“Clockwork Basilisk: The Early Revolvers of Elisha Collier and Artemas Wheeler” is available right now for preorder on Kickstarter: Most of the historical recognition of Elisha Collier comes from the 1851 and 1852 patent infringement […]
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, […]
In 1855, Prussian customs officials discovered a shipment of 3,000 Colt 1851 Navy model revolvers (and their accouterments) hidden in bales of cotton being shipped from New York to Russia. Prussia was a neutral power […]
The most-produced Colt percussion revolver was not one of the big sexy Army models, but rather the humble 1849 Pocket. It was first introduced as the Model 1848 Baby Dragoon, in .31 caliber. By 1850, […]
In 1863, the Bilharz, Hall, & Co firm of Pittsylvania Court House, Virginia (now Chatham VA) received a contract to make 1,000 examples of a simple percussion cavalry carbine modeled after the US Model 1855 […]
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