I got to try something unusual last night.
Firstly some background to firearms laws here in England...
1) Handguns that fire cartridges in the traditional sense are restricted to such an extent that they may be considered to be banned outright.
2) For a firearm not to be classified as a handgun, it has to be large enough so that concealing it is unlikely or very unwieldy. This means the barrel alone must be 300mm at least, and the overall length of the gun must be 600mm minimum. This means you could have a long-barreled pistol with a permanently-attached rod sticking out the rear of the grip to make up the length. It isn't my idea of a handgun, in fact I regard that as a carbine without a proper stock.
3) You can have black powder handguns, or more specifically a handgun that does not use cartridges but which is muzzle-loaded.
A guy called Alan Westlake got hold of some long barreled Taurus revolvers which were imported in the configuration described in (2) above. Namely they had a long barrel and a metal rod or brace protruding from the grip, rearwards.
He then removed the factory cylinder, manufactured his own nitro conversion cylinder and modified the gun to accept that removable cylinder. The gun was then a muzzle-loader (albeit with smokeless powder) and was no longer subject to the restrictions in (2) above. It could be cut down to the size of any of the familiar black powder pistols such as a Ruger Old Army, and best of all that hideous wire brace could be cut off.
The resulting gun is still a Taurus but it is modified by Alan Westlake and is known as a Westlake Nitro conversion. And that is what I fired last night.
Here is the gun:
The guy who owns this revolver has made a board to hold 42 individual powder holders with easy flip caps. They work great:
The cylinder is loaded similar to a black powder except there is no wad and there are no nipples on which to place caps. The bulllets used are full wadcutters, pressed into the front of the cylinder with a loading tool. This 7-shot .357 cylinder is machined to take shotshell primers:
When firing the gun I was able to get all 7 shots in a reasonable group at 25 yards. The gun felt solid and reminded me of a Taurus model 66 my family had back in South Africa, which was .357 magnum.
If it was my gun I would change to the thicker wood stocks and try to find a way to put the Taurus-style sights on it. The sights don't seem to be original to me, well not the front blade and rear notch plate at least. The rear plate on this conversion was loose and didn't have the white U-outline I like, which was on our 4" model 66 Taurus:
And the front blade with red insert:
Overall I was very impressed with the gun. Firing that conversion was as close as I can get here in the UK, to firing the family revolver which we had in South Africa.
Other benefits (so I have been told) is that it will be much easier to clean and we can fire that indoors (which indeed I did) whereas black powder can't be fired indoors at our range.
Loading the cylinders was not a pain, in fact I found it quite enjoyable. Ideally it would be good to have a bunch of cylinders but I hear they are licensed items, same as the gun. I think you can get the gun with two cylinders with little issue, but asking for three or more may be met with resistance.
That is the nature of the beast here in the UK.
I understand that Alan Westlake cannot get the long barreled Taurus revolvers anymore so he is now importing part-made Armscor and Alfa revolvers, sent without cartridge cylinders so that he doesn't have to import long barreled guns with those pesky wire braces out the back. Looking at the two types, I think the Alfa is more my kind of gun, but obviously these are custom converted and are therefore expensive.
http://westlakeengineering.com/15105.html
Firstly some background to firearms laws here in England...
1) Handguns that fire cartridges in the traditional sense are restricted to such an extent that they may be considered to be banned outright.
2) For a firearm not to be classified as a handgun, it has to be large enough so that concealing it is unlikely or very unwieldy. This means the barrel alone must be 300mm at least, and the overall length of the gun must be 600mm minimum. This means you could have a long-barreled pistol with a permanently-attached rod sticking out the rear of the grip to make up the length. It isn't my idea of a handgun, in fact I regard that as a carbine without a proper stock.
3) You can have black powder handguns, or more specifically a handgun that does not use cartridges but which is muzzle-loaded.
A guy called Alan Westlake got hold of some long barreled Taurus revolvers which were imported in the configuration described in (2) above. Namely they had a long barrel and a metal rod or brace protruding from the grip, rearwards.
He then removed the factory cylinder, manufactured his own nitro conversion cylinder and modified the gun to accept that removable cylinder. The gun was then a muzzle-loader (albeit with smokeless powder) and was no longer subject to the restrictions in (2) above. It could be cut down to the size of any of the familiar black powder pistols such as a Ruger Old Army, and best of all that hideous wire brace could be cut off.
The resulting gun is still a Taurus but it is modified by Alan Westlake and is known as a Westlake Nitro conversion. And that is what I fired last night.
Here is the gun:
The guy who owns this revolver has made a board to hold 42 individual powder holders with easy flip caps. They work great:
The cylinder is loaded similar to a black powder except there is no wad and there are no nipples on which to place caps. The bulllets used are full wadcutters, pressed into the front of the cylinder with a loading tool. This 7-shot .357 cylinder is machined to take shotshell primers:
When firing the gun I was able to get all 7 shots in a reasonable group at 25 yards. The gun felt solid and reminded me of a Taurus model 66 my family had back in South Africa, which was .357 magnum.
If it was my gun I would change to the thicker wood stocks and try to find a way to put the Taurus-style sights on it. The sights don't seem to be original to me, well not the front blade and rear notch plate at least. The rear plate on this conversion was loose and didn't have the white U-outline I like, which was on our 4" model 66 Taurus:
And the front blade with red insert:
Overall I was very impressed with the gun. Firing that conversion was as close as I can get here in the UK, to firing the family revolver which we had in South Africa.
Other benefits (so I have been told) is that it will be much easier to clean and we can fire that indoors (which indeed I did) whereas black powder can't be fired indoors at our range.
Loading the cylinders was not a pain, in fact I found it quite enjoyable. Ideally it would be good to have a bunch of cylinders but I hear they are licensed items, same as the gun. I think you can get the gun with two cylinders with little issue, but asking for three or more may be met with resistance.
That is the nature of the beast here in the UK.
I understand that Alan Westlake cannot get the long barreled Taurus revolvers anymore so he is now importing part-made Armscor and Alfa revolvers, sent without cartridge cylinders so that he doesn't have to import long barreled guns with those pesky wire braces out the back. Looking at the two types, I think the Alfa is more my kind of gun, but obviously these are custom converted and are therefore expensive.
http://westlakeengineering.com/15105.html
.