Rock Island Auction Company: any gun with Colt on it, people will buy.IMHO and of course the same goes with Winchester,Remington,Marlin, and etc Everyone always want to own a piece of history
i'm guessing maybe the weight of an unfired round would prevent it from moving with the right calculators on bore size you could vent enough gas to move an empty case but not a full one
Yeah, basically, you have a five shooter, and if you go back before speed loaders were common, this could save some time since you wouldn’t bother ejecting the last case. You would load 5 and let the first shot blow the last case out. Still a dumb idea though. Just use speed loaders.
@@justins8802 That's not why they did that, an old single action revolvers if you leave a live round in the chamber if you bump the hammer on the back of the gun the gun will discharge
Nah, that game would've had a more clever or useful design to their revolver...This just seems like the bois at Colt got drunk one night and were fuckin' around xD
When you're down in the mouth, and life's a pain Weatherman says "heavy rain" A little boost is all you need Average Joe to Hercules A stronger arm, a sharper brain That's why the future is Fontaine!
I'm thinking he probably did it just to see if it could be done, rather than for practical purposes. One of the benefits of a revolver, when you can take your time shooting, is not having to pick your cases off the ground.
I think this idea would be okay if implemented on a single action army. Because you load it on one side and it ejects out the other side. It would save loads of time.
Then you'd have to remove the loading gate and replace it with the auto ejector, then make a whole new loading gate on the left side. Like someone said though, on the first shot you'd have that ejection gas coming out of the empty chamber in the direction towards the shooter.
Robert E. Roy, 73, of Barefoot Bay, FL, died Wednesday, (March 27, 2002) at Indian River Memorial Hospital in Vero Beach, FL. He was the beloved husband for 53 years of Theresa (Marlow) Roy. He was born in Holyoke, MA, and was a longtime resident of central Connecticut. Before his retirement in 1993, which concluded 30 years of service, Mr. Roy was the Director of International Sales for Colt Firearms. He was well known and respected by business and government leaders around the world. He was an avid shooter and photographer, enjoyed reading, listening to jazz and telling stories of his travels. Besides his wife, he is survived by his daughters and sons-in-law, Linda and Allan Craig, and Sandy and Tom Mepham; his son, Robert Roy, Jr.; six grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; his sister and brother-in-law, Phyllis and Jim Norwood; his sister, Carol Stanka; and his brother and sister-in-law, John and Kathy Roy. Services were held in Florida. Memorial donations may be made to the American Heart Association, American Diabetes Foundation or American Cancer Society.
I am amazed that with the amount of weird designs you've already shown, you still manage to find subjects like this where the first reaction to the concept is utter disbelief. I find it humbling that after those years, you still haven't been able to document every method about the (one would think) relatively simple function of throwing a bit of dense metal at something. Thanks for your work :)
Ive seen a similar idea with a chain fed .38 acp. The Shells were chain fed and advanced every time you pulled the trigger then ejected on the far side of the gun as the links fell out. It looked like there was a cylinder but it was just a half tube that was machined to look like one. it was neat to watch him shoot the different guns he made. The makers name was Shelenhamer he was an accountant in Palmyra Pa. He had several rifle cartridges named after him. After his death I don't know what happened to the pistol.
Back in 2012 I took an M1895 Nagant revolver & made it gas ejecting. The mechanism I made was nearly identical to this. I had no idea this prototype Colt revolver existed. I had many of the same problems. Such as how it ejects on every shot, so I had to leave actually two chambers empty due to the position of the ejector rod. Which since a Nagant holds 7rds it still had 5rds, but with such a slow reloading process you really want to have those extra 2rds. Having it auto eject really didn't save much time on the reload.
All I can imagine is if it ejected all 6 rounds it would just have a faster reload time than a normal revolver which would be a plus depending on how complicated the design would be. Love your videos
This reminds me about a question I've been dying to ask: Why haven't "Tround" guns ever taken off? I can see why the Dardick revolver itself didn't take off, but why hasn't the idea been used since? It seems like it could be useful, especially in a hunting rifle. Sorry if you've answered this in a Q&A already, I don't usually have the time to watch them through.
the plastic cased ammo and the shape and all that maybe if they made it with regular rimless semiauto type of ammo it could work if they remade it the reason they tryed the first thing i said was cause it supposedly held more ammo
The concept was explored further in small-scale tests, with the US Navy building a .50 caliber tround machine gun. The rate of fire was quite high and it worked without issue, which is really where the tround comes into play; the tround was really meant for something like a machine gun or autocannon for aircraft use, as the case design allows an “open-cylinder” design that simplified chambering and ejection with a linkless feed system.
Interesting idea but I think the top break revolver is more elegant in that opening up the gun to put more cartridges in already ejects the spent cases so there is no additional effort or actions spent in removing them, even a swing out cylinder requires you to hit the ejector after swinging out the cylinder which is one added step over a top break.
Ian I love you so much man. You are my hero. Omg. Your stoner firing video convinced me how much of a role model you are to me. Ever since R Lee Ermey died you’ve truly filled that place for me. Thank you. Please never stop keeping the firearms history alive. And keep em’ in the 10 ring! RIP R Lee Ermey hoorah
This works just like my auto eject striker 12. I would also like to add that the striker is much better than the crapy street sweeper like you did a video on. You are welcome to check it out if you are ever in Wisconsin.
