"Why not revolver rifles?" Topic

I know that these were in fact made, here and there, but never seem to have been very popular. I wonder why?

I assume it is because the revolver has such a tendency to lose penetrating power from escaping gas, as opposed to the more sealed chamber of a bolt action rifle. Still, it seem like, for the vastly greater rate of fire that would be possible, this would have been a more popular design.

Obviously, the people who lived back then thought otherwise. I am an ignoramus on the subject, so I thought I'd ask why.

The imperfect seal could ignite neighboring chambers causing premature firing and loss of fingers, eyes, hands, bowels, etc.

OAW aka Endless Grubs

Well, the Colt revolving rifle was unpopular due to the possibility of a chain fire that could blow your front hand off.

I think in the Civil War the Colt revolver rifle gained a reputation for unreliability. This may be because rifles get fired a lot more in a battle than a pistol, so it tends to get dirtier, which clogs up the works,especially with the black powder they were using.

But that's reaching for some long-dormant memory cells, so I may be wrong. I don't have any actual experience with the weapon.

Part of that would be exposure between shots. A pistol typically stays in a holster between fights. A rifle gets carried, leaned on, used to open doors or push aside shrubs, etc.

Couldn't an imperfect seal cause the same chain firing in a pistol? Why was it more dangerous for a rifle? Cartridge size?

Because you don't hold a pistol with two hands…

I'm guessing that a chain fire on a pistol revolver, while no doubt unpleasant and dangerous, is less dangerous than on a rifle revolver, where your forward hand is directly in front of the direction of that chain firing explostion.

The Union Army didn't like rapid firing small arms becuase they were worried about soldiers using too much ammo. At least I think I read that somewhere.

"The Union Army didn't like rapid firing small arms becuase they were worried about soldiers using too much ammo. At least I think I read that somewhere."

Yes, but that was most evident after the war, when the US Cavalry kept the breech-loading Sharps carbine instead of adopting the lever-action rifles that had been adopted by some units (Wilder's Brigade, for instance). A lot of the Indians at Little Big Horn were actually better-armed than the cavalry.

The 21st Ohio did yoeman service at Chickamuaga with Colt revolving rifles, firing over a hundred rounds per man and only being captured at nightfall due to mistaking Confederates for friends.

Couldn't an imperfect seal cause the same chain firing in a pistol?

It could, and it did.
Officers would often seal the chamber with melted candle wax to prevent it from happening. That, of course, was darn dangerous on it's own but it's better to accidentially shoot your tent at night than to shoot yourself in combat.

A more reasonable, but not always avaliable, method was to seal nipples with grease of some kind.

"The Union Army didn't like rapid firing small arms becuase they were worried about soldiers using too much ammo. At least I think I read that somewhere."

Yes, but that was most evident after the war, when the US Cavalry kept the breech-loading Sharps carbine instead of adopting the lever-action rifles that had been adopted by some units (Wilder's Brigade, for instance). A lot of the Indians at Little Big Horn were actually better-armed than the cavalry.

Reality check. The newspapers and the politicians, listening to disappointed inventors, said the Army rejected repeaters due to ammunition expenditure. In fact, there were serious problems with early repeaters, starting with the fragile loading mechanisms which required low power cartridges and the resulting short range.

There was also the political problem that all the repeaters were "patent firearms", and there was a US law requiring special Congressional action to purchase the same. The law was the result of the Hall's breechloading carbine fiasco, and had a special exemption for Colt, by the way.

As for the Indians being better armed at theLittle Big Horn, that rests on questionable data and is only true if you expect close-up (like inside 50 yards) action.

In addition to the chain fire problem, it is still, essentially, a muzzel loader. Which means once you've fired your five or six shots, you have to load five or six chambers which takes quite a bit of time. Or you can load and fire a single chamber which means it's no better than a Springfield.

for those that want to see one of these up close…find the local group of SASS (Single Action Shooting Society) at your local range. Also check the web. It is afun group

vonmallard

aka decon posen

Regarding ammo expenditure. I heard that men carrying repeating weapons, rarely carried more ammo than their musket-armed counterparts.

The revolving rifle wasn't a very reliable or solid weapon, the main problem being chainfire that could blow your hand off. The size and diameter of the chambers also limited the firepower compared to a regular musket.

The introduction of metal cartridges solved the problem of revolvers chain firing. But by that time lever action long arms with tube magazines were in common use, and these had bigger magazine capacities than a six-chamber revolver.

yup zippyfusenet and Patrick R are both kind of right.
one part metal cartridges made the need for a revolver type rifle a dead design idea, they were all cap and ball type and slow to reload after its 6 shots, leaver, drop block, and bolt action weapons were just faster to use and reload, and could use bigger more powerful bullets.

"The Union Army didn't like rapid firing small arms becuase they were worried about soldiers using too much ammo. At least I think I read that somewhere."

Isn't that the same argument every army uses for not upgrading weapons? :P

As several fellas have already described, early models using cap and ball frequently chained fired.

