The first rifle made in Sam Colt’s Paterson NJ factory was the 1837 “ring lever” rifle. These were rather fragile and underpowered and while they were used successfully in the First Seminole War, they needed […]
The Pettengill revolver is a 6-shot, muzzleloading double-action-only system designed and patented by C.S. Pettengill in 1856, and improved by Edward Raymond and Charles Robitaille in 1858. In 1859, the Rogers & Spencer company was […]
In 1863, the Confederate military decided to design a new standard pattern of cavalry carbine. The designs was put together rather quickly at the Richmond Arsenal; a 25 inch barrel, brass furniture, and Enfield type […]
“Clockwork Basilisk: The Early Revolvers of Elisha Collier and Artemas Wheeler” is available right now for preorder on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/headstamp/clockwork-basilisk?ref=7zdbzu Most of the historical recognition of Elisha Collier comes from the 1851 and 1852 patent […]
Carbines made by the Columbus Armory are particularly scarce, and their history is not really well understood. They were manufactured by John Gray of Columbus SC, whose brother William Gray was a partner in another […]
Amos Rogers and Julius Spencer ran a company making mostly farm equipment in the 1840s and 1850s. In 1859, they took on a firearms manufacturing contract (as mechanical fabrication companies often do) to make Pettengill […]
One of the early combination self-defense guns was the “Sure Defender”, with a combination of brass knuckles, a small and finicky wavy-bladed dagger, and a single shot percussion pistol barrel. The rather complex process for […]
Edward Lindner was a Bavarian-born gunsmith who spent much of his professional life in the United States. He was granted no less than 13 firearms patents, and was involved in some very forward-thinking designs. Among […]
This is a very unusual single-shot muzzleloading rifle. It is devoid of markings that might identify it, but appears (to my eye, anyway) to have been built from what was originally intended to be a […]
Made by one Francis Lebeda, this is an Elgin classic pocket watch with the internal mechanism removed and replaced with a single-shot pistol mechanism. It fires a 4.5mm BB using just a No.11 percussion cap, […]
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