To make that fundamental design work it would be necessary to store the gas pressure from the previous shot in a small tank with a check valve so the gas pressure can charge the tank and the action of the cylinder rotating would trip a valve to vent the gas to the cylinder and eject the round that was just fired. Very simple fix.
This is about as useful as a horse carriage drawn by a motorcycle, or a steam engine whose boiler is heated with electricity. Nowadays revolvers have star ejectors which spit out all used cartridges when you open the cylinder, so there is no need for this contraption. The real improvement is the self-loading pistol which has been invented more than one century ago.
Why not an option to disable the gas tube so that you don't eject an unused round? That would be helpful, so that you don't waste unused ammunition. Also, it should be simple so that you can immediately reactivate the gas tube after the first shot. Perhaps a way to block the gas tube harmlessly so you don't damage anything? Removing and reattaching it would be tedious. Or load five instead of six, but then you aren't getting the full potential of the design. I like this because it could help cut back on reload time.
@@lucianene7741 They aren't "spit out", they are manually extracted. It is the slowest and most problematic part of reloading a revolver. An auto-ejecting revolver empties the cylinder faster than a moonclip, while having access to the durability of the speedloader. Quicker, faster and more reliable reloads for duty and self-defense.
I could see a gas-eject revolver built a bit differently working as a novelty gun. You start with a 7-shot cylinder 686-type revolver, giving you six shots taking account of the need to keep one chamber empty. Instead of the spring-loaded gate, you have a chute or ramp that deflects the ejected cartridge up and away. The cylinder is fixed, not swing-out, and the revolver is reloaded through the ejection ramp/chute like a gate-loader. It’s not superior in any way to a standard revolver, but it could be a functional curiosity, especially if designed with a certain steampunk aesthetic.
One other issue I see is that, if you fire with a full cylinder, the unspent cartridge that lines up with the ejector is going to come flying out before you can fire it, either wasting ammunition or requiring that you leave that chamber empty and only load 5 chambers.
This is like the Armsel Protecta shotgun, as far as i know the only gas ejecting revolver I know of to ever go into production. i always though the Protecta solved the problem in a kind of clever way, in that the loading gate was where the cartridges were ejected through, but it stayed closed until you indexed the shotgun to the second chamber meaning that it didn't eject the "final" still live round in the cylinder. You had the problem that the last round was not gas ejected, but the gun still had en ejector rod so you just used that for the last round. The big "failing" was that it was essentially single action only with you having to advance the cylinder with the forward grip between shots. I always wondered if they could have still used the clockwork drum mechanism that the Striker did and just built in a little bit of lag between the shot and the drum advancing (like do it on trigger release) to allow the previous cartridge to fully eject.
Good video, thanks. In fact someone did do it before. The Spanish gunmaker Orbea made a gas operated self ejecting pin fire revolver in the 1860s that looked near identical to the revolver in the video. Except of course it had a fixed cylinder, not a swing out. I’ve never come across another and it’s likely the mechanism was impractical in operation. There is a photograph of it in Guns by Dudley Pope, published in the early 70s.
I feel like it would work well as a single action. It's cool to see the things that didn't make a splash which through all the failures, led us to where we are today. Thanks for the video Ian, keep up the great work!
Maybe that kind of system will be more appropriate for a revolver like the Nagant, because the way you usually eject the empty cartridges is way slower. Also, the fact that the Nagant seals very good may be very beneficial for the system, because you will have very little gas leakage.
There's a version of the Striker 12 that uses the same gas ejection system. It makes a lot more sense on something with a 12-shot cylinder that you reload like a hilariously oversized Single Action Army - saves you a lot of time and movement.
This is literally a pistol-format version of the Striker 12's extraction mechanism. I like how Ian remarks that he has no idea how this would become popular or widespread... and then a year later he does a video on a weapon that uses exactly this principle. The only thing this revolver lacks, of course, is the extractor rod for manually ejecting the last casing.
Hello Ian, my grandpa has a really strange old rifle I want to ask you about because I cannot find anything about it anywhere and neither can he. The only name on the gun is "M. Heim Mannheim" written just above the receiver. The only other markings is a 4 and 2 on the side of the receiver (and some markings we thing would be for the front sight). it features an Iron sight above the trigger. It has a dual trigger (back trigger puts it on a hair trigger) - It is quite decorative featuring screws that have a slat all the way from one side to the other and have an engraved sun or star on them among various other engravings of star patterns and textures. Nobody has ever shot it because we don't know what it shoots. My grandpa got it from basically a wealthy person who gave it to him as a gift but nothing is really known other than its a precision target rifle and its german. He took it to the Indy (Indianapolis) gun show and lots of people wanted to see and look at it but nobody knew what it was. Maybe you would know? I have pictures I can send.
It would have to work backwards. The Barrel tapping would need to push a spring loaded plunger forward. Then it would need to release when the spent round came to the side and push it from the cylinder. So that your last trigger pull would be after your last shot, to eject the last round.
There are a LOT of lead slinging devices, and by no means are they all "practical"; sometimes the answer is simply "just because I thought it'd be fun to make one". That said, with some more development and put it in a rimfire caliber (to up capacity & lower operating pressure) I could see this as a really fun plinking gun.
