Civil War and Guns - question.

[DMW]

I spent some time yesterday watching the Ken Burns Civil War series. One of the things that came up many times was the reload time on the rifle used by soldiers on both sides. They had revolvers during the war so I was wondering, would it have been possible to make a "revolver rifle"? I never saw such a gun but I'm a relatively new shooter. Maybe it was related to cost since the rifle was probably much easier to manufacture than a pistol.

 

[Treo]

Colt made one

 

[Duke of Doubt]

Revolver carbines and rifles existed both in design and occasional manufacture. One serious design limitation involved the metallurgy of the cylinder and frame versus the blasting powder for the rifle slugs. Picture a .30-'06 revolver. Of course, Civil War era cartridges were lower powered than that, but so were the metals lower strength. So you were left with a repeating "carbine" using a pistol or pistol-like cartridge. Not so bad, but not an improvement on the existing pistols, repeating carbines or rifles.

 

[Tommygunn]

Colt and Remington both made them; the Colt was more popular --- or atleast it seemed it was used more often.
They were not popular guns, as they were phased out of service they were offered to the servicemen for sale at 25 cents, IIRC.
The main problem was the revolver cylinder in the rifle. There is always a gap between the front of the cylinder & the barrel. In a black powder rifle, a lot of exploding powder gasses come out. If you're holding the revolver rifle like you would a normal rifle, you're going to spatter your left forearm with the gasses.
This is not very comfortable!

Also, for reasons I don't know, and wonder if anyone does, the rifles seemed more prone to chainfires. That's when the ignition of the cylinder aligned with the barrel sends out sparks that somehow ignit adjacent chambers. This can happen from the front, or from the back -- even the caps can send out sparks. Now, if an adjacent chamber goes off, and you're holding this rifle in the normal manner, you're gonna lose your left hand!
Or it's gonna leave a mark!
No wonder they weren't popular.

To use these rifles correctly, your left hand has to support the rifle near your right, under the trigger guard. This however is not a normal way to hold a rifle.

 

[Duke of Doubt]

Or you can hold them Hillbilly/Duke of Doubt style, with your arms crossed, the cylinder resting just above the nock in your left elbow, with your left hand grasping your right elbow.

Try it sometime. It evolved out of the need to shoot those things up in the hills while hunting raccoons for food, yet retain one's left hand, and carried forward into the cartridge era because it happens to be a well-balanced standing position. It really is.