So I got my hands on a new heater. Or most of one. It's a French M1873 revolver. The DA trigger threw its hands up and fled the battlefield sometime in the last century and a half, leaving it single-action-only, and the Peacemaker-style ejector assembly is long gone, leaving you to poke spent cases our with a stick, but at forty bucks, the price was definitely right to add it to Miss Tam's Home For Derelict Firearms.
Now to find some 11x17mmR ammunition. (With a muzzle velocity of around 500fps, if you noticed that Pvt. Jaques was drawing a bead on you, you might be able to outrun the bullet with enough of a head start...)
Does it give you the feeling that you couldn't fight your way out of a wet paper bag, and the urge to surrender?
ReplyDeleteDidn't Whatshisname Actordude use a pair of these in shoulder holsters in "The Mummy"? Which kinda made sense, seeing that he was in the French Foreign Legion?
ReplyDeletewv: sneptr. I think that was one of th Egyptian gods.
It is a neat looking revolver in a "son of a Webley" sort of way. Too bad about the ejector, definitely adds character to a DA revolver.
ReplyDeleteHappy hunting (for the ammo).
I get a Nagant kinda vibe from it.
ReplyDeleteSo how many times was it dropped by the "Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys?" (H/T to Top Gear).
ReplyDeleteIs that a brass you can form from something more easily available?
ReplyDeleteNice addition to the collection! Any idea what the muzzle energy of that round would be? Big & slow can still hurt.
ReplyDeleteTam: go to http://hlebooks.com/11mm73/cham00.htm. They even have books you won't find anywhere else on this thing.
ReplyDeleteNot sure if you can get the 'reloading kit' with 12 cases into the country though...
All The Best,
Frank W. James
Hey, French guns are a great value. Never fired, only dropped once...
ReplyDeletehttp://knol.google.com/k/h-l-publishing/revive-your-antique-french-11mm-model/f03ynyjzei4d/30#
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering what rimmed rifle round can be trimmed down to work here. Thanks Tam, you've given me a research project to dabble with.
I love the classic lines (esp. the grip) of those '73s, but for no apparent reason, whenever I see one I can't help but think of a little french kid running around shouting Saint-Étienne! Saint-Étienne!
ReplyDeleteThey even have a YouTube video if you don't get the book.
I've a customer with a couple of these tings. You can see them used by Brendan Fraser in the first 'Mummy' movie. My customer uses heelbased .44 Colt bullets in cut down .44 Special cases. I can get you the bullets if you wanna try reloading for this dinosaur.
ReplyDeleteStaghounds, you don't win a war by dieing for your country......LOL!
ReplyDelete@ Staghounds -- blah, blah , blah.
ReplyDeleteAw, geez, Matt, it's an entire nation of people, with governments that had a history of severe dysfunction; you gonna blame all Frenchmen back to ancient Gaul 'cos they decided to sit a recent war or two out and have lost many?
ReplyDeleteSo they are on a bit of a losing streak since Charlamange - everyone has a dry spell once in a while.
ReplyDeleteIm English the French have never forgiven us for Agincourt or Waterloo
ReplyDeleteor rescuing them from the Germans in
WW2 there is a joke over here.Why did the French Plant trees on the
Champs-Élysées,So that the Germans could march in the shade.
"...if you noticed that Pvt. Jaques was drawing a bead on you, you might be able to outrun the bullet with enough of a head start...)"
ReplyDeleteOr, with a sufficiently padded catcher’s mitt, return it to him with a call of “low and outside, ball one.
I'd kinda like to see Uberti et al look into making replicas of these lesser known military revolvers firing modern near-equiv calibers (even if only in "Cowboy" loads).
ReplyDeleteBring a little more diversity to SASS, Wild Bunch and the other retro gun games.
Plus be kinda cool in and of themselves.
>http://hlebooks.com/11mm73/cham00.htm
ReplyDeleteoh wow, those cases look machined, rather than drawn. Sounds like they'll work at those pressures, but that means that there's no easy parent brass out there.
.453" just happens to be a common valve stem hole for automobile wheels. Useless trivia of the day.
-SM
Reminds me of the Italian Bodeo revolver of similar vintage.
ReplyDeleteEuropean pistols at that time all had a "fashionable" look about them.
Nice pickup for forty bucks.
Yes Brendan Frasier used a pair of Chamelot-Delvigne revolvers in the Mummuy. Here is the link to the IMFDB page
ReplyDeletehttp://www.imfdb.org/wiki/The_Mummy
I still can't figure out how he reloaded them just by spinning the cylinders. I never saw him actually reload them.
You don't reload movie revolvers, you just wind them up. That's how they did it in the old Westerns.
ReplyDeleteThat's a far more handsome gun than I would expect. Nice find!
ReplyDeleteAntibubba
Staghounds your comment was:
ReplyDeleteMore Frenchmen died fighting Germany in 1939 and 1940- you know, a year os so before the Americans bothered to get involved, other than to make money- than did Americans did fighting Germans during their fraction of the struggle.
A quick check on Wiki shows
French 85,000 (1939-40) 12,000 (41-45)
Americans in European theater 109,000
Your point on insensitive comments remain valid though