I am kind of shocked this never really went anywhere. Obviously the gas system was a bit crude and it is a gimmick, but I could see this feature being a great selling point for people out there that wanted to say: "oh yeah, can your Smith &Wesson do this?"
This was right about the time that Law enforcement was just making the shift from revolvers to automatics. MANY officers HATED the automatics, and wanted the bigger revolver cartridges without going to a 1911. You would be amazed how bullheaded police officers are to change(see the crazy holster designs LAPD came up with as L2 revolver holsters). I can honestly see why he experimented with it. If it had been practicable at all, I could see where LE would have taken it as a last bastion for revolvers.
I could see a pretty good use for it. Allows you to reload a revolver easily without having to eject all the cases, as the empty cases have already been rejected. Course, at that point you should just get a pistol, but if you're so against have magazines for whatever reasons, a self rejecting revolver is the way to go
One of those "Ghost Guns" I've heard or read of over the last 45 to 50 years but never saw one or even a drawing to convince me it ever came close to being a "real thing". Now I know better.
You leave the empty in the cylinder to be ejected first making sure to place it in the 12 0 clock position when putting the cylinder back in place that way you dont autoeject an unfired cartridge with the first bang
One additional problem you didn't mention was that upon firing the first round of a fully loaded cylinder, it would attempt to eject the live round that was in the number six position behind the gas tube.
In a fire fight, you could be adding rounds as they come out, or reload after the fifth and it would just keep going. Pretty cool, but other then that and even in that, your right that it seems a little cooler then it is useful.
Would be cool to see someone source the missing parts to get this functional, although realistically this would only be practical on a revolver like a copy saa where you unload one round at a time and have to eject one at a time, but that would require a hybrid ejector to use both has and manual force (maybe an ejector that slides over the gas tube and pushes next to the gas vent, of course that could get hot and stick under high rof use, but you could top the firearm off as you went along, possibly using a loading gate on the firing side as well as on the ejection side.
A lot of people seem to be mistaking this as a prototype of an actual possible product. It is not that. It is a test bed for an idea. The idea was "could we tap gas from the barrel to eject cases?" The reply would be "let's find out." So they built a test bed out of existing, off the shelf parts just to see if the concept would work. Once that is done, there are three possibilities. 1. It didn't work. They couldn't make it work so they scrap the whole idea. 2. It worked so they took the concept and further develop it into an actual product that probably would have been far different from this test prototype. This obviously didn't happen in this case. 3. It worked but no one could figure out a way to use this new knowledge to improve on existing designs. This is probably the most likely outcome in this case.
When speedloading it would solve the practical issue of having to tilt the gun 90 degrees and use gravity to help eject the spent cases. Often if you go too quickly the cases won't have time to clear the cylinder or if you have it at the wrong angle they might not eject all the way. The trouble is that in today's era any speed advantage would easily be won over by moon clips, so it's not worth it.
Roy took a perfectly fine revolver and made it be able to jam. Also, with a full cylinder, wouldn’t you eject an unfired round with the first shot? All jokes aside, this is still a neat concept that I’m sure he didn’t sink a huge amount of time into. For someone like Roy, this was likely a neat idea he had on lunch and made that day or the next. More of a proof of concept than anything.
If you want a auto ejecting revolver, just do a top-break. I've actually heard some interesting bit though about a top-break build, but with the barrel on the bottom chamber. Something about being a stronger lockup I guess.
What would be cool would be if someone was to modify a Mateba or Fosberry autorevolver with some sort of spring-loaded ejector that would activate after the frame went through its recoil cycle, then you'd have solved the problem of that sixth round, since every round fired from an autorevolver cycles the frame and thus every round would provide the energy for its own ejection.
I think this would work as is if you carry with 5 and load with an only mostly loaded moonclip. It would cost you a chamber, but save you the time of hitting the ejector rod. You would need a locking system so that the cylinder does not spin freely when swung out, which would keep the unejected empty case lined up with the barrel once you close the cylinder, ready to be ejected when the cylinder rotates as you fire the first shot. I'd like to see a speed test of 30 shots with this against a standard 6-shooter.
Not true, two cartridges can be loaded on the left side of the cylinder at a time prior to the discharge of the last case leaving a continuous loading and auto unloading.
I’m kinda pissed we don’t do cool stuff like this and even I wanted to just bust the tools out and try to make it myself I would get fined or arrested.
I suppose the initial idea was to load the cylinders one by one as you shoot during lulls by pulling the deflector back rather than loading with a speedloader, so its still kinda practical maybe? I mean like you start with 5 shots and one empty, then go bang bang, get cover, and load in another 2, and keep shooting until your pocket is empty
Theoretically you could probably modify the Webley-Fosberry operating system to include auto ejection of the fired round. It would undoubtedly take more work than one could justify without hitting insane prices for the guns, but it would certainly be an interesting project for someone with money to burn.
When you load 6, the first time you fire, you eject a live round instead of an empty. Wembley once made an automatic revolver. The top of the frame and barrel would come back under recoil, rotate the cylinder and cock the hammer before going forward back into battery for the next shot. Would be an interesting gun to feature on your program.
