Texas Star - you're right, Enfield 476 and 455 caliber revolvers were top break, my mistake. I think the 455 Enfields were made by Webley. I have read that Webley 455 revolvers were still in service during WWII, but maybe that source was incorrect. It is my understanding that only military Webleys were chambered in 455 and commercial guns were chambered in 442 or 476 cartridges. Hope the poster has a military version.
I still think it is a bad idea to shoot smokeless and jacketed bullets in a 120 year old BP gun.
Walkin Jack - I bet there are very few nickel Webleys out there - I kind of like the look, but Texas Star is correct, value of your refinished gun is diminished.
Glowe-
You are confused. The unique Enfield revolvers of the 1880's were all in .476. They used an odd system developed by an American named Jones. You can probably find them on the Net and see what they were like. Or, "The Handgun" by Boothroyd and various other books like those covering the sidearms of the RCMP in its early days will show you. They were made by Enfield Arsenal, and Webley had nothing to do with them, either in design or manufacture.
The .476 cartridge used a 288 grain bullet at some 700 FPS and was well thought of. But the Enfield revolver was a disaster, so ill-liked that it was withdrawn within a decade. It was officially replaced by the Webley MK I in 1887, the first government-issued Webley. (For military use; the RIC and some other police used Webleys already.)
I think that what confuses many here is that some books say that the MK I was adopted in a .442 caliber, probably similar to the rounds used in some RIC and Bulldog type Webleys. That may have been true, but all production models of the MK I seem to have been chambered in .455 MK I.
Webley made commercial guns in all of these calibers, plus .450 and probably others.
Officers could buy any, but official ammo was in .455, and surely it was favored. But I've read that the US .44-40 and .45 Colt were so popular that official Stores (supply depots) in some countries stocked that ammo, too.
It is significant that Lt. Col. Vincent Fosbery, V.C. said that the best handgun "stopper" that he saw in use was the Colt Frontier .44-40. This was in the NW Frontier area of India now part of Pakistan, and his foes were about what lives there now and in Afghanistan. (His V.C. was awarded for gallantry in Afghanistan, during fighting in Khandahar.) He was quoted in, "The Peacemaker and its Rivals", by John Parsons. And, yes, he was later the designer of the Webley-Fosbery Automatic Revolver.
Most of the govt.-issued MK I-V revolvers had four-inch barrels, but some had five or six inchers. Officers buying from Stores seem to have favored the longer ones, but not universally. I have seen a photo of two NCO's and one officer from the Royal Household Cavalry in 1914, and all three wore four-inch barrels. But officers had flapped holsters; enlisted open-top, with a cleaning rod fitted in loops on the back.
In, "Flame Over India," I noted that the captain was using a MK VI in 1905, a gun not made until 1915. I wrote it off to movies being movies, as with the MK VI's used in 1879 in, "Zulu." But I later learned of the Webley & Scott Army Revolver, made from 1904 and maybe earlier. It looked like a MK VI with a front sight like the MK IV, part of the barrel. It was never adopted, but was quite popular with officers buying their own guns. The lockwork was probably honed and the finish a little better than the flat blue of the service-issued Webleys. It cost more, but not as much as the finely-finished WG or Webley-Wilkinson models. So, the captain could have had a W&S Army Model and looked about the same. He might have just gotten a Wilkinson-Webley of 1905, too, although the bright blue finish would be distinctive, and the wooden grips with a gold oval for his initials. But I've never seen one of these in a film. Rlfles in the Kenneth More film were SMLE's, the extras actual Indian troops in 1960, when the film was made. Some No. 4 rifles lurk in the background. In reality, the Indian forces in 1905 would have had long Lee-Enfields or Lee-Metfords, maybe the first of the SMLE's, adopted in Dec., 1902. Had I been the director, I'd have set the movie in 1919 or so, allowing the guns used. Nothing much else would have changed, although the early Maxim MG would have been a Vickers. That should have been easy for a movie director to locate!
Oh: some reading this may wonder why Wilkinson Sword would be selling Webley (or other) revolvers.
The answer is, upon graduation from Sandhurst, young officers needed to buy a sword and a revolver. The best swords were made by Wilkinson, and it was easy for affluent officers to go there and buy both sword and handgun. So the swordmaker contracted with Webley to provide fancy guns made to their specs. They came in three models, of 1892 (one was used by Churchill before he bought his famous Mauser), of 1905, and 1911. The last two looked like finely blued MK VI's, although the official MK VI came later. They also had wooden grip plates with a gold oval for initials. The 1905 and 1911 varied in having six grooves of rifling in one, seven in the other. I think the 1911 MAY have also had a cylinder with thicker walls, to be safer with smokeless powder. But I checked Boothroyd's, "The Handgun" and he mentioned only the rifling difference. I do not have Dowell's,"The Webley Story."
