A Modern BP Self-Defense Revolver

removed cause I contributed to this being off topic, my apologies.

OK, this seems to be drifting slightly towards fantasy. Let's introduce a touch of reality for a moment.

Black powder/muzzle loading firearms are used for self defense all the time in the USA. There are a lot of loaded and capped muzzle loaders hanging on walls or in closets around the country. Rifles, pistols, revolvers... they are out there in vast numbers and they are used as originally intended. The use of a muzzleloader will cause no special legal attention *unless* you are statutorially barred from firearms ownership. The fact that you used a muzzleloader will not spare you any attention either of course. You will receive attention if you use any weapon.

The problem with antiques (in the legal sense) is not effectiveness. The problem is not that prosecutors will reveal the secret anti-muzzleloading-as-self-defense-weapons statutes that only they know about and send you to prison for an extra extra long time. The problem isn't even capacity or reloadability... a lemat spins 9 42-caliber (about the same as .44 magnum) rounds around a central 16ga smoothbore barrel. I'd take that over 8 rounds out of a 1911 any day.

The problem is reliability with modern caps. Replace the nipples with holders for large pistol primers, or get decent quality caps, or do whatever is needed to prevent cap jams and the like, and you have an effective firearm by any standard....

Thinking on a global scale, we Americans are ,I think, unique in the world in our fighting for and maintaining the right to protect ourselves with firearms. You can bet that if I lived in a country that would not let me own a modern pistol that I would own and have loaded at least one cap and ball revolver. You can also bet that I would have shot that gun enough to know what makes it reliable ie. proper powder cap and ball. Not to really know your self defense weapon no matter what it is is just plain stupidity. And yet I know there are many people in the U.S. that have never fired a gun that go out and by a gun and a box of ammo load it and stick it in a drawer hoping that they'll remember how to use it in an emergency at 2 a.m. with adrenaline flowing. Under the typical emergency conditions I'd be surprised if they remember where they put it.
Last month I was at a gun store when a young women walked up to the counter guy with a request for a home defense revolver saying that she was alone and not a shooter. It seems that her brother suggested a revolver for it's simplicity. The salesmen first showed her a used S&W 38 and then proceeded to try to bump her up to a 9mm Glock Auto. I was PISSED at that salesman. I took the lady aside and told her to, under no circumstances, to buy the Glock. The revolver was best for her. The sales guy was miffed at me and I could have given a flamin fiddlers fig if he was. In fact I later called the store and asked for the manager and told him about it. The dude should have been reamed at least and fired at most.

To add a finer point to my point. Most of the problems we read about on this forum are newbies getting familiar with their guns. Once they shoot them and learn what the muzzleloader needs to be reliable we don't hear them gripe about it.
OK, I'm done lecture over.

I think it'd be cool to make something like the Howdah, but with 4 barrels. Electric ignition. 1000 lumen light. Can't legally own a normal shotgun that short.

It would be cool... but do you need all those barrels w/ electric ignition?

If I was going electric, here's what I would do....

Attach a low sensitivity microphone to the barrel assembly near the recoil lug (where it can't be seen unless the gun is disassembled) and drill/tap holes every half inch or so from the breach plug forward to the front of the stock. Each of the holes would have an ignition plug that was designed to withstand chamber pressure. The stock would cover the holes so that, when assembled, you couldn't tell that there was anything "untraditional" about the gun.

When you pull the trigger, the ignition plugs are fired in sequence from muzzle towards breach until the microphone triggers. If the microphone triggers, the next trigger pull will start the sweep from one plug breachward of the last successfull ignition.

Why?

Load powder, wad, ball, waxed/greased wad, powder, wad, ball, waxed wad, powder, wad, ball, waxed wad, powder, wad, ball....

Pull the trigger... ignition sweep in until it hits the muzzlemost powder *BANG* the microphone triggers to stop the sweep, leaving the gun loaded with:

Powder, wad, ball, waxed wad, powder, wad, ball, waxed wad, powder, wad, ball, waxed wad...

Pull the trigger again? Swee*BANG* and you have:

Powder, wad, ball, waxed wad, powder, wad, ball, waxed wad...

Two barrels would give you 8-10 shots depending on how tightly you packed the balls together.

Chain fire? Bangbangbang and the sweep might take a fraction longer next trigger pull. Mic didn't detect the blast? You get a double tap....

Why not?

I really like Ed's idea of the swivel gun.

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG CLATTER

Click to expand...

Would you really want it full-auto? How about a crank like on a Gatling gun or one of those converted M1919?