That aluminum cover is one step short of converting the whole thing to a self-cocking revolver. Had it been mechanically coupled to the hammer, the overall design would have been way simpler than Webley-Fosbery, with less muzzle climb due to lower bore axis.
this would make sense in a gun like the Nagant or the Rast & Gasser revolver, where the casings had to be ejected one by one. With guns like those, I think, you could really save some time, if they used this system
Well you get a slight advantage. Sometimes when ejecting the cases, one or two kind of get stuck right at the end and have to be plugged out. Not always but sometimes. Having only one left reduces that chance. That is a REALLY small advantage to get out of a decent amount more complexity.
As a revolver pistol, this doesn't make much sense. However, at the same time as adopting the M16, we also se the air force looking at faster firing guns for aircraft - Gatling guns and revolver cannons. For an aircraft weapon that is using a revolving feeding tray/link less ammo system, this is a pretty ingenious way to clear cases. I could see this as working for a semi-auto tank gun or artillery piece.
Surprised revolvers with quick-switchout cylinders have not made it to the marketplace. Seems like a rhino-style underbarrel config would facilitate; maybe Six12'was an example?
This blowback ejector idea would have been well used before revolvers opened for reloading. But also this design sets you back in not being able to fully load because the last round would be ejected on your first shot.. Meaning you'd load 6 but only get 5 shots.
The bigger issue I see with this is that you couldn't load 6 rounds, because you'd blow a live cartridge out on the first shot if you did, a more interesting idea would be a gas cocked revolver (possibly using a striker that's reset by gasses vented out the rear of a proprietary cartrige)
Colt has made a lot of unusual and Interesting Firearms over the Years, to compeat with Winchester, Colt came out with the pump action Lighting, very popular in the old west Because of how fast it could be fired, mostly in .45 long Colt and .38-40 which was actually a .40 caliber bullet with 38 grains of Black Powder. Have you done a review and or firing of these classic Colt's of the old West? Enjoy your Channel for the unusual and rare Firearms I can seldom find anywhere else.
I was wondering if anyone would want something like this. One of my favorite things about revolvers is that you don’t get your brass thrown all over the range.
Took me a minute to realize this was relatively modern and not some weird ass 1910 job
Yeah, at first I assumed it was on a fixed cylinder gun.
only did this comment make me realize
If that cylinder stayed latched shut, the urge to fire this would be undeniable.
Just hold it shut, no big deal
Rock Island Auction Company: any gun with Colt on it, people will buy.IMHO and of course the same goes with Winchester,Remington,Marlin, and etc
Everyone always want to own a piece of history
I just would want to see if it works once.
Neat idea although I agree with Ian not very practical.
I've got a brand new roll of Flex Tape. I wonder if it will stop bleeding from a wound?
Considering Ian is a leftie he'd probably think twice before doing so.
Is this one of those assault revolvers I've been hearing so much about?
hjp14, no it doesn't have a threaded barrel for the flash silencer.
We're do you put the chainsaw bayonet
It is fully-semi-automatic.
Does it come with the under-barrel chainsaw bayonet?
I think so. It has the wibbly thing that goes down, the equally dangerous cousin to the shoulder thing that goes up.
Wouldn’t another issue be that it’s going to eject the unfired round from cylinder number six when you fire cylinder number one?
Indeed! that's exactly what I though too, to me this concept is an arrant nonsense.
Wondering that myself, maybe you were expected to only load 5? Or the aluminum deflector might have kept a fully loaded round in.
exactly what i was thinking. you lose one cylinder.
also I am not sure how much benefit it is as you need to open the cylinder to reload anyway.
i'm guessing maybe the weight of an unfired round would prevent it from moving with the right calculators on bore size you could vent enough gas to move an empty case but not a full one
Could put in a blocker that only opens after the first chamber rotation
* loads 6 cartridges*
* shoots once *
4 bullets left. oops!
Dirty Harry would be in trouble! 😳
Did I fire 6 shots or 1?
thats why you would want to leave that one empty shell in there when reloading !
Yeah, basically, you have a five shooter, and if you go back before speed loaders were common, this could save some time since you wouldn’t bother ejecting the last case. You would load 5 and let the first shot blow the last case out. Still a dumb idea though. Just use speed loaders.
@@justins8802 That's not why they did that, an old single action revolvers if you leave a live round in the chamber if you bump the hammer on the back of the gun the gun will discharge
Feels like an upgrade in bioshock "fontaines futuristics" 😀
Just slap a metal piece to the side of the gun and give it damage bonus, done.
Nah, that game would've had a more clever or useful design to their revolver...This just seems like the bois at Colt got drunk one night and were fuckin' around xD
When you're down in the mouth, and life's a pain
Weatherman says "heavy rain"
A little boost is all you need
Average Joe to Hercules
A stronger arm, a sharper brain
That's why the future is Fontaine!
I'm thinking he probably did it just to see if it could be done, rather than for practical purposes. One of the benefits of a revolver, when you can take your time shooting, is not having to pick your cases off the ground.
Also when you murder someone you leave less evidence behind.
@@lucianene7741 ah yes, priorities
Exactly. This gun dosen't even have sights, it's purely experimental.
I think this idea would be okay if implemented on a single action army. Because you load it on one side and it ejects out the other side. It would save loads of time.
