1885 Dimancea: A Revolver With Sprockets
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- Опубліковано 1 сер 2019
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Patented in 1885 by Romanian military officer Haralamb Dimancea, this revolver is actually a true hammerless design. Instead of simply shrouding a hammer inside the frame, Dimancea used a pair of rotating sprockets to cock and release a striker and act as hand and stop for the cylinder. The Gatling Arms Company of Birmingham England produced a run of 1,000 of the guns, which were used in Romanian military trials, and also tested by the French as a replacement for their 1873 revolver. Neither country ended up adopting the gun, though.
A .45 caliber 5-shot version was apparently made in small numbers, but the standard pattern (like this example) is a .38 caliber, 6-shot model. The barrel, crane, and cylinder pivot 90 degrees to the left to extract empty cases and reload. While Dimancea's design was innovative, is really did not provide any benefit over a traditional revolver, and is considerably more complex to manufacture. It fires in double action only, with no mechanical way to manually cock the action for a "single action" shot.
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I'm romanian and I have never heard of this revilver. Haven't seen it in the National Military Museum either. Thank you for the video!
I wonder if it's because not many might be left of if the communist and present authorities weren't / aren't that keen on letting the public know that gun ownership and design used to be a thing in Romania.
Well, 99.9% of Romanians have never heard of a firearm beyond a Kalashnikov...You're just not "gun" people. What's your firearm ownership rate there? 2.5%?
@@cs-rj8ru Even less. It's 0,7% / 100 people, and of those around half are non-lethal guns. The communists did a "good job" of turning Romanians into gun fearing people.
Yes something between 2.5 and 3.0%. But regular people can only own lethal hunting weapons which can only be used for hunting and non lethal self defence weapons which can only be used for self defence. If you are a collector the weapons must be rendered unable to fire.
@@cs-rj8ru hey, that's not true! we know all of the guns from CS 1.6
Looks like the revolver i use to draw back when i was a kid
I guess you were an accurate artist then since this revolver actually exists.
Quite blocky to be sure.
A kid designed it
Han Solo shot first
I think "Fearless Fosdick" carried one of those...
The inventor of this gun was a genius I would say. To think all this working complexity is really something.
19th Century Romanian bourgeoisie, the ones that were actually competent, had a lot of time on their hands. Couple that with speaking English, French and/or German just for the sake of going to studies abroad, they really had a lot of wacky ideas.
Now that's not true how to define genius is an attempt by a fool to measure his own knowledge
I told them "Use Cogswell's cogs: Not Spaceley's sprockets"
Sounds like the line from The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing song.
Cl Lyman why not Garret’s Gubbins?
@@baker90338 Because Garret's Gubbins wasn't in The Jetsons. :)
CI Lyman is using the way-back machine to find that special episode of The Jetsons.
Hans KC it is from the jetsons, if you did not know.
Designed by a clockmaker. The sear and stop operate exactly like the pawl and wheel on a clock's escapement.
The late 1800's was such a hotbed for interesting and innovative firearms design tech.
I was bitten by the change from muzzle loading to self contained cartridge. Over a lot of years I obtained a 1876 Peabody Martini from the Providence Tool co. in .43 Spanish, a 1888 45/70 Trapdoor Springfield, last was a .577 1875/80 British Snider. 2 of these you have to reform cases to shoot them. The rest of my collection for the Era are modern reproductions. I'm writing all this to inspire you and others for this era. It is fascinating and "shootable" originals are affordable. A lot of safe queens and wall hangers are coming on the market. It is the most interesting time. I'll stop. ;)
Punctuated equilibrium.
@@patrickglaser1560 we've gone as far as we can *with existing materials*. The next advance will involve propellant material or projectile composition.
@@patrickglaser1560 I'm not arguing against the point that we're close to the limit. As I see it, the material science is the problem. We both know that the means of energy transfer (kinetic, electromagnetic, or other) will each have advantages and disadvantages.
It seems that in a lot of fields the late 1800s were a wild time for everything involving engineering.
I collect and document cameras and around the same period, you've got a wild explosion in terms of cameras.
It's when we went from "wet" glass plates (aka, the plates had to be coated with the photo sensitive chemicals right before taking your shot) to dry plates (aka, you can easily store or buy pre coated plates).
