New Production of Webley Mark VI p[ossible

I wonder where they could have the guns made? Not England, certainly. Nor can I see much market for an obsolete "cult gun" in an obsolete caliber. The action won't let them use a modern cartridge and even something like .45 Colt would be too long for the ejector. I wish them luck, but I wouldn't buy stock in the enterprise.

Jim

They have been asking for this for over a year. I HIGHLY doubt any new Webleys will be made.

If they are, it will be a very limited run that will sell for sky-high collector's prices.

The big crux is not firing a modern cartridge. Such an obsolete, reloader's only proposition, just doesn't appeal to many.

Old news, not going anywhere.
Denis

I doubt very much that Webley still has any of that old machinery and tooling, and they would have to ship it out of England. So, any new maker would have to start from scratch. Now $100 times 100 pledges equals $10000, which won't buy a decent quality milling machine, let alone production equipment. Either those folks are smoking funny weed or the whole thing is a scam.

(If 1000 of those reading this will just send me $1000 each, I promise to consider reproducing the Savage-North revolver. I will very seriously consider it while lounging on the Costa del Sol with a cold drink in one hand and a blonde in the other.)

Jim

If it were a Webley-Fosbery I would save up for one. It took care of Miles Archer, and he was no softie!

I wonder if these people will deliver revolvers?
http://www.andersonwheeler.co.uk/revolver

They are asking £6,500, which is about $9,200 at current exchange rates. By the time you got it imported it would be close to ten grand. Having a machine shop custom make a gun to order is not exactly being in production.

I have some serious doubts about the 357 Magnum chambering. AFAIK, nobody ever made a 38 Special breaktop revolver, much less a full house 357. A 357 Magnum generates about 2 1/2 times the pressure of a 38 S&W. I'm sure fine modern steel is used throughout, but the design simply isn't very strong.

natman said:

They are asking £6,500, which is about $9,200 at current exchange rates. By the time you got it imported it would be close to ten grand. Having a machine shop custom make a gun to order is not exactly being in production.

I have some serious doubts about the 357 Magnum chambering. AFAIK, nobody ever made a 38 Special breaktop revolver, much less a full house 357. A 357 Magnum generates about 2 1/2 times the pressure of a 38 S&W. I'm sure fine modern steel is used throughout, but the design simply isn't very strong.

Click to expand...

Uberti does a No.3 in .38 Special, 44-40, 44 Russian and 45 Colt.

I can't imagine a top break .357 -- I'll bet it would scatter parts all over the range.

All to often, when trying to determine the feasibility of a certain action of type or firearm,s ability to handle the pressure of a particular cartridge.....the pressure figure is all that is looked at. There is much more to the equation than pressure alone. For example, if you take a 30-06 and a .223 and measure the actual rearward static thrust on the bolt face at the moment of firing you will see 10560 #s vs. 6160#s. The two rounds are loaded to about the same pressure, if anything, the smaller round is at a slightly higher pressure.

So why the difference? That pressure in the 06 is pushing against more area; .176 Sq. In. vs .112 sq. in. All other factors being equal the more area the pressure has to push against, the greater the rearward thrust on the breech bolt. This is why shotgun shells are not loaded much above 15,000 PSI.

So.... could a top break revolver handle a 357 magnum pressures. Probably not, a Webley certainly not. The action would have to be beefed up considerably and the cylinder lengthened. But Perhaps not that much. I don't know the formula for computing static thrust but I know the pressures involved. The 357 runs at about twice the pressure of a 45 ACP....but the ACP case is much larger in diameter, giving its lower pressure much more area to push against. The actual static thrust is doubtless STILL much more for the 357....but perhaps not as much as one would think....

I would love to see Webley's come back, but I don't ever see it happening. It can all be summed up in four words:

No demand. Too ugly.

There is a modern break top Russian revolver chambered for 357, but it's a totally different design than a Webly. Not sure if they are still in production.

That Russian design looks for all the world like it has the same frame-latch as the old S&W / Iver Johnson / H&R top-breaks. That is supposed to be inferior to the Webley stirrup-latch. It is startling to me that they got it to work at all in 357 Magnum, but I am not an engineer and know nothing about materials science.

I really wish that Russian top break got imported and is all it's susposed to be.

It may be chambered for the 357 but is there any reports to it's capability to actually handle it?

Like the 45 acp HK P7's, sure they made a couple production models but they had so many problems they scraped the idea.

I've never seen production numbers or more then just a few copy/pasted versions of the same 2-3 pictures. Was this an actual production gun?

Edit: I see it was much like the 45 acp HK P7's, it was only prototyped, never produced. Possibly due to the arms embargo during the 90's when it was built, or issues with the design. Both are possible.

At one time, the Russians were great at producing "vaporware" complete with faked pictures of super computers, bombers, missiles, etc.

The strength of the latch and hinge is only one of the problems of building a breaktop revolver for high power cartridges. The other is extraction. With long cartridges like the .357 and .44 Magnum, the conventional camming systems or even the "rack and pinion" S&W systems won't work. A break top with manual extraction (like the old Iver Johnson Trailsman) would work but would lose one of the major advantages of the break-top, its "automatic" extraction.

Jim

They are making the Webley top break pattern in a 32 in India. It is sold for self-defense for women - very expensive.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/29/india-creates-gunforwomennamedforgangrapevictim.html