Then you'd have to remove the loading gate and replace it with the auto ejector, then make a whole new loading gate on the left side. Like someone said though, on the first shot you'd have that ejection gas coming out of the empty chamber in the direction towards the shooter.
Robert E. Roy, 73, of Barefoot Bay, FL, died Wednesday, (March 27, 2002) at Indian River Memorial Hospital in Vero Beach, FL. He was the beloved husband for 53 years of Theresa (Marlow) Roy. He was born in Holyoke, MA, and was a longtime resident of central Connecticut. Before his retirement in 1993, which concluded 30 years of service, Mr. Roy was the Director of International Sales for Colt Firearms. He was well known and respected by business and government leaders around the world. He was an avid shooter and photographer, enjoyed reading, listening to jazz and telling stories of his travels. Besides his wife, he is survived by his daughters and sons-in-law, Linda and Allan Craig, and Sandy and Tom Mepham; his son, Robert Roy, Jr.; six grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; his sister and brother-in-law, Phyllis and Jim Norwood; his sister, Carol Stanka; and his brother and sister-in-law, John and Kathy Roy. Services were held in Florida. Memorial donations may be made to the American Heart Association, American Diabetes Foundation or American Cancer Society.
I am amazed that with the amount of weird designs you've already shown, you still manage to find subjects like this where the first reaction to the concept is utter disbelief.
I find it humbling that after those years, you still haven't been able to document every method about the (one would think) relatively simple function of throwing a bit of dense metal at something.
Thanks for your work :)
*loads six
Bang!
*has four
I think I'll wait for the piston version with a non-reciprocating charging handle.
James Healy where do you think they'll put the charging handle? I say something along the lines of an mp5.
Maybe having the trigger guard be the charging handle, flick the thing forward with your finger. H&K mp5 style is not a bad idea either.
Wtf, I want what ever y'all are smoking lol.
I think the rear mounted pivoting position has some merits for thumb activation without breaking firing grip. ;)
*becomes HK416 assault revolver version*
A solution looking for a problem, it seems
Ive seen a similar idea with a chain fed .38 acp. The Shells were chain fed and advanced every time you pulled the trigger then ejected on the far side of the gun as the links fell out. It looked like there was a cylinder but it was just a half tube that was machined to look like one. it was neat to watch him shoot the different guns he made.
The makers name was Shelenhamer he was an accountant in Palmyra Pa. He had several rifle cartridges named after him. After his death I don't know what happened to the pistol.
Ian’s the type of guy to lubricate his guns with a good single malt scotch.
Joe Donnelly agreed
Joe, are you the kind guy to lubricate his guns with the cringe from his jokes? ;-p
Touay okay?
he used to be a bartender, so probably
Noooooo, Ian is a Bourbon man..........
Back in 2012 I took an M1895 Nagant revolver & made it gas ejecting. The mechanism I made was nearly identical to this. I had no idea this prototype Colt revolver existed. I had many of the same problems. Such as how it ejects on every shot, so I had to leave actually two chambers empty due to the position of the ejector rod. Which since a Nagant holds 7rds it still had 5rds, but with such a slow reloading process you really want to have those extra 2rds. Having it auto eject really didn't save much time on the reload.
All I can imagine is if it ejected all 6 rounds it would just have a faster reload time than a normal revolver which would be a plus depending on how complicated the design would be. Love your videos
Exponentially faster. Would be the ultimate self defense revolver.
The problems of the design are very valid, and I'm sure Mr.Roy had them in mind, so a gun made for shits and giggles maybe?
This reminds me about a question I've been dying to ask: Why haven't "Tround" guns ever taken off?
I can see why the Dardick revolver itself didn't take off, but why hasn't the idea been used since? It seems like it could be useful, especially in a hunting rifle.
Sorry if you've answered this in a Q&A already, I don't usually have the time to watch them through.
the plastic cased ammo and the shape and all that maybe if they made it with regular rimless semiauto type of ammo it could work if they remade it the reason they tryed the first thing i said was cause it supposedly held more ammo
The concept was explored further in small-scale tests, with the US Navy building a .50 caliber tround machine gun.
The rate of fire was quite high and it worked without issue, which is really where the tround comes into play; the tround was really meant for something like a machine gun or autocannon for aircraft use, as the case design allows an “open-cylinder” design that simplified chambering and ejection with a linkless feed system.
This would be cool to see function correctly in slow mo.
Interesting idea but I think the top break revolver is more elegant in that opening up the gun to put more cartridges in already ejects the spent cases so there is no additional effort or actions spent in removing them, even a swing out cylinder requires you to hit the ejector after swinging out the cylinder which is one added step over a top break.
Ian I love you so much man. You are my hero. Omg. Your stoner firing video convinced me how much of a role model you are to me. Ever since R Lee Ermey died you’ve truly filled that place for me. Thank you. Please never stop keeping the firearms history alive. And keep em’ in the 10 ring!
RIP R Lee Ermey hoorah
Like the Fosbery, an attempt to answer a question nobody was asking. Neat piece of history though.
This works just like my auto eject striker 12. I would also like to add that the striker is much better than the crapy street sweeper like you did a video on. You are welcome to check it out if you are ever in Wisconsin.
The engineering dead ends are honestly my favorite. Such weird goodness. So Many fails and Facepalms 😊
You find the most interesting tools and now my day will be spent down this rabbit hole...
very cool for sure!