And so, we went from big studio cameras to more compact smaller cameras you could more easily pack with you; so, a wild explosion of manufacturers and unusual designs.
It was a wild time for makers and engineers!
-That’s a nice revolver.
-Thanks! It has sprockets.
More like cogs...😆🧐
I think the man that invented this revolver was a genius. To think at all this parts, with al this parts of the parts... He had no computer, the concept was in his mind only until he put it on the paper.
Quite genius!
Its hard with a computer as well you need to know what you want
@@catalintimofti1117 I think he meant you had no way of visualizing the mechanism apart from drawing it yourself on paper, which if you suck at drawing, it can be quite the task :))
@@ginkamikaze2 i mean yeah speed up things but its still hard as shit
Simplicity is geniunity. This is just mindfuck. For a good reason this revolver was no success at all.
@@c.s.4273 Said this to your phone. Is anything but simple.
Legend has it that the fellow assigned to clean the gun after the Romanian military trials is still trying to reassemble it to this day.
The machining that went into making that gun is intense.
Despite it's complicated design it really is an innovation for its time. It's basically a semi-automatic revolver. It's a shame that it wasn't accepted. If only a simpler version was made. It really is an engineering marvel
In 1885 Romania was a German Kingdom with a German King. Ofcourse everything was over complicated and over engineered :))
Semi-automatic revolver? Pretty much every revolver since the percussion cap era is semi-automatic
@@ChillYeti 1885 Kingdom of Romania. King was Carol I de Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and around one million germans were living in Romania. You have free acces at internet, is no reason to be ignorant ..
@@ChillYeti Just because Romania was CREATED and was ruled by a German King, our schools were in German, we had catolic churches and a huge german population and also german was our lingua franca like English is today...ofcourse Romania was not a ''german kingdom '' :))) Romania became independent and a real country ONLY because our German King dedicated his life to warfare, Carol was personally in the battlefied and he WON the war !
@@ChillYeti Romania BECAME and independent European Country because CAROL 1st ( Romania's German King, that was an excelent strategist ) won the WAR OF INDEPENDENCE against Ottoman Empire 1878. I am not even good at history and I know when ROmania was created and how it was created !
Here's Ian in a French gallery, showing us a revolver, designed by a Romanian, patented in the UK, and also manufactured there (for an American machine-gun company) . . . and packed full of Swiss complexity. How cosmopolitan can you get?
The whole time he was explaining how it worked I had a look of confusion on my face like I'd just walked in on a group of monkeys playing Twister while discussing quantum mechanics.
I'm romanian and i never knew about this gun until now, thank you for the video!!
There's a waterwheel in your revolver
yeah, i see that too
Its gorgeous. Thats a huge amount of machining, especially the one piece barrel/ front.
Another Star wars blaster, a scope and some odd metal widgets on it it would be perfect. :D
Or perhaps Fallout.
Definitely Steampunk.
@@MrRenegadeshinobi chinese pistol (1800's)
An engineering dream a soliders stripping nightmare..
It's sealed. You wouldn't have to take it apart. It's a trade off i'd accept.
Definitely not "soldier proof".
As a mechanical engineer, I concur. Really interesting. Not elegant, but interesting.
@@NPFeifman Lots of parts, but all actually easy to make on a bridgeport and a lathe. Even the gears can be done on a mill with a dividing plate. Really clever design. Great to see.
There is a time, early in the development of a technology, be it automobiles, guns, aircraft, etc., when a great MANY inventors are trying a great MANY things. Then it all sort of settles down to “this is the way we do things.” But that time of wild and sometimes crazy inventiveness is fascinating. 😃. Thanks, Ian.
As someone who is half Irish and half Romanian it's finally nice to see Romanian firearms covered.
Well in this video the Romanian firearms aren’t covered. They are literally exposed 😂
@@MladenSpasinoviciMusicLibrary exposed for the beauty they are
That's a combo I never heard of. I bet you can drink!
This is one of those actions that could use an animation a la C&Rsenal. One wonders if, with serious development, there were any features or advantages to this concept that might have been realised.
Kudos to you, Ian, for getting the pronunciation
just about right (except for the very last
syllable). In Romanian, the name "Dimancea" sounds more or less like "Deemunchah", with the last syllable pronounced like the Cha-Cha dance.