Granting this is an imaginary exercise, most proposals seem to favour heavy, often multibarreled weapons. Lets do a bit of lateral thinking here, we are not planning on fighting WW3 with it. What we want is a lightweight easily accessible weapon that is capable of sorting out BGs at short range.
How about a modern smaller equivalent of the Le Mat - made in modern aluminum hard alloy able to handle BP pressures. We can also leave out the central shotgun barrel and instead make all chambers to fire AAA or similar heavy shot. This of course mean a smooth bore barrel and a probable reduction of cylinders to 6 rather than 9.

How about a modern smaller equivalent of the Le Mat - made in modern aluminum hard alloy able to handle BP pressures. We can also leave out the central shotgun barrel and instead make all chambers to fire AAA or similar heavy shot. This of course mean a smooth bore barrel and a probable reduction of cylinders to 6 rather than 9.

Click to expand...

If you take away the shotgun barrel and 3 of the chambers, how is it anything like a LeMat?

OK. Lets call it a "Le Mat memorial". This is after all a fantasy exercise!

we could go with a LeMat style revolver,

but to make it more tactiCOOL,

have the cylinder rotate around a flashlight/laser combo, instead of the shot barrel.

that way your ready for low light situations.

Modernized LeMat ... err... LeAmes...

20ga barrel as the cylinder pin in a double-action top-break (similar to Webley) frame. 20ga barrel has a screw-in breach plug w/ 209 primer pocket. .45cal barrel is set above the 20ga barrel.

Frame uses a transfer bar safety w/ two firing pins set in the frame. In normal operation only the upper firing pin is transferred to by the bar. Push a lever/button on the side and a second transfer bar extends out for the lower (shot barrel) firing pin, pushing the normal transfer bar to the side and deactivating the upper firing pin for that shot.

Cylinder is donut shaped and slides over the center pin/shot barrel when the action is open. An ejection system pushes the cylinder back when the action opens to make swapping cylinders easier. The ejection system pushes only on the innermost part of the cylinder.

C&B cylinders are loaded outside the gun. Cylinders are set up for 209 shotshells as primers.

Load the shot barrel, open the topstrap and thumb a primer into the central primer pocket. Drop a primed cylinder onto the cylinder pin. Close the action... you have 9+1 (or so) shots available. Fire off your nine, hit the lever to break the action... old cylinder drops away... slap another on... close and keep firing....SNAKE! swing the gun down, push with your thumb, squeeze the shot off *BOOM* swing back up, ease off with your thumb, squeeze another shot off *BAM*... hit the break lever, slap another cylinder on...

Don't like the cylinder reloading headache? Enter the conversion cylinder.

Because the ejection system only pushes against the center of the cylinder, you can put a cylinder which is bored to accept .45 colt or similar with a normal ejection system. A circlip around the "cylinder pin" holds the cylinder in place so the ejector can work. Now you have 9 rounds of .45 colt + one legal 20ga shotgun barrel.

I bet it could even be sold as a cartridge gun... the presence of a muzzle loading barrel shouldn't make it an AOW.

I'd also had a little push button flip out bayonet...

And a corkscrew...


Evil

I can see the cork screw to pull that bad ass's eyeballs out, but bring a switch blade to a gun fight?

I can tell everyone in on this post is grinning ear to ear. I just hope no one really gets the idea this is ok for in real life as intened, and I do believe you will find you are under gunned and won't like it one bit.

I kinda like that big double too, and brace of those would be nice if **** stained steps was the ideal stop.

I hate using a word like that here but it has impact. I guess if we are day dreaming about stopping bad guys once and for all the sin should be acceptable.

If, after 9 .45 call balls and a mess of shot, you still need a corkscrew to open a bottle you are probably way past your limit.

Out of curiosity.... why do you think someone with 9 209-primed rounds of .45 with somewhere around 35gr of black powder (unless you wanted to tighten up that primer pocket in which case you could shrink it to maybe 10-20 grains of smokeless with a 250ish gr bullet) plus a 20ga barrel firing 9 or so 00 balls would be under gunned compared to... well... pretty much anyone?


The bayonet would add a nice webleyesque touch...

