the way, were round in cross-section -- it's the rifling of the barrel that gives the bore the appearance of being seven-sided.
You appear to have an 1849 Pocket Colt, made in the last few years of its production run. These had barrel lengths ranging from three to six inches, with and without loading levers. Assuming, again, that it's original, no idea what it's worth -- condition would have a lot to do with that, and even then my sources are a couple of years out of date.
My saying twice, "assuming" it's original, isn't to imply you might not be telling the truth about its age. Replicas of the various Colts have been around for many years, now, and some are starting to look old as dirt themselves. [;)]
While it doesn't help identify the firearm, it sounds like the 7-sided rifling is the Alexander Henry rifling form which is heptagonal in shape.
"The Henry rifle has a polygonal bore with seven instead of six sides." - Sir Joseph Whitworth
Alexander Henry was Scottish gunsmith/designer who created this 7-sided rifling form in the 1860's. It eventually turned up in the Henry rifles and interesting enough in the Martini-Henry rifles as manufactured by the Providence Tool Co. through the auspices of a Mr. Henry O. Peabody of Boston. He was responsible for using this rifling form in hundreds of thousand of Peabody-Martini-Henry rifles produced for the Turkish government starting in 1872.
This rifling form is still available:
HENRY STYLE RIFLING
Also known as Schalak or Pope Style Rifling, these are currently available in .577 and .458 calibers. Also .40 Cal, .375 Cal. and .32 -49 cal. available for future production.
Krieger Barrels, Inc.
Best.
It definitely sounds like you have a Colt Model 1849 "pocket model" manufactured in 1864. You can post pictures by following the instructions in this link: http://forums.gunbroker.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=259294
If you have a problem posting, e-mail them to me at kabarknives@att.net and I'll post them for you.