Looks like a pistol from the star wars early years. Great video ian!
What I really like about revolvers is their mechanical simplicity...
I can tell how much work went into this video, based on the number of times you repeat yourself. You must have done a *lot* of takes on this.
Keep up the good work - but make sure you get some rest in too!
This is one of the coolest and rarest revolvers that I have seen on your channel! Haven't seen it in a museum yet but would be amazing to see upclose. Great video and the designer of this revolver was nothing short of a genius. It gives us something to admire all these years later.
Really love how this one disassembles! Also, the fact that the ENTIRE grip is solid wood is super epic! Great video Ian, as usual :)
I think the mechanical engineering that was done in those days was amazing. Extremely complicated in many cases, but still amazing nonetheless.
Thanks for that - it brought the description in my Ian Hogg book into full clarity, I now look at the photo and "see" what's inside (like many others he has featured and you have shown me!).
Dee-mantcha. This is the right pronunciation.
Interesting gun!
Greetings from Romania.
I'm gonna need one of those C&Rsenal animations to understand this revolver.
Wow! Interesting places you're getting access to. This is really cool, and I hope to see more crazy firearms
Totally impressed by your ability to take a gun apart like this. Fascinating.
I've never seen a gun so unique as this. True genius the man who invented it. He had vision. Great video. You really bring out guns that are forgotten and special. As a romanian I feel very proud to know about this revolver. I hope you will do videos about romanian forgotten wepons. Thank you. You are awsome.
Nice, also Romanian here. First time hear of and see this gun! Thanks Ian!
I misread it as a revolver with rockets
i read "with pockets". that seemed practical
@@Raph584 I read "with sockets" haha.
The Volcanic revolver does sort of shoot rockets.
"With lockets", a revolver for her
i read "sprockets" but i didn't know what that is
Looks like something I'd think I could fix and then realize how screwed I am after I pull it apart.
I don’t like to be *that* person, but it’s not a sprocket. A sprocket drives a chain or other flexible component with holes (e.g. film cameras have a sprocket to move the film). Cog would be the most accurate description, I believe.
Good point.
It’s what happens when you like mechanical things but have a degree in English.
Thomas Carlson I wouldn't think a degree in English would give such knowledge maybe one in mechanical engineering might though I'm sure that degree doesn't go over every single definition in the language ?
I suspect that 'ratchet' would be the best term for it, the trigger group performing the role of the 'pawl'.
Of course, a whippersnapper well-versed in modern slang might find other reasons to describe it as 'ratchet'...
Sprag.
Interesting, the two hexagonal "stars" appear to be assemblable in two different ways (via the square peg), are they keyed in any way to prevent them from being put together out of timing?
just wondering this myself
Nope. I misassembled them myself once when working on this.
A lot of good-looking machine work and milling, even if the gun is a complicated, over-designed mechanism. I'd love to own one, just to admire the machining and crafstmanship.
Great mechanics :)
Thanks for the video and for fumbeling with all the loose parts to show us how it works.
Thats a wierd firearm, love it.
You did a great job explaining it though
Yan, une super vidéo, comme toujours. MERCI !!!
Very interesting revolver Ian. Thanks for showing it Sir
With that operating system you could put a crank handle on the side and turn it into a Gatling-style machine pistol - it's even manufactured by the right company !
All the parts on rear facing rails instead of side mounted pins and screws, it actually came apart easier than some revolvers that I have seen where you have to fiddle the hand and trigger to get them both in and working together. No coiled mainspring in the grip that needs a pin to take tensioner off before it could be removed, and woe to anyone who wasn't shown the trick of putting a paper clip into the hole to pin the spring. I can feel kinship with the inventor of this gun, it would be the same sort of mechanism that I would end up with if I invented one. I could imagine someone looking at a stoner ar10 back in the 50's who asked, and there are just two pins holding this together? That take all the recoil, and using steel in aluminum to take all that recoil?
The opening-locking mechanism is quite interesting and it's a revolver. I'm liking this episode.
Thanx Ian
A striker fired revolver, now I've seen everything!
That's a damn odd and rare piece. BTW, it's pronounced close to Dimancha in Spanish.
1 week ago??
Despite the complex internals it seems like one of the simpler of revolver designs despite the very strange internals
laheu I agree it looks quite simplistic, just expensive for the machining side.
