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While I have this outfit, I thought I'd take the opportunity to share data about TL's in general, Triple Lock boxes, and .455's.
You're going to look at the finest .455 Triple Lock I have ever seen. If not the finest in the world, it's right up there in the top FEW!
Also, we know who owned it at one point in time of its service life as an Officer's Sidearm.
Enjoy.
.455 History
Roy tells us in History of Smith & Wesson that nearly 75,000 of the 455's were supplied to the British Commonwealth in WW I.
Only around 5,000 of them were Triple Locks, the rest being .455 Second Models with no ejector rod shroud and no third lock.
The story you have always heard is that the Brits demanded the Second Model development because of complaints that the shroud and 3rd lock got jammed by mud in the trenches and no-mans-lands of that awful war.
Well, sorta-kinda, but that's not exactly how it went.
In the SUMMER of 1914, the Brits had asked S&W if they could build .455 revolvers. S&W built a .455 TL and sent it to them. The Brits responded that it was too heavy and so precise they felt it could be jammed by dirt. So, they wanted a lighter, less precise, and I suspect, CHEAPER gun for military use. The War had not yet started.
Before S&W could design the 2nd Model, war broke out in August, and the Brits yelled "Send us what you got now!"
The first 666 of the .455's built were built on 44 TL frames that the factory had on hand. These frames were already numbered in the 44 N frame serial number series. As they built more frames, they started a new series for the .455's beginning at 1, and running to 5000 or more.
The change to the Second Model occurs between 5000 and 6000 of the .455 series. Since SOME of the 44 frames used to build .455's were numbered below 5000, it would be possible to have TWO .455 TL's sitting side-by-side with the same serial number below 5000. I've often wondered if we will ever see a pair assembled!
So, we have roughly 5000 TL's built in .455, and roughly 70,000 Second Models.
As the Brit contracts were finishing up in 1916, S&W found enough parts to build 691 .455 Triple Locks. These guns will be numbered in the 44 serial number series. I have no idea why they were not just numbered in the .455 series. Perhaps it was .455 barrels and cylinders that the factory found, and they simply turned again to existing 44 frames to use them up. They were sold commercially.
Commonwealth officers have always purchased their own sidearms. So, a British officer might have a TL with commercial proofs he bought on the open market, or he may have had one purchased from government inventory which would probably have the military acceptance marks and a cancelled broad arrow to show it was no longer crown property. You'll hear the term "purchased from stores" for those purchased from government inventory which was called "stores".
There are no commercial Canadian proofs, so a Canadian officer could have an unmarked gun, or again, could probably have bought one from the gov with gov marks which were possibly cancelled. I'm not certain on that.
This gun was shipped to a dealer in Canada in Nov, 1916.
I bought the gun from a dealer in Canada. It had recently surfaced from an estate. It came with the regular Officer's commonwealth holster shown above.
This is where it got interesting>
Inside the holster, written in fountain pen, was the man's name, rank, and "Cdn Army".
His initials were also neatly applied on the butt, appearing to be pressed in.
My searching for the Lt was not going well. I could find officers and men with his surname, some in what eventually turned out to be his unit, but no such officer in WW I.
In a later search I somehow stumbled across his name because the Cornwall library had the unit history cataloged online with brief excerpts, one of which had his name in it. Mind you, that unit history was printed after WW II to give to the members of the battalion when the unit returned from Europe, not for general circulation. That meant only a few hundred had been printed in 1945.
God favors even the fool sometimes, and I found the unit history for sale on Amazon that same day. It was not cheap and was also located in Canada. I figured I had to buy it even if it only had his name listed, so I bought it, and was pleasantly surprised when it came.
A.M. became a Lt right after the fall of France, while The Battle of Britain was raging. Good show, old sport!
The "Glens" as they were called landed on White beach (the Nan White sector of Juno Beach) around noon on D-Day and were soon engaged by German counterattacks. It was said of the Regiment that it "never failed to take an objective; never lost a yard of ground; never lost a man taken prisoner in offensive action."
I suspect A.M. was given the gun when he was commissioned by a relative who had bought it as his sidearm for WW I. He would have been a small child if even born when the gun was shipped. He was a Major by the end of the War.
Edited to add: A helpful forum member put me in touch with a Canadian who was very helpful in securing the service record of A. Marsh Irvine. I had already sold the gun to Jim Fisher, so I mailed it on to Jim when I received it.
Further research might tell us more.
Obviously, he did not use it in training or combat. He probably kept it as a keepsake and/or for dress and ceremony. I doubt any .455's hit the beach at Normandy since I imagine they wanted to be standardized on the 38/200.