I learn something new here. Never heard of such a thing before.
To make that fundamental design work it would be necessary to store the gas pressure from the previous shot in a small tank with a check valve so the gas pressure can charge the tank and the action of the cylinder rotating would trip a valve to vent the gas to the cylinder and eject the round that was just fired. Very simple fix.
who’s got two thumbs and wants this gun? this guy
I love how everyone is quick to put down an interesting invention instead of trying to find a way to improve it.
This is about as useful as a horse carriage drawn by a motorcycle, or a steam engine whose boiler is heated with electricity. Nowadays revolvers have star ejectors which spit out all used cartridges when you open the cylinder, so there is no need for this contraption. The real improvement is the self-loading pistol which has been invented more than one century ago.
Thank you for proving me right.
@@olinvent lol I guess so
Why not an option to disable the gas tube so that you don't eject an unused round? That would be helpful, so that you don't waste unused ammunition. Also, it should be simple so that you can immediately reactivate the gas tube after the first shot.
Perhaps a way to block the gas tube harmlessly so you don't damage anything? Removing and reattaching it would be tedious.
Or load five instead of six, but then you aren't getting the full potential of the design.
I like this because it could help cut back on reload time.
@@lucianene7741 They aren't "spit out", they are manually extracted. It is the slowest and most problematic part of reloading a revolver.
An auto-ejecting revolver empties the cylinder faster than a moonclip, while having access to the durability of the speedloader.
Quicker, faster and more reliable reloads for duty and self-defense.
I could see a gas-eject revolver built a bit differently working as a novelty gun. You start with a 7-shot cylinder 686-type revolver, giving you six shots taking account of the need to keep one chamber empty. Instead of the spring-loaded gate, you have a chute or ramp that deflects the ejected cartridge up and away. The cylinder is fixed, not swing-out, and the revolver is reloaded through the ejection ramp/chute like a gate-loader. It’s not superior in any way to a standard revolver, but it could be a functional curiosity, especially if designed with a certain steampunk aesthetic.
This revolver is the answer to a question that nobody asked. Still very interesting and I want one!
I dunno very much about guns, but when I see the simpler older ones I get all sorts of zany engineering ideas for magazines.
One other issue I see is that, if you fire with a full cylinder, the unspent cartridge that lines up with the ejector is going to come flying out before you can fire it, either wasting ammunition or requiring that you leave that chamber empty and only load 5 chambers.
This is like the Armsel Protecta shotgun, as far as i know the only gas ejecting revolver I know of to ever go into production. i always though the Protecta solved the problem in a kind of clever way, in that the loading gate was where the cartridges were ejected through, but it stayed closed until you indexed the shotgun to the second chamber meaning that it didn't eject the "final" still live round in the cylinder. You had the problem that the last round was not gas ejected, but the gun still had en ejector rod so you just used that for the last round. The big "failing" was that it was essentially single action only with you having to advance the cylinder with the forward grip between shots. I always wondered if they could have still used the clockwork drum mechanism that the Striker did and just built in a little bit of lag between the shot and the drum advancing (like do it on trigger release) to allow the previous cartridge to fully eject.
Good video, thanks. In fact someone did do it before. The Spanish gunmaker Orbea made a gas operated self ejecting pin fire revolver in the 1860s that looked near identical to the revolver in the video. Except of course it had a fixed cylinder, not a swing out. I’ve never come across another and it’s likely the mechanism was impractical in operation. There is a photograph of it in Guns by Dudley Pope, published in the early 70s.
I feel like it would work well as a single action. It's cool to see the things that didn't make a splash which through all the failures, led us to where we are today. Thanks for the video Ian, keep up the great work!
Maybe that kind of system will be more appropriate for a revolver like the Nagant, because the way you usually eject the empty cartridges is way slower. Also, the fact that the Nagant seals very good may be very beneficial for the system, because you will have very little gas leakage.
There's a version of the Striker 12 that uses the same gas ejection system. It makes a lot more sense on something with a 12-shot cylinder that you reload like a hilariously oversized Single Action Army - saves you a lot of time and movement.
The Schüler Reform pistol had a successful gas eject system and was actually produced. Would love to see Ian review one in the future.
They spent so much time figuring out if they could, they forgot to ask themselves if they should.
An ingenious solution to a problem that didn't really exist. Cool.
Early engineering designs are very interesting. Thank you for the great history of these amazing weapons. You sure know your stuff!!!
This is literally a pistol-format version of the Striker 12's extraction mechanism.
I like how Ian remarks that he has no idea how this would become popular or widespread... and then a year later he does a video on a weapon that uses exactly this principle. The only thing this revolver lacks, of course, is the extractor rod for manually ejecting the last casing.
Hello Ian, my grandpa has a really strange old rifle I want to ask you about because I cannot find anything about it anywhere and neither can he. The only name on the gun is "M. Heim Mannheim" written just above the receiver. The only other markings is a 4 and 2 on the side of the receiver (and some markings we thing would be for the front sight). it features an Iron sight above the trigger. It has a dual trigger (back trigger puts it on a hair trigger) - It is quite decorative featuring screws that have a slat all the way from one side to the other and have an engraved sun or star on them among various other engravings of star patterns and textures. Nobody has ever shot it because we don't know what it shoots. My grandpa got it from basically a wealthy person who gave it to him as a gift but nothing is really known other than its a precision target rifle and its german. He took it to the Indy (Indianapolis) gun show and lots of people wanted to see and look at it but nobody knew what it was. Maybe you would know? I have pictures I can send.