No it really doesn't if you want simple you want something like some of nagants revolvers ~4 moving parts including the cylinder and one spring.
Nice! Since you've done the PSL and this revolver, think you can also cover the Romanian Orita SMG?
At least in video form! www.forgottenweapons.com/romanian-orita-smg/
www.forgottenweapons.com/romanian-orita-smg/
Looks like the eqivalent of the Royal Navie's Humgrumit, or possibly the Flogol toggle? ( Those of a certain age in the UK will know exactaly what I mean)
Maaaa netrebnicule
Is voevode barbu mi au dat ban pe discord si acu nu mai is pe rpr poti sa mi dai link pls :)))
Whilst i can see why it was not accepted, i can't really fault the design. It's sturdy in all the right places and presents a very solid "wear" form. I mean, let's face it, whenever stuff like this pops out, it's made with tin and wire. This at least presents itself as a chunky weapon.
Yes quite chunky and revolver pawl, revolver lock and pivot axis that wear down on the usual revolvers are hard wearing due to the sproket design inmho, springs are better. This is 1885 and you have an easy to load and unload 38 cal revolver that I d love to see it fired in a C Rsenal trial.
This looks more like a proof of concept for his trigger and striker mechanisms than a serious attempt at a military revolver. Considering the time, it could have been a very serious contender for a system that goes into a rifle destined to the trenches. While it is complicated, it is very well contained and depending on how it is integrated with the rest of the gun, this system might have survived the dirt and mud of ww1.
What unique looking revolver. Beautiful! I am so glad you do this.
All the best to you and yours!
NOW IS THE TIME ON SPROCKETS WHEN WE REVOLVE!
SunshineCamo NOW IS THE TIME ON SPROCKETS WHEN WE MAKE AN OVERLY COMPLICATED REVOLVER
(Btw favorite snl skit ever)
NOW IS THE TIME ON SPROCKETS WHEN WE DANCE.
SunshineCamo ja every time i go to eurotrash disney I make sure to visit otto the diseased bear.....
I was going to go for NOW IS THE TIME ON SPROCKETS WHEN WE SHOOT.
Zee time on Shproh-kets.....
the concept of the gun isnt a complete waste but the finished product is a failure. too bad though because this could have been pretty intriguing.
Picture how much money the inventor wasted by not letting go of a poor concept.
Love your videos Ian very informative 🐺
Great video, truly a forgotten weapon, the weirder the better.
I really like it. I'd never want to use it, but I really like it.
Which I say quite a lot on this channel now I think about it.
So the trigger and sprockets work together like the escapement in a clock. I wonder if that's where the inventor got the idea.
Really interesting design, but truly an answer to a question nobody asked; A solution in search of a problem, as it were.
Love it. Really like seeing strange revolvers and pistols.
French: I will create an intricate revolver !
Dimancea: Hold my tzuica !
I will give credit to the factory that was actually able to do the machining work for that revolver and make IIRC 1000 of them. Must have been very expensive to make considering all of the machining required. The only thing it does better than many of the designs in current use was you could in theory open the gun to eject all six and quickly reload. Looks like it was drop safe and with those large sprockets to never wear out assuming proper heat treatment. Very thick cylinder walls in the .38 chambering. It was certainly a beast of a revolver.
Looking at this as a gunsmith I think Ian has it wrong. Normal revolvers then and now have more parts, and the parts are very complex to manufacture. This revolver, with all its linear movement, has parts with straight lines, which are way easier and faster to make.
@@observed00 Some of the final revolvers of the 1870-90's seem simpler. But my major comment was about the amount of machining it was to make that Dimancea; it was a lot. The total number parts might not be more.
Envision yourself Nick trying to duplicate that in your shop. When you are actually going in side of a block of steel to hollow it out. It is a lot of work. I have a belgium made 9,4 dutch military revolver that does look simpler to make.
It is possible it was not so difficult due to welding the machined pieces together afterwards.
Note I am not a machinist, But I have watched a gunsmith/manufacturer set up computer control equipment to make specific guns parts. Often making a new gun can be almost as challenging as designing the prototype was.
