that should have sold for 10x the price. if the guy who bought it is smart, he should get a blueprint made as that is a unicorn that should have a replica in a museum. real pioneer in thinking who made it.
@@anikidwolfy he should have the blueprint made and then commission a couple hundred made I'm sure even as replicas you'd be able to sell them for 1000$ each
I know I’m late to this party, but is it possible that the bolt/barrel lockup was self regulating with chamber pressure... in other words the expansion of the case creates friction with the inside of the chamber sufficient to keep it closed?
@lockpickinglawyer I think that would just be normal blowback operation unless I'm misunderstanding you. If I am, do you have an example of another gun that uses that locking style?
Cory Yalowicki The Tommy Gun comes to mind... at least that’s what I was thinking of. There must be others, but I don’t know any offhand. A more effective version of this friction delayed blowback uses a concave ring in the chamber to increase friction when the case expands. I can’t think of guns that use that, but I vaguely recall reading about it. 🤷🏻♂️
@@lockpickinglawyer The Tommy Gun used a Blish Lock, which was based on the assumption that the static friction of two dissimilar metals was greater under pressure, which was incorrect. It didn't work at all and was effectively straight blowback. The friction-delay you're thinking of was used in the Fritz Mann .25 pocket pistol and the Kimball .30 carbine pistol. That worked too well actually, the cases would expand into a groove in the chamber and get stuck or blow out. I like your channel BTW, keep it up
+Rad Chad You have no idea what you're talking about. I'm a service tech at a US Audi dealership I know all about their "efficient engineering" translation over complicated garbage that falls apart in five years.
+MonkeyWith72Magic funny thing is: it falls apart if you don't know what the fuck you are handling. no problem like that in german audis. or most other german produced cars.
***** lol, i would depend on a 10 year old benz no second thought. in fact my 7 year old bmw has 270.000 miles down and is "purring like a cat" (german saying if something runs smooth)
***** sorry if i misunderstand your post, but what has your grandma to do with german cars. i'm german and here in germany most german build cars work for a pretty long time especially those brands called luxery brands like mercedes, bmw, audi and so on. but i have to agree about faults in the luxery equipment. this stuff tends to break down way sooner then the actual car. like i said sorry if i misunderstood your post, my native language is german. oh and ask your grnadma about "schnurrt wie eine Katze" :) thats what my bmw does.
@@MarlowQAI There's also the Mateba Model 6 Unica auto-revolver. It's also neat because the barrel aligns with the bottom chamber instead of top chamber.
@@OnlyKaerius The Mateba appears in Shirow Masamune's *Ghost in the Shell* movie. The team "rookie" Togusa persists in using it although The Major wants him to use a regulation semiautomatic pistol. When I first saw this firearm, I thought "Now if the barrel was on the bottom...." :D
This seriously is cool. I'm pretty disappointed that we didn't get to see how the whole thing works, due to the missing firing pin housing, but wow. This thing really is a work of art
Agreed, I'm actually talking to a smith about building a functional reproduction and hopefully people pick up on automatic revolvers as a consequence haha
@@InvidiousIgnoramus To be fair it really isn't a revolver either. It's some monstrosity of a gun that just looks neat and probably performed like crap when in one piece.
***** jingleheimer? no... i appreciate the reference though. it is only part of what I seldom do. nor J.L Smith, the famous flying Smith... though, the smith are a nom-de-plume/guerre clan of many... though we digress eh? as M Smith already observe, how awesome would it be to see Chris Lloyd with this item? or perhaps, to see a similar item in Firefly or in Nuka-Break?
Sometime in the 20th century: Someone: Hey Dan, I've heard that you are very good gunsmith. I bet you can't make a gun that combines revolver with a semiautomatic pistol! Dan: Just watch! Ian in the 21st century: WTF is that gun and what was its purpose?!
Nigh on six years ago and this shows up in recommended. Some observations... 1, The Forgotten Weapons theme is still a sweet piece of music 2, Ian has found the fountain of youth 3, This Old Tony used his lathe to travel back in time to build a pistol HIS way but forgot his camera
Alejandro Medina okay this literally looks like something I would find in Fallout like jokes aside it literally looks like this gun was supposed to be in the game but they forgot I'm dead serious LOL.
Alejandro Medina No shit. Pretty sure I've paid an exorbitant number of bottle caps, a perfectly good, functioning auto-rifle and not a trivial number of 'favors' for exactly this in Fallout too - sorry to give up the illusion of reality/fantasy by invoking the game to which you so subtly refer.