But I think the real reason is that a rifle such as a Sharps or lever action can normally hold more than six bullets.

Assuming metal-cartridge ammunition, it is easier to add a round or two to a tube-magazine weapon than it is to add them to a revolving magazine. With a tube magazine (e.g. a modern shotgun) all you do is stuff the rounds into the magazine door. With a revolver, you have to open the cylinder, get the spent casings out of the magazine, put the new rounds into separate holes in the cylinder, and then put the cylinder back in. A few extra steps that could be pretty costly in a fight.

Second, unrelated point about the Union concern about ammunition supply: it wasn't that the troops would use *too*much* ammo, but that they would fire off *all* their ammo in a few minutes, and then be out of the rest of the fight. A valid concern that cropped up again 100 years later in Vietnam.

The Colt chain fire problem was far worse in a rifle than a pistol. You hold a pistol at arms length while firing, the cylinder of a revolving rifle is right by your face. Ouch!

The Colt-Patterson revolving rifle was pretty popular before the arrival fo the Henry. Here are the problems:

1) Chain fires – the cylinder revolved in such a way that the loaded chamvers pointed toward your left thumb. If the second or third chamber fired, then they would hit you in the left hand. Not that uncommon apparently, as there was a method to fire the thing with the cocking lever extended and using the left hand to hold onto that.

2) Slow reload – this was not a metal cartridge weapon, rather each chamber was loaded manually with powder, ball, and a cap placed on the nipple, just like the army and navy pistols. Therefore, after you had fired you preloaded shots, it was very time consuming to reload. And I don't believe it was that easy to change cylinders on these. Unlike pistols, it's not convenient to carry 6 of them! The Henry with metal cartridge was still sorta slow, but magnitudes better than the Colt-Patterson. The Spencer, however, was loaded with a tube of bullets. Troopers would carry pre-loaded tubes, so reloading was a snap!

3) Limited availability – the army never ordered any, as far as I know, so the purchases were private or by states.

That's what I remember off the top of my head.

Rob

Hi

I love my revolving carbine, though it is of the remington design, and they only made 3000 of the real ones. As a carbine, you can do an easy two handed grip with the trigger guard that is very stable. The weapon is very accurate, but only good for 100yds or less.

The colts are a lot bigger and more clumsy. The loading lever hold isn't practical for a couple reasons, but you can still do the two handed under the cylinder hold.

Chain fire happens with two different drives. One is blow back flash from the gap at the cylinder igniting the others(ain't a nipple flash as someone says above), but leaping from front of cylinder to front. Oversized balls scrunched and pealed to fit works somewhat, grease works somewhat. But sometimes just the concussion of the round going off will set off the others. If the chain fire doesn't do your hand, and the blow back in your face doesn't bother you (did you wear safety glasse?), the chain fire usually damages the gun as well.

The winchester wasn't a solution. The version used in the ACW used a rimfire .44 round. This is a 44/28 round,meaning less power than the usual colt revolver (44/35).

The spencer was liked and used (though I cannot stand the ergonomics). The real problem is the good/bad of the repeater tube. It wasn't until way later that you do load rounds while not useing the magazine. This is important because the tube fails, and reloading for stray single shots is a pain when, like "dirty harry" you cannot remember if it was "five or six". This was fixed a lot later. Carrying the loaded tubes was dangerous, and the ammo case to do so wasn't generally available until later, and carried 6 for 42 rounds which, by coincidence was the same as that carried by other cartridge guns.

Post war, there were a lot of Spencers, all things considered. But the deal was this: An allin conversion of the muzzle loader was like 2 bucks, but a spencer was $36 USD to 40(as were most of the compeating conversions and things like the Sharpes).

The later 45/70 "trapdoor"(a term not used at the time) is currently very underated due to things reported in error about the repeaters. It was cheap, reliable as a nail and very accurate and effective and LONG ranged.

Rocky

Another reason for the tradoor Springfield's bad reputation is that the first thing most people find is a booklet written by an US Army officer who damns it thoroughly. What people don't realize is that the author was also an inventor who had his design turned down not once, but twice, by the Ordnance Department – first in favor of the Krag-Jorgensen and the second time in favor of tne M1903.

It was after the second experience that he wrote the pamphlet (which, oddly enough,, is sold in reprint at the Springfield Armory Museum) daming the Ordnance Board as a bunch of blind fools. Since the K-J had proved itself in combat and the entire Army was quite pleased with the '03, he made his case retroactive to 1874 and criticized, often mendaciously, a weapon that few in the Army of 1910 even remembered.

Guys, Rocky said it all. But I have to wonder why any modern person knowing that your digits are at risk holding the barrel, expects that this didn't occur to original users. Sort of like wondering why crossbow shooters didn't put their fingers up where the string would tear off a finger nail!? Anyone needing to be told these things ought to be feeding the horses, not shooting with the toys. (Templars, btw, disdain shooting weapons of any type personally, because manly knights only fight beard to beard; so this discussion would normally be a non discussion for types like me, but in fact I do find guns fascinating, I just can't help it, call it a weakness)