I find it always so fascinating to learn about alternatives to traditional firearms technology, regardless of its complexity it is do cool so see outside the box thinking
They should add this to Red Dead. Always love strange revolvers
Love the patent, something entirely new, and that workmanship, looks awesome. I wanna feel the almost polished metal surfaces of the inner parts. Seems more like a swiss / german idea. Wonderful! I imagine the idea behind this was to get a smoother DA trigger pull and I might guess when it's sufficiently oiled / greased, it could fulfill that, kind of. The striker doesn't move very far and with good tolerances it should be lighter then moving a whole hammer around. There's room for improvement / simplification IMO, but sadly this idea hasn't evolved that much after this, has it?
Looks like the top block that is just above the striker is the actual cylinder stop because the cylinder has the square cuts for it to have the block slip forward into it.
Good presentation and thank you for sharing this interesting firearm. You said no one adopted this pistol. I’m assuming the Elbonian Army wasn’t contacted.
I love these nitty-gritty teardown videos :D
Legend has it that Ian is still trying to hold all the pieces together to show the audience how it all works
I feel like the designer got half way through this project, realized it was gonna be impractical, then decided to go through with it anyway since he was too invested at that point.
A risky strat to be sure; looks like it didn't pay off.
It always amazes me how complicated some of these older guns are.
Thinking about it from a machinists perspective. What a pita to make but very interesting. They didnt have fancy milling machines then, they had lathes and shapers and slotters.
While Ian did a great job explaining how this revolver works, I feel like a 3D animation would be immensely helpful for truly understanding it.
Just before you said it, I was thinking “wow, a striker fired revolver”. Love these strange firearms.
Ian is finally looking at guns in Paris. I bet Ian is loving that.
If he tried to sell this as a revolving rifle, I'd buy it. It really does look like an early automatic rifle frame attached to a revolver front.
Being fairly modular, you could probably do quite a lot with this action, just slide on a different front bit and grip!
I have ideas.
Romanian engineering.... European Engineering in general they test a lot of new Concepts Firearms down the line in history aren't really new technology they are just slightly more refined because the concepts themselves of the early Firearms were more just of a test bed
Beautifully Unique! kinda steam punk.. looks like it has more in common with some of the early machine guns.
When i seen "with sprockets" i was kinda hoping for more mike myers as Dieter.
Velcome to shprockets....now ve danse...
Doing a trigger job for this would be a nightmare, a total of six sears to work with.
Was the swing out cylinder concept still covered by a patent when he designed this weapon ? It ended up doing the same function pretty much just was more complex,large and heavier so cant see why he would bother unless he was trying to work around some patent or something
It's actually cool, it would look good in a Victorian crime drama or something of the sort.
But my question, is it hard to hold all the prices together to show how they work?
Outtakes!
I LOVED the lack of editing at 7:30, your hesitation and repeating yourself really drove home just how difficult this mechanism is overall. There's really no good way to parse it, is there?
It's an assault revolver. Thus the HUGE size.
You can beat someone senseless when you run out of ammo.
When you're done filming a sticky/stuck firearm do the owners ever opt to take that moment to oil and maintain the piece before you reassemble it?
I know it is valuable, but.... a little oiling, cleaning? carefully, ok.
7:24 editing mistake
I love you mate!! You are like my uncle but he prefers wine at shooting videos
Thanks for the video!
"Dig that crazy, mixed-up plumbing." -This Island Earth (1955)
Bat Guano hey sarge i think theres some pre-verts here....
Cool and forgotten? Perfect!
This reminds me of some math teachers that suggest a very complicted integral - and in 20 minutes twist and turns in formulas - and show it is really a very simple function, that could have been solved by a high school student in 5 minutes. But it shows off that the teacher is really great.
Wow that is bonkers for the time period. It's so cool.
Man, that thing is weird as hell. I'm half surprised it even uses a trigger to fire.
Gusts of wind made this video a little bit more cozy than usual.
So it's kind of a striker fired revolver? Fascinating!
Way ahead of its time 👍👍
Too many ideas, thoughts and labor in every detail of it, resulting in a rather usual revolver, which could be much simpler. Ian was plying as kinda detective to understand all that and succeeded once again! Congrats!
Ok men, You're going to disassemble and assemble this blindfolded. And you're going to do it in 60 seconds!
What a cool revolver! That said it might be one of the worst examples of design for manufacturing and service ever created. It must have cost a fortune to produce, never mind being completely impractical the price would have doomed it alone.