This shit absolutely gets me going. The mystery, the design, the steampunk awesomeness. All the questions, who made it. Why. Immediately I’m thinking of a plot line to a Cthulhu noir novel, a mad engineer thrust into the lovecraft world, and inspired to craft new weapons to defend himself. Unimpressed by the performance of 5-6 shot .38 revolvers of the day, inspired by the operation of larger artillery pieces, he modified a revolver frame into a semi automatic, clock spring wound cylindrical magazine holding 10-12 rounds of 7.62x25 Mauser or Tokarev ammunition. A home made, C-96 inspired, revolver modification project if you will. Used to defend himself and hunt the servants of the greater evil, with hardened carapaces and thick muscle, and often traveling in packs. What an absolutely fascinating piece.
One way of getting a slightly better idea if the owner wanted to get detail would be to get the steel analysed. Steel is constantly changing and all sorts of metals are added (as well as varying amounts of carbon) and the composition could give an earliest possible date. The rounds it was designed for might give a clue as would close examination of fixings such as screws. Between 1860 or there abouts and about 1970 screw sizes tolerances and TPI were changing a lot. The threads alone could give an earliest possible date. EG if it has SAE threads it would have to be post 1912 (extremely likely anyway), but if it has for example UNF threads it would have to be post 1950. Just an idea and it wouldn't give a very accurate date unless it does use UNF/UNC in which date it could be narrowed to an 8 year window.
Why make your own screws, when it's one of the easiest part that can be sourced from a store. Making your own custom screws is work, but buying a pack and a fitting threading tool is way easier. Also don't forget that starting in the 40's/50's there is an increase in background radiation from surface nuclear tests. That has an impact on things like carbon dating. There are even some who source steel from sunken pre-WWII ships, because they still have a different radiation profile.
Looks like there was a rear tilting locking block that is missing. It may have locked the slide and breach block together for the short recoil phase and after moving back it then unlocked the rear by raising it out of the two rear notches on top (I'm assuming that the rear notch on the right side has been sheared away at some point). The firing pin transfer bar would be in this locking piece and part of the safety of the design would be that it if was not locked the transfer bar would not be in line with the hammer.
I had much the same idea. Take a look at the top. There's a lateral cutout on top of the bolt with a matching cut on top of the 'slide', but only on the left side. My guess would be that the right side used to match, but part of the notch was sheared off at some point, accounting for the void above the 'safety lever'. It looks like there's a large cross pin at the front of that slot in the bolt. Maybe the locking black tilted on that so that a projection on the rear dropped into those notches. Ian, if you can get another look at that gun, see if that void above the 'safety lever' looks like something broke off, and check for a camming surface sticking up into the slot in the bolt.
My idea is different and simpler, it is that the barrel and the bolt aren't locked together per say but rather made to stay together for a while simply by design, first by the empty casing is forced to expand into a chamber that might have a notch cut in it like on some of those old pocket pistols I can't remember the name of which use the deformed casing to lock the bolt and the barrel together more or less by strong friction, this combined to the fact you can see on the video that the barrel travels its few millimetres back much easier than the bolt + barrel assembly later has to. Basically my theory is that by following the path of least resistance the force will simply take the barrel back through its small travel before taking the bolt back, but that could only work if there is a sufficient amount of friction between the brass and the barrel which would imply some kind of notch or pattern cut into the chamber.
This is resurrecting a post from the dead, but I wonder if you had a borescope if a small hole could be found going from the bore in the rear barrel support down into that spring chamber... gas pressure would hold the block and barrel together long enough to be useful delay. It would eat springs, but this is someone's wild idea anyways so....
I don't know about gorgeous in its current - or viewed 8 years ago - condition, but it's definitely interesting enough that I'd like to see one completed and functioning.
Two things about Vash's gun - it fired from the bottom cylinder like a Chiappa Rhino, but it's also a Top Brake instead of the usual swing-out cylinder. If I had f-u money I'd have one commissioned in a heartbeat.
It's sad seeing this interesting weapon in such a state. I would love to get my hands on it and make a new one to see how it performed and why it was forgotten.
The revolver for the average working man in the alternate universe of 1913. Every cybercowboy has one of these in the saddlebag of his motorcycle. I've heard the governor even has one with autosights.
Definitely a post apocalyptic cowboy hat wearin' gunslinger type of gun but it takes the fang of a alien wolf as a firing pin or something straight out of Cowboy Bebop or Trigun.... LoL
@@vincedibona4687 No and, fuck no! "kid's these days" are the ones who frivolously toss around the term cringey over utterly inoffensive and benign things.