3rd Lock
For those who aren't familiar with exactly what the third lock is>
The Yoke Cam is always case hardened whether the gun is blue or nickel, and it is serial numbered on the back:
Caliber Marking
Below is the .455 caliber mark.
Expect to see many .455 TL's with NO caliber mark.
Expect to also see .455-2nd Models with no caliber marking. They can be disbursed all the way through production. I have seen one above 60,000 with no cal mark, and it was a righteous gun. That is probably explained by a batch of 2nd Model barrels that were not marked which were pulled from stock all the way through production.
Logo
All .455's I have seen have the logo.
Grips
All .455's shipped with gold medallion grips.
Grips of this era are numbered with pencil, top half of right grip.
Unfortunately, oil, wiping the grips, age darkening, etc can make the number go away-
Box
The box you see is not original to this gun. I mated it with the gun.
It IS the proper box for a .455 TL or a .455-2nd Model.
This would also be the box used for 44 TL's with a different label, of course.
It is probably the correct box for the early 44-2nd's. I'm not sure how late this box runs, but we know the "patent" or "Display" box, which is the hinged lid maroon box, has a patent date of Dec, 1920 printed in it.
I suspect S&W was using the maroon hinged box by the early to mid 20's.
The pics show all sides.
Note the pencil serial number on the bottom which means a .455-2nd shipped in this box. It has a close serial number inside the lid. No clue why, unless some unit once had that numbered gun in the box. I'm just a custodian, so I don't alter the ancient marks on anything.
Top-
Prologue
This last pic will show you why my heart skipped a beat while transacting to acquire the gun.
As I said, I bought the gun from a Canadian dealer for an appreciable sum of US dollars for the gun, shipping, and import fees.
I was assured in phone conversations that it was a beauty. Pics were sent, and though fairly good, glare and small size and poor focus and darkness on some made it unclear exactly what the condition was.
Since importing takes time, the holster arrived first.
I was impressed with the condition, and then I opened it. Look at the two circles on the flap. Those were made by verdigris from the grip escutcheons!
YIKES- the gun had been stored in the holster for a looonnnngggg time somewhere in its history.
However, God smiled again on the fool and the gun arrived with a nice coating of old oil that had dried to varnish and cleaned up very well.
The verdigris also cleaned off the escutcheons.
You're going to look at the finest .455 Triple Lock I have ever seen. If not the finest in the world, it's right up there in the top FEW!
Also, we know who owned it at one point in time of its service life as an Officer's Sidearm.
Enjoy.
.455 History
Roy tells us in History of Smith & Wesson that nearly 75,000 of the 455's were supplied to the British Commonwealth in WW I.
Only around 5,000 of them were Triple Locks, the rest being .455 Second Models with no ejector rod shroud and no third lock.
The story you have always heard is that the Brits demanded the Second Model development because of complaints that the shroud and 3rd lock got jammed by mud in the trenches and no-mans-lands of that awful war.
Well, sorta-kinda, but that's not exactly how it went.
In the SUMMER of 1914, the Brits had asked S&W if they could build .455 revolvers. S&W built a .455 TL and sent it to them. The Brits responded that it was too heavy and so precise they felt it could be jammed by dirt. So, they wanted a lighter, less precise, and I suspect, CHEAPER gun for military use. The War had not yet started.
Before S&W could design the 2nd Model, war broke out in August, and the Brits yelled "Send us what you got now!"
The first 666 of the .455's built were built on 44 TL frames that the factory had on hand. These frames were already numbered in the 44 N frame serial number series. As they built more frames, they started a new series for the .455's beginning at 1, and running to 5000 or more.
The change to the Second Model occurs between 5000 and 6000 of the .455 series. Since SOME of the 44 frames used to build .455's were numbered below 5000, it would be possible to have TWO .455 TL's sitting side-by-side with the same serial number below 5000. I've often wondered if we will ever see a pair assembled!
So, we have roughly 5000 TL's built in .455, and roughly 70,000 Second Models.
As the Brit contracts were finishing up in 1916, S&W found enough parts to build 691 .455 Triple Locks. These guns will be numbered in the 44 serial number series. I have no idea why they were not just numbered in the .455 series. Perhaps it was .455 barrels and cylinders that the factory found, and they simply turned again to existing 44 frames to use them up. They were sold commercially.
Commonwealth officers have always purchased their own sidearms. So, a British officer might have a TL with commercial proofs he bought on the open market, or he may have had one purchased from government inventory which would probably have the military acceptance marks and a cancelled broad arrow to show it was no longer crown property. You'll hear the term "purchased from stores" for those purchased from government inventory which was called "stores".