I would vote for a top-break design like the S&W Frontier models or the Safety Hammerless with a front loading black powder cylinder which was held on an axis by a ball type lock. To reload you would break open the revolver and pull out the empty cylinder and replace it with a fresh fully loaded and capped one. The nipples would be inset in the back of the cylinder so that if the loaded cylinder were to be dropped or struck the nipples could not come in contact with anything, thus making the the carrying of spare loaded cylinders a safe practice. Provided the frame would not accept a metallic cartridge cylinder no federal paperwork should be required to purchase, and in most states no state paperwork either, as it would legally be no different than a Colt 1860 replica. With the lower operating pressure of BP loads maybe even an aluminum cylinder would be practical. The .36 cal soft lead round ball over a maximum powder charge was considered a pretty good man-stopper in its day, or so I've read.

Something Similar

I'm going to suggest something similar and blasphemous. Check out this thread at TFL...

http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=460489

I would suggest a modern handgun be like the harmonica rifle/pistol. Only, the "magazines" would be advanced double action by the trigger like a revolver. When the magazine has been emptied, it should be ejected out the side and a new one stuck in place to repeat the process.

Thus, faster than the Schofield concept with cylinder switch, and stronger because the frame wouldn't have the weak link. Electric ignition could also be very nice, possibly with a battery held between the grips, and electric igniters instead of caps?

I wonder how a piezoelectric gas grill ignitor would hold up? It would give a simulated DA trigger pull.
I saw a Bill Holmes pistol design in a book, it was essentially a .22 magnum harmonica pistol. It looked like a semiauto pistol.
instead of having a magazine, it had a harmonica that was spring loaded upward.
Releasing the trigger after each shot, allowed the harmonica to index upward to the next chamber.
The book is Home Workshop Prototype Firearms, by Bill Holmes. It's a good book, I recommend it to anyone who is even slightly interested in building their own gun from scratch.
The same design could be made as a C&B gun with rifle/pistol/shotshell primers or even electric ignition.

Other than that, I'd suggest a DA revolver based on the Remington, ROA, or LeMat.
If you used a breaktop design with quick change cylinders, they could use pistol primers or piezoelectric ignition.

I think you could use piezo ignitors as the trigger if you relocate the electrodes. Piezo ignitors are very affordable should they need to be replaced.

Plus, it's kinda fun to shock yourself with them. Or is that TMI?

They do make modern BP self defense revolvers, they just don't market them as such. The cap and ball .22s made by Freedom Arms (no longer in production) and North American Arms were designed for use with modern smokeless powders with modern steel.

If I were to design a BP revolver for self defense (and paperless) I would base it off something like a Smith and Wesson model 10. Single or double action, with a cylinder that looks like a normal cartridge cylinder. The cylinder would have to be stepped, allowing for use with smokeless powder. Of course we won't tell Uncle Sam that because it would be re-classified as a cartridge gun. The cylinder would be 1/8th of an inch shorter than the gun it's based off of in order to keep Uncle Sam at bay, and it could use 209 primers. The cylinder would remove for loading much like the NAA companions. So imagine this as a BP revolver with no paperwork, pretty sweet ain't it?


There you go. Six shots, maybe .38 or .36 caliber, double or single action, some good sights, 209 priming to eliminate cap jams, secretly capable of smokeless powder (but the ATF doesn't know, it wouldn't be in the manual) and it would look like just a regular .38 revolver.

It could be marketed as a target or hunting revolver, again to keep Uncle Sam's evil henchmen at bay.

Does that sound like a good idea to you guys? I know I come up with a lot of weird ideas, of course I'm just thinking out loud here. You know what I would like to see is Pietta making double action 1858 Remingtons again, that would be superb for defense given they are as reliable as the single action versions. From what I understand Remington did make some double action cap and ball revolvers, I'm not sure why they discontinued them. Maybe the trigger pull was horrendously heavy or something.

Levi

Remington didn't. Starr did...and there have been repros made, of terrible quality.

A good Adams or Tranter repro would be nice, but I don't expect to see one.

Levi,

You do not really grasp the GCA '68. It doesn't matter what the propellant is, as long as it doesn't take cartridges. It also doesn't matter if the cylinder is the same length as the cartridge version. A drop in cylinder is merely a gun part and requires no government registration.

Junkman 01, NAA used to have smokeless load data in the manual for their Companions, but the ATF had them take it out or the gun would need to be re-classified from what I understand. And being on the frame of a Smith and Wesson model 10 it would be like buying a receiver of a firearm, that is what they consider to be the firearm itself. However if the gun were similar in appearance and the cylinder was just a little shorter then you couldn't just pop a cartridge cylinder in there without chucking it on a lath first, it wouldn't fit therefore it wouldn't be "too easy to convert" by the ATF's standards.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

~Levi

I like the idea of building it on something like a Smith K frame. The ejector star could be designed to eject the 209 primers.