Revolver - Forgotten Weapons

Competition with an SAA: The Colt Bisley and Bisley Target

August 30, 2018 Ian McCollum 8

Bisley in .45 Colt Bisley Target in .32 WCF Named for the famous British shooting competition range, the Colt Bisley was the target version of the 1873 Single Action Army revolver. Colt first offered a […]

Alsop Navy Revolver, Compared to its Pocket Model Companion

August 28, 2018 Ian McCollum 3

RIA’s catalog page for this revolver Joseph Alsop and his sons Charles R and Charles H were investors in the Savage Revolving Firearms Company, but also made an attempt to produce revolvers of their own […]

Enfield MkI Revolver: Merwin Meets Webley (Sort Of)

August 23, 2018 Ian McCollum 12

RIA’s catalog page for this revolver Adopted in 1880 to replace the Adams revolver, the Enfield MkI was based on an extraction system patented in the 1870s by Owen Jones of Philadelphia. This was similar […]

Classic Imperial British Revolvers: the Webley WG Army and Target

August 19, 2018 Ian McCollum 21

RIA’s catalog pages for these revolvers: WG Model of 1889 WG Army Model WG Target Model The Webley company used the “WG” (Webley Government) nomenclature in its literature starting in 1883, but the first revolver […]

Colt Prototype Self-Ejecting Revolver

August 16, 2018 Ian McCollum 30

RIA’s catalog page for this revolver Robert Roy was a career Colt employee, who began his work as an engineer in 1963 (including work on the 1971/SSP pistols and the CMG machine gun series) and […]

Short: Revolvers with Manual Safeties

June 21, 2018 Ian McCollum 35

One of the classic mistakes make by authors who are not “gunnies” is to have a character threateningly click off the safety catch…on a revolver (sound effects editors do it in movies and TV, too). […]

The Fitz Special: Art of the Gunfighter, Circa 1926

June 2, 2018 Ian McCollum 28

This revolver is coming up for auction at Rock Island here. John Henry Fitzgerald was not the first person to cut down a revolver barrel, nor the first person to bob the trigger guard or […]

McCarty’s Peculiar Revolver

April 6, 2018 Ian McCollum 54

William McCarty patented this turret revolver design in 1909 (submitted in 1908, approved in 1909), with the idea of making a high capacity revolver. His gun held 18 rounds of .22 rimfire ammunition – double […]

Swiss Prototype von Steiger Auto-Ejecting Revolvers

February 19, 2018 Ian McCollum 34

In the 1870s, Switzerland was looking for a new military revolver, and they were particularly interested in finding a system which would allow faster reloading than the standard loading gate and manual ejection rod. A […]

The Only Gun With Rollin White’s Name

February 12, 2018 Ian McCollum 17

While Rollin White’s patent for the bored-through cylinder was a massively important element in the development of Smith & Wesson as a company, White’s actual firearms design was impractical and never produced. In fact, there […]