My Uberti Tornado in .454 Casull does eject automatically too, when the loading gate is left open! :-)
GREAT- a revolver that jams like an auto. Why am I not surprised that Colt tried to make such a thing?
It would have to work backwards. The Barrel tapping would need to push a spring loaded plunger forward. Then it would need to release when the spent round came to the side and push it from the cylinder. So that your last trigger pull would be after your last shot, to eject the last round.
There are a LOT of lead slinging devices, and by no means are they all "practical"; sometimes the answer is simply "just because I thought it'd be fun to make one". That said, with some more development and put it in a rimfire caliber (to up capacity & lower operating pressure) I could see this as a really fun plinking gun.
A solution for a problem that did not exists.
Edit:
A solution for a problem that did not exist and nobody had ever thought off nor ever wanted.
Edited version is wrong,many people have thought about auto-ejecting revolver.
as a matter of fact, there are workable exemplars of gas self extracting revolvers in Spain before 1881, like the Piñal and Ibarra revolvers.
Revolver day?! Im so excited to watch this! TY Ian.
I am kind of shocked this never really went anywhere. Obviously the gas system was a bit crude and it is a gimmick, but I could see this feature being a great selling point for people out there that wanted to say: "oh yeah, can your Smith &Wesson do this?"
Ahhhh. A Colt prototype. This will be a good day.
Imagine competition shooting with one of these
This was right about the time that Law enforcement was just making the shift from revolvers to automatics. MANY officers HATED the automatics, and wanted the bigger revolver cartridges without going to a 1911. You would be amazed how bullheaded police officers are to change(see the crazy holster designs LAPD came up with as L2 revolver holsters).
I can honestly see why he experimented with it. If it had been practicable at all, I could see where LE would have taken it as a last bastion for revolvers.
I could see a pretty good use for it. Allows you to reload a revolver easily without having to eject all the cases, as the empty cases have already been rejected. Course, at that point you should just get a pistol, but if you're so against have magazines for whatever reasons, a self rejecting revolver is the way to go
One of those "Ghost Guns" I've heard or read of over the last 45 to 50 years but never saw one or even a drawing to convince me it ever came close to being a "real thing". Now I know better.
Nice experimentation. We need to see more wacky design work like this in the industry.
You leave the empty in the cylinder to be ejected first making sure to place it in the 12 0 clock position when putting the cylinder back in place that way you dont autoeject an unfired cartridge with the first bang
One additional problem you didn't mention was that upon firing the first round of a fully loaded cylinder, it would attempt to eject the live round that was in the number six position behind the gas tube.
In a fire fight, you could be adding rounds as they come out, or reload after the fifth and it would just keep going. Pretty cool, but other then that and even in that, your right that it seems a little cooler then it is useful.
Would be cool to see someone source the missing parts to get this functional, although realistically this would only be practical on a revolver like a copy saa where you unload one round at a time and have to eject one at a time, but that would require a hybrid ejector to use both has and manual force (maybe an ejector that slides over the gas tube and pushes next to the gas vent, of course that could get hot and stick under high rof use, but you could top the firearm off as you went along, possibly using a loading gate on the firing side as well as on the ejection side.
Why though
Why not?
One reason........MURICA
A lot of people seem to be mistaking this as a prototype of an actual possible product. It is not that. It is a test bed for an idea. The idea was "could we tap gas from the barrel to eject cases?" The reply would be "let's find out." So they built a test bed out of existing, off the shelf parts just to see if the concept would work. Once that is done, there are three possibilities.
1. It didn't work. They couldn't make it work so they scrap the whole idea.
2. It worked so they took the concept and further develop it into an actual product that probably would have been far different from this test prototype. This obviously didn't happen in this case.
3. It worked but no one could figure out a way to use this new knowledge to improve on existing designs. This is probably the most likely outcome in this case.
When speedloading it would solve the practical issue of having to tilt the gun 90 degrees and use gravity to help eject the spent cases. Often if you go too quickly the cases won't have time to clear the cylinder or if you have it at the wrong angle they might not eject all the way.
The trouble is that in today's era any speed advantage would easily be won over by moon clips, so it's not worth it.
Seems like the answer to a question, no one asked...
Roy took a perfectly fine revolver and made it be able to jam. Also, with a full cylinder, wouldn’t you eject an unfired round with the first shot?
All jokes aside, this is still a neat concept that I’m sure he didn’t sink a huge amount of time into. For someone like Roy, this was likely a neat idea he had on lunch and made that day or the next. More of a proof of concept than anything.
All of these unanswered questions are the reason this weapon is and always will be a curious prototype.
Oddly enough, I kinda like that two tone look. Such a neat mechanism, would really like to shoot something like that just for the novelty.
If you want a auto ejecting revolver, just do a top-break. I've actually heard some interesting bit though about a top-break build, but with the barrel on the bottom chamber. Something about being a stronger lockup I guess.