There are no commercial Canadian proofs, so a Canadian officer could have an unmarked gun, or again, could probably have bought one from the gov with gov marks which were possibly cancelled. I'm not certain on that.
This gun was shipped to a dealer in Canada in Nov, 1916.
I bought the gun from a dealer in Canada. It had recently surfaced from an estate. It came with the regular Officer's commonwealth holster shown above.
This is where it got interesting>
Inside the holster, written in fountain pen, was the man's name, rank, and "Cdn Army".
His initials were also neatly applied on the butt, appearing to be pressed in.
My searching for the Lt was not going well. I could find officers and men with his surname, some in what eventually turned out to be his unit, but no such officer in WW I.
In a later search I somehow stumbled across his name because the Cornwall library had the unit history cataloged online with brief excerpts, one of which had his name in it. Mind you, that unit history was printed after WW II to give to the members of the battalion when the unit returned from Europe, not for general circulation. That meant only a few hundred had been printed in 1945.
God favors even the fool sometimes, and I found the unit history for sale on Amazon that same day. It was not cheap and was also located in Canada. I figured I had to buy it even if it only had his name listed, so I bought it, and was pleasantly surprised when it came.
A.M. became a Lt right after the fall of France, while The Battle of Britain was raging. Good show, old sport!
The "Glens" as they were called landed on White beach (the Nan White sector of Juno Beach) around noon on D-Day and were soon engaged by German counterattacks. It was said of the Regiment that it "never failed to take an objective; never lost a yard of ground; never lost a man taken prisoner in offensive action."
I suspect A.M. was given the gun when he was commissioned by a relative who had bought it as his sidearm for WW I. He would have been a small child if even born when the gun was shipped. He was a Major by the end of the War.
Edited to add: A helpful forum member put me in touch with a Canadian who was very helpful in securing the service record of A. Marsh Irvine. I had already sold the gun to Jim Fisher, so I mailed it on to Jim when I received it.
Further research might tell us more.
Obviously, he did not use it in training or combat. He probably kept it as a keepsake and/or for dress and ceremony. I doubt any .455's hit the beach at Normandy since I imagine they wanted to be standardized on the 38/200.
3rd Lock
For those who aren't familiar with exactly what the third lock is>
The Yoke Cam is always case hardened whether the gun is blue or nickel, and it is serial numbered on the back:
Caliber Marking
Below is the .455 caliber mark.
Expect to see many .455 TL's with NO caliber mark.
Expect to also see .455-2nd Models with no caliber marking. They can be disbursed all the way through production. I have seen one above 60,000 with no cal mark, and it was a righteous gun. That is probably explained by a batch of 2nd Model barrels that were not marked which were pulled from stock all the way through production.
Logo
All .455's I have seen have the logo.
Grips
All .455's shipped with gold medallion grips.
Grips of this era are numbered with pencil, top half of right grip.
Unfortunately, oil, wiping the grips, age darkening, etc can make the number go away-
Box
The box you see is not original to this gun. I mated it with the gun.
It IS the proper box for a .455 TL or a .455-2nd Model.
This would also be the box used for 44 TL's with a different label, of course.
It is probably the correct box for the early 44-2nd's. I'm not sure how late this box runs, but we know the "patent" or "Display" box, which is the hinged lid maroon box, has a patent date of Dec, 1920 printed in it.
I suspect S&W was using the maroon hinged box by the early to mid 20's.
The pics show all sides.
Note the pencil serial number on the bottom which means a .455-2nd shipped in this box. It has a close serial number inside the lid. No clue why, unless some unit once had that numbered gun in the box. I'm just a custodian, so I don't alter the ancient marks on anything.
Top-
Prologue
This last pic will show you why my heart skipped a beat while transacting to acquire the gun.
As I said, I bought the gun from a Canadian dealer for an appreciable sum of US dollars for the gun, shipping, and import fees.
I was assured in phone conversations that it was a beauty. Pics were sent, and though fairly good, glare and small size and poor focus and darkness on some made it unclear exactly what the condition was.
Since importing takes time, the holster arrived first.
I was impressed with the condition, and then I opened it. Look at the two circles on the flap. Those were made by verdigris from the grip escutcheons!
YIKES- the gun had been stored in the holster for a looonnnngggg time somewhere in its history.
However, God smiled again on the fool and the gun arrived with a nice coating of old oil that had dried to varnish and cleaned up very well.
The verdigris also cleaned off the escutcheons.
Last edited:
