Know Your Weapons: The Adams Revolver

Robert Adams and Samuel Colt Waged a Vicious, but Largely Unknown War over the 19th Century Pistol market

By 1850, Samuel Colt had come to dominate the American revolver market, aggressively defending his patents and using advanced manufacturing processes to out-produce rivals.

Meanwhile in February 1851, British gunsmith Robert Adams patented his double-action revolver design.

The key advantages Adams’ revolvers had over Colt’s were their larger caliber and double action. This made them fast-firing and hard hitting. You could shoot them with one hand, making them ideal for the sort of close-quarters combat British officers found themselves in during colonial campaigns.

Colt attempted to gain a foothold in Europe in the early 1850s, setting up a lavish display featuring his pistols at the Great Exhibition. It was at the exhibition that Colt faced his first competition from Adams.

London gunmakers George and John Deane’s stand displayed a plethora of products from a number of British gunmakers from London and Birmingham. Among them was a finely-decorated Adams Revolver, which enjoyed much interest from visitors.

Despite Colt gifting various presentation pistols to dignitaries and demonstrating the impressive interchangeability of his weapon to fascinated crowds, at the end of the exhibition Deane & Deane won a prize medal whileColt received only an honorable mention.

Undeterred, in 1852 Colt established a factory in London, hoping to gain lucrative military contracts from Britain and Europe. Initial orders from the Royal Navy for 9,500 revolvers and the British Army for 14,000 revolvers were encouraging. But the British became steadily more interested in Adams’ revolvers.

During trials at the Woolwich Arsenal, testers found that the Adams was faster to reload — 38 seconds to the Colt’s 58 second. The Adams was also more accurate and suffered no misfires, unlike the Colt.

Colt was unwilling to move away from his own open-frame, single-action designs in order to compete with his British rival. In 1856, Colt was compelled to close his factory.

Adams himself had initially worked as manager of the Deanes’ factory. It was with Deane & Deane that he first manufactured and sold his revolver. The success of the pistol following its unveiling at the Great Exhibition in 1851 saw Adams elevated to partner with Deane & Deane.

Read the Remainder at War is Boring

Obscure Weapons: Thompson Model 1923 Auto Rifle

One of the very early entrants into the United States Ordnance Department’s semiauto rifle trials was the Auto-Ordnance Company, makers of the Thompson submachine gun. For the rifle trials, they designed a .30-06 rifle using the same Blish-locking principle as had been applied to the SMG. Since the Blish principle doesn’t actually work, this resulted in what was actually a delayed-blowback action which extracted at very high pressure.

The Thompson Autorifle, as it was called, used a very coarse screw to delay the bolt opening, and required oiled felt pads in the magazine to lubricate the cartridges as they fed. It was a particularly long and unwieldy rifle as a result of it’s unusually long receiver, and is known today for having ejection so forceful that it could actually stick cases into wooden planks placed close to the shooter. Needless to say, it did not fare very well in trials and was dropped from consideration not long after this, the Model 1923.

Read the Original Article at Forgotten Weapons

Military Weapons From the Past: Japanese Type 100 Paratrooper

The Type 100 (sometimes called the Type 0) was one of the initial Japanese experiments in paratroop rifles. Manufactured from standard Nagoya Arsenal Type 99 rifles, the Type 100 used a set of interrupted lugs at the chamber to allow the rifle to be broken into two short sections. Only a few hundred of these were manufactured for testing, and ultimately the Type 2 design (with a locking wedge) was adopted instead.

Read the Original Article at Forgotten Weapons

Obscure Weapons: 1846 Norwegian Knife-Pistol

This is one of the more practical knife/pistol combinations I have seen – it actually has a pretty reasonable grip when used in either capacity. It has two muzzleloading smoothbore barrels, with a percussion cap hidden under each top ear of the crossguard and a folding trigger in the body of the grip.

After I had finished filming, it was brought to my attention that while it does not have the proper markings, this piece is very, very similar to an 1846 Postførerverge – a double-barreled blade/gun issued to Norwegian postal employees after a rash of deadly assaults on rural postal workers. Those were made from 1846 until 1854, with a total of 152 being manufactured. Could this be one with the markings worn off or removed? Perhaps. It could also be a commercial copy, or something else entirely.

Read the Original Article at Forgotten Weapons