What would be cool would be if someone was to modify a Mateba or Fosberry autorevolver with some sort of spring-loaded ejector that would activate after the frame went through its recoil cycle, then you'd have solved the problem of that sixth round, since every round fired from an autorevolver cycles the frame and thus every round would provide the energy for its own ejection.
There's somethingvery steampunk about an auto-ejecting revolver.
I think this would work as is if you carry with 5 and load with an only mostly loaded moonclip. It would cost you a chamber, but save you the time of hitting the ejector rod. You would need a locking system so that the cylinder does not spin freely when swung out, which would keep the unejected empty case lined up with the barrel once you close the cylinder, ready to be ejected when the cylinder rotates as you fire the first shot.
I'd like to see a speed test of 30 shots with this against a standard 6-shooter.
Not true, two cartridges can be loaded on the left side of the cylinder at a time prior to the discharge of the last case leaving a continuous loading and auto unloading.
I’m kinda pissed we don’t do cool stuff like this and even I wanted to just bust the tools out and try to make it myself I would get fined or arrested.
LOVE YOUR CHANNEL I LEARN MORE HERE THEN I DO AT SCHOOL !!!! Keep doing what you’re doing!!!! God bless
I suppose the initial idea was to load the cylinders one by one as you shoot during lulls by pulling the deflector back rather than loading with a speedloader, so its still kinda practical maybe?
I mean like you start with 5 shots and one empty, then go bang bang, get cover, and load in another 2, and keep shooting until your pocket is empty
My day is complete!
Theoretically you could probably modify the Webley-Fosberry operating system to include auto ejection of the fired round. It would undoubtedly take more work than one could justify without hitting insane prices for the guns, but it would certainly be an interesting project for someone with money to burn.
If someone had come up with this system back in the single action army days, it would've been useful.
Not to mention the benefit of a revolver is not having to worry about casings being found and later entered into evidence
When you load 6, the first time you fire, you eject a live round instead of an empty.
Wembley once made an automatic revolver. The top of the frame and barrel would come back under recoil, rotate the cylinder and cock the hammer before going forward back into battery for the next shot. Would be an interesting gun to feature on your program.
That aluminum cover is one step short of converting the whole thing to a self-cocking revolver. Had it been mechanically coupled to the hammer, the overall design would have been way simpler than Webley-Fosbery, with less muzzle climb due to lower bore axis.
That is the coolest thing I've seen in a long time! I'll take 3! 😀
this would make sense in a gun like the Nagant or the Rast & Gasser revolver, where the casings had to be ejected one by one. With guns like those, I think, you could really save some time, if they used this system
The side gate would make it nice to top off the revolver, assuming you get a chance during a fire fight/ shootout
Looks well thought out. I'm very interested in how this pistol actually shoots!! A review at the range would've been really cool!!
Krayzie Killah probably not going to happen
Well you get a slight advantage. Sometimes when ejecting the cases, one or two kind of get stuck right at the end and have to be plugged out. Not always but sometimes. Having only one left reduces that chance. That is a REALLY small advantage to get out of a decent amount more complexity.
As a revolver pistol, this doesn't make much sense. However, at the same time as adopting the M16, we also se the air force looking at faster firing guns for aircraft - Gatling guns and revolver cannons. For an aircraft weapon that is using a revolving feeding tray/link less ammo system, this is a pretty ingenious way to clear cases. I could see this as working for a semi-auto tank gun or artillery piece.
Surprised revolvers with quick-switchout cylinders have not made it to the marketplace. Seems like a rhino-style underbarrel config would facilitate; maybe Six12'was an example?
This blowback ejector idea would have been well used before revolvers opened for reloading. But also this design sets you back in not being able to fully load because the last round would be ejected on your first shot.. Meaning you'd load 6 but only get 5 shots.
The bigger issue I see with this is that you couldn't load 6 rounds, because you'd blow a live cartridge out on the first shot if you did, a more interesting idea would be a gas cocked revolver (possibly using a striker that's reset by gasses vented out the rear of a proprietary cartrige)
There is a benefit in the design in that if you want to reload partially, you don't have to eject all of your rounds that aren't spent.
If there is a loaded round in that chamber, what is preventing the system to just blow out the live round?
am17frans
Nothing?
Nothing. I think that may be a reason why this was not developed further as solving that would make the revolver much more complex (and expensive).
My thought, too. It would seem somebody would have thought of that before going through the trouble. . .
Good question
maybe you just hold it closed with your thumb first shot lol
Please do show us Maurice some time, love that thing. So silly.
Colt has made a lot of unusual and Interesting Firearms over the Years, to compeat with Winchester, Colt came out with the pump action Lighting, very popular in the old west Because of how fast it could be fired, mostly in .45 long Colt and .38-40 which was actually a .40 caliber bullet with 38 grains of Black Powder. Have you done a review and or firing of these classic Colt's of the old West? Enjoy your Channel for the unusual and rare Firearms I can seldom find anywhere else.
I see the Good Idea Fairy stopped by for this one.
A beefed up double action top brake for 357 would be the quickest way to reload.
Thats such a cool concept
Not to mention casings ejecting straight into your chest
if the deflector fail ,your eye gonna fail. by the way great design also you can dream about beltfed revolver . really awesome
I was wondering if anyone would want something like this. One of my favorite things about revolvers is that you don’t get your brass thrown all over the range.