The machining looks really nice. On first glace it's quite crude but all surfaces are smoth, no sharp corners, nice construction. I actually like the idea of a rotary magazine, makes for a compact gun, just manufacturing and maintenance would be pretty nasty.
+gambitraven This was also most likely just an unrefined prototype weapon. A lot of shop floor guns have a similarly exposed and complex look before they are refined for mass production.
full auto revolver is easy to make you need single action revolver and put the gas tube on the barrel. If you shot piston in gas tube move back and put the hamer back hamer rotate the magazine and hit the another bullet.
+_Colnex_ Just mount the barrel and cylinder on a slide and use the recoiling mass to re-cock the hammer and rotate the cylinder, like Mateba does it. Putting a gas tube on a revolver..
For how old it probably is, this is amazing. It looks crude of course, but I'm sure it wasn't completed. Man I would love to know more about this. Somewhere out there, alive or not, there is the person who created this.. and I'm sure it wasn't their first, or their last..
This might sound a little silly, but is it possible that the part locking the barrel and recoil mechanism together was in the slide/firing pin assembly?
Late to the party, I know, but... that's clearly the case. If you pause the video around 2:06 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-r7me_z0Qdcs.html you can see that the notches in the bolt and slide line up perfectly, and a pair of lugs on the back of the missing piece would have fit right into them, locking the bolt to the barrel. The lever at the back would not have been a safety in that case, but a way to unlock the bolt for manual cycling. You can see that the lever's position doesn't really make sense for a safety, but it would be perfectly positioned to push up on one of those hypothetical lugs. I'm honestly kind of amazed that Ian didn't notice that.
@@kennmikos9120 Good point! Only argument that I could see against that is the short travel of the lever, but it might have been spring loaded or simply been an unlock lever, requiring the user to flip up the part to actually disengage the lugs.
That's a beautiful mechanism, weather worth it's complexity and function or not. It's the fact it exists. That bolt closing has a very satisfying sound. The sound is a big part.
I hope whoever bought this thing is a skilled and uniquely-thinking gunsmith who finishes what whoever made it started. It would be quite something to have a functioning example of what is without a doubt one of the most interesting handguns the world has ever know.
This appears to be a shop prototype and appears to have a rotary magazine like the Mannlicher-Schönauer rifle produced by Steyr Mannlicher, so it can't be called a revolver like either the English Webley-Fosbery Automatic Revolver, American Union Automatic Revolver, Norwegian Landstad revolver, or Italian Mateba Autorevolver. The firing pin and it's associated striker extension as shown are missing. The caliber from a chamber casting would go a long way to at least pinning done probable countries of manufacture.
Makeshift weapons always look interesting and have personality but I would be terrified walking up on someone or trying engage in a firefight wondering if the damn thing will work when I need it to. Pull the trigger and it goes "click" and then the other guy pulls a factory mass produced and guns you down.
That's why, if I ever were to make one, it would be a simple single-shot breach loader. Can't do too much wrong with that. At least not as much as with any type of self loading system.
My guess would be that this is a blank firing movie prop from the 1950's, it looks vaguely familiar but I can't put my finger on it. The way the action was designed, plus the poor quality sights and elaborate mechanics makes me think this could possibly have been an old big-budget sci-fi prop.
That missing piece in the back looks like it also kept the barrel and bolt together at the start of the travel, based on the notches on both pieces. Wish that piece was still present.
Just as I thought, the cylinder was spring loaded. All that's missing is a fixed firing pin piece to fire this as an automatic. Unlike the Mauser pistol that uses clips to load the bullets, this one would require each bullet to be loaded one by one.
Goth Bladerunner gun? It almost looks like a Starr Arms model 1858 frame and trigger but not quite.. The Mateba 6 Unica and the Webley also come to mind..
+BrainEatPenguin 1 not really, the most basic weapons we have seen from fallout so far in case of guns is the pipe guns which has regular cartridge ejection :P
what if its a weapon let by someone from the future that came back in time to the 1950s and something happens to them and the revolver get found that would be amazing
God i would love to see that thing operate, it seems like it would look so cool firing with that bolt and slide. Hopefully this makes its way into a video game or something!
It seems like the friction of the cartridge case on the sides of the chamber when it was under pressure would tend to draw the floating barrel backwards.
I just found the patent for the .30 Carbine Kimball pistol, and it does in fact use a floating barrel. I think this operates on the same principle: patents.google.com/patent/US2846926A/en