What Gun would you have in the 1880s -Part 4
Cartridge Conversions and Cartridge Revolvers!
If you have done your homework after part 3 you will now be able to spot a Colt 1851 Navy, Colt 1860 Army and a Remington 1858. You may have even got your heads around all that muzzle loading nonsense! You would have also spotted that the “Percussion” blank fire pistols that we use take those new-fangled cartridges! That is because they are cartridge conversion revolvers – I’ll explain!
In the early 1850s Smith and Wesson where trying to develop a self-contained metallic cartridge. They took a European idea developed by Flobert; he had put a .22 ball in a percussion cap to create a very low power cartridge. It was used in indoor target pistols and was so low power it was no good for hunting or defensive use. Our heroes took this idea and developed the .22 rim fire cartridge, it later developed into the .22LR. This is probably the most used cartridge in the UK today.
Having developed a cartridge they now set about making a pistol, so they built a dinky little 7 shot .22 pocket revolver that had bored through cylinders so you could load the ammo from the back just like a modern pistol. The problem was that a chap called Rollin White, who worked for Colt, had the patent on this idea. Unfortunately for Colt he had dismissed Rollin’s ideas and pistol design, so Mr White was happy to sell the idea to Smith and Wesson.
By 1857 S&W were manufacturing a 7 shot .22 revolver and they quickly went on to make a bigger .32 calibre revolver. While nowhere near as powerful as a .44 percussion revolver, the ease of reloading and weatherproof properties of a metal cartridge made them very popular with troops fighting the US Civil War. By the end of the Civil War a number of metallic cartridges existed including those to fit the Henry rifle, Sharpes rifle plus others and all the pistol manufactures knew how to make cartridge revolvers but couldn’t due to Rollin Whites Patent.
Every time a company made a cartridge revolver, Rollin White took them to court to protect his patent. (The story of “patent evasion” and “patent avoiding” pistols is a saga in its own right!) So while Colt and Remington couldn’t make a cartridge revolver nothing stopped local (unknown) gunsmiths from converting percussion revolvers into cartridge revolvers, often to take a Henry .44 cartridge. All this is all just a long way of saying that our Colt Navy and Colt Army Revolvers that take blank 9mm cartridges are really replicas of these “cartridge conversion” pistols.
The patent finally expired in 1871 and now anyone could make a cartridge revolver. Remington made the “Improved New Model Army” a cartridge version of the 1858 Remington percussion pistol, this is what we really have in our blank fire Remington 1858s. Colt had loads of percussion parts to use up so they just made there own factory cartridge conversions of the Army and Navy models. But they were working on a better design!
1873 saw Colt release the “Single Action Army” (SAA) or as often called the “Peacemaker”! A much stronger pistol than the old Colt Navy and Army models and one designed for metallic cartridges! Bruni, Kimar, Uberti, Pietta and many others all make replicas of this pistol! But percussion pistols where not dead, Remington still offered a percussion version of the 1858 until 1888, often a pistol would come with two cylinders, one for percussion and one for cartridges.