A Photo Essay about Merwin and Hulbert Revolvers

[Driftwood Johnson]

Everything is relative.

What do you mean by wiggle? These are old guns. I have examined a number of Merwins with barrels that wiggled, about 100 years worth of wear. And some that were tight.

As far as the arbor is concerned, I recently read about one owner who removed the arbor (first removing the bug screw) Then he stippled the bottom of the extractor ring to raise a teeny bit of metal. That tightened up the arbor when he screwed it back in.

As for the barrel, two of my Merwins were extensively reworked by their previous owner. He welded on new material to the joints, then filed it to fit. I can still see the blue dykem where he did his filing. One has a teeny bit of rotational wiggle, but no wiggle up and down. The other is as tight as a drum in both directions.

My Pocket Army is also tight as a drum. It had a couple of wear problems, but the barrel joint was not one of them.

 

[mravery]

By wiggle, I mean if you hold the gun grip and the barrel, you are able to move the barrel side to side. I would say that you could call you it rotational as you stated.

 

[Driftwood Johnson]

No, by rotational I mean the barrel can rotate ever so slightly around the center arbor. Just a teeny bit. What ever the case, the joint is a little bit loose. Is this a top strap gun with two joints or an open top with just one joint?

 

[mravery]

Top strap, pictures are posted earlier in this thread.

 

[Driftwood Johnson]

A Merwin with a top strap will tend to be stronger than an open top. But wear is wear. Probably not much you can do to tighten up the barrel joints other than judiciously welding in a tiny amount of metal at the right spot and filing it down to fit.

If you can get the arbor out, try using an automatic centerpunch to punch a bunch of tiny dents on the surface where the 'extractor ring' bottoms out against the frame. This is sometimes known as stippling. Each dent will resemble a tiny crater and will raise a tiny bit of metal around it. This may be enough to tighten up the fit of the arbor when it is reassembled.

I do not know if these guns had their barrels custom fit or if the tooling was accurate enough that the barrels fit properly without any fitting. But I'm sure none of them left the factory with any amount of wiggle at all. Is the odd numbered barrel any looser than the other two? That would say something about individually fitting the barrels.

 

[mravery]

The tightest barrel is the 3.5", then the 2.5" (odd numbered) then the 5.5"

I would say that gun has been used (not abused) and would bet that over the course of the last 130 yrs, plenty of smokeless rounds have passed through it and perhaps loosened the locks just a tad.

Being that this is the first of an antique gun that I have owned and being a multi-piece frame vs one piece frame I have nothing the compare against.

 

[Panzerschwein]

Lover the M&H's.

Just wish a modern company like Uberti, Pietta or Davide Pedersoli would make a good-quality repro.

 

[BCRider]

A local gunsmith that shoots cowboy action with us bought one chambered in the MH .38 size cartridge. He turned down some brass to make it work and brought the gun out to one of our meets. I was one of the folks privileged enough to operate, shoot and otherwise fondle the gun.

As shown in DJ's photos the machine work isn't all that pristine looking. But the gun I handled was fitted very well in the spots where it counted. All the functions worked slick as you could wish for.

And while I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder I find the Merwin Hulbert guns to be quite attractive and I wish that there were more of them around. Or perhaps that one of the Itallian makers would produce them much like we see with Uberti and the S&W break tops. If they did then I'd have to buy one.

In any event if any of you are ever so lucky as to be offered one to handle or shoot I would certainly take the person up on the offer. They ARE a treat.

 

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy Again

I don't think I am telling anybody anything they don't already know, but a few years ago there was a huge amount of hoopla around a new company that was going to start making reproductions of Merwin Hulbert revolvers. All the hoopla was accompanied by the usual baloney about how precise the originals were, and only through the miracle of modern 3D CAD design and CNC machining would these reproductions be possible. Deposits were taken. 3D CAD renderings of the guns were shown on the internet, and a few parts were made. Then after many months of nothing to show, it was announced that the company had gone bust. The good part of the story is that another outfit bought what remained of the company, and everybody eventually got their deposits back.

There is nothing 'magic' about the Merwin Hulbert design, which I will go into soon. But so far none of the other replica arms makers has taken a stab at reproducing a Merwin Hulbert revolver.

It is not a lack of precision machining capability, it is probably more of a market share thing and whether or not it is worth any other company's time to try.

 

[housepainter]

This is why I like THR.
Some of the most interesting revolvers I've ever seen.

Great thread !

 

[mravery]

Driftwood,

I've followed your posts in other conversations about the MH and the black powder vs smokeless etc. The MH that you have that had the blown cylinder, wasn't that caused with a black powder cartridge (I thought I read that in another post)?

If so, what happened, why did it blow with black powder?

 

[Driftwood Johnson]

Actually, I'm not too sure.

I seem to remember the first time the gentleman I bought it from told me he was shooting Smokeless powder out of it. I seem to remember he stated something to the effect that he should not have been shooting Smokeless out of it.

More recently, he told me that he was shooting it with Black Powder. I think his memory is getting a bit hazy. I don't know why it would have blown up with Black Powder.

 

[mravery]

Lol, well we may never know then

Good news is, I was playing around with the arbor and if a tighten it, the wiggle I mentioned earlier goes down to about zero