Mystery Gun- What is it?

Sebago Son said:
This is "Cave Gun". So named as it was found by a friend of mine in a mountian cave in Laos. Origion unknown, could be Durrah or maybe Eibar. It is a copy of a 1905. Note the strain screw. At one time it had a flat mainspring...

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Note the S&W Logo...

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Another point that no one has mentioned is the finish on this model. The tool room work ups that I've seen were rarely finely finished to commercial standards such as the mystery gun is....

Drew
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Ummmm..are there the usual S&W Patent dates on top of the Barrel?
 
Hondo44 said:
When I think of this as a knockoff the 1st question that comes to mind is, a knockoff of what? What S&W existing model like this was there to knockoff?

When I think of S&W timeline, starting a comparison with the 1896 HE DA seems way to late. This mystery gun seems to have roots in the SA New Model #3 era. I ponder if Smith was considering a side swing cylinder as far back as that but needed to move forward with their breaktop DAs in 1880 to keep up with the market? Did a whole chapter of SA side swing cyl technology get bypassed and end up in the dust bin of history only to reincarnate in the 1896 32 HE and 1903 2nd Model in a new DA form?

Mystery gun indeed!
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Exactly - I am sure S & W was well aware of the Winchester 'Swing Out Cylinder' experimental Models, and, of course, well aware of the advent of the Colt Swing Out Cylinder Models which began to be marketed some while later.

I would expect S & W to have made any number of 'early' Swing Out Cylinder experiments or prototypes of sorts, in this context, and I see no reason why some of them would not have been Single Action or from the period in which a Single Action platform was still being contemplated for the hosting the new design.

Just because there are references to a proprietary S & W ".41" Calibre Cartridge, does not mean this Revolver could not even pre-date that Cartridge's reference dates.

.41 does seem an odd choice, especialy compared to .44 S&W Russian, or .44-40 of course.
 
I can buy into the Belgium produced hybrid of S&W technology especially if the caliber is the 10.4 mm instead of 41 Cal. But those european guns are usually stamped with some kind of proof marks. The jury is still out for me, I'm keeping an open mind.
 
2152hq said:
To me it shows a double strike from the plate bounce back during the application.
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Not a double strike.

A lousy picture. I said this already. I took the picture close up in macro focus with no flash or additional lighting. My shaky hand and a slow shutter speed made for a ghost image.

I will post better pictures as soon as the owner brings it by my shop again....

This will be no earlier than Thursday.

Cheers!

Greg
 
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Why not let Ed, Roy, Jimmy or Lee inspect the pistol? Their reputations are beyond reproach & who know's kid, you might get lucky if they find out it's real........Such an evaluation could only help you get your price for it.........if it is real.

Do you have any type of documentation from the old lady? As yet, you have not mentioned any.
 
Over the years I have seen, held, and even owned guns that were marked as both Colts and Smiths but weren't the real thing. One of the traps that is too easy to fall into is to assume that the makers of those pieces were attempting to "copy" or "infringe upon" a Smith or Colt.

Most of those imitations, in the period of this gun, came from either Belgium or Spain. The maker may have been skilled and may have even possessed some innovative elements in his design. What he also had in his favor was that most of his potential customers had never seen the "real thing". They had, however, heard the names and the reputations that were attributed to the brand. The motivation, in many cases, was to utilize and capitalize upon the marketability of the Smith or Colt name without a real effort to "copy" it.

Bob
 
Eddy's Shooting Sports said:
I will post better pictures as soon as the owner brings it by my shop again....

This will be no earlier than Thursday.

Cheers!

Greg
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This could help a lot.
Please post pics of:
1- grip frame without grips, both sides.
2- back sides of grips.
3- recoil shield
4- side view of cocked hammer
5- checkering on hammer
6- front face of trigger
7- flat on bottom of barrel
8- IF you can, shots of the bore and chambers (I know that's tough)
9- closeups of all markings
 
Greg, In addition to what Lee has suggested, a very important clue would be to check the thread pitch on the screws. S&W had it's own proprietary pitch for it's screws. S&W screws will only fit S&W gun, so remove a side plate screw and test it in a genuine S&W gun of the period. If it fits, then the screws and probably the rest of the gun was made in the S&W factory, or at least made from real S&W parts. The time this gun was probably made, late 1800s, early 1900s, was a period when S&W management allowed employees to make a personal gun from discarded or excess spare parts, on their own time. The gun could be an employee "one off" I have several of these "one offs" and they can be weird and unusual and with no serial numbers. Ed.
 
I am holding my breath until you guys figure out what it is.

I think it would be in the sellers best interest to provide as much access to the firearm as possible. At this point it is just an unknown, with no documentation, he is getting a free investigative service here and should take advantage of it, unless he is afraid of finding out what he really has.
 
There doesn't appear to be a 'seller' per se: Post 32, "A citizen unknown to me walked into my buddy's LGS and played show and tell with it."
 
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opoefc said:
The time this gun was probably made, late 1800s, early 1900s, was a period when S&W management allowed employees to make a personal gun from discarded or excess spare parts, on their own time. The gun could be an employee "one off" I have several of these "one offs" and they can be weird and unusual and with no serial numbers. Ed.
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Hi Ed,
If not too much trouble and you have pics of some of these "one-offs", I think we'd all appreciate seeing a few of these. If for no other reason than a little education about these rarities and to quell are impatience to know more about the posted mystery gun.
Thanks,
 
I would be interested to see the lockwork, the outside has traits of both Colt and S&W
 
The knurling/checkering on the thumb latch appears to be handwork, the horizontal lines are quite uneven.
 
opoefc said:
Greg, In addition to what Lee has suggested, a very important clue would be to check the thread pitch on the screws. S&W had it's own proprietary pitch for it's screws. S&W screws will only fit S&W gun, so remove a side plate screw and test it in a genuine S&W gun of the period. If it fits, then the screws and probably the rest of the gun was made in the S&W factory, or at least made from real S&W parts. The time this gun was probably made, late 1800s, early 1900s, was a period when S&W management allowed employees to make a personal gun from discarded or excess spare parts, on their own time. The gun could be an employee "one off" I have several of these "one offs" and they can be weird and unusual and with no serial numbers. Ed.
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Ed,
If the owner will not allow Greg to pull a sideplate screw, are the grips screws of that period the same size as the sideplate screws as are the hand ejectors; the S&W proprietary .122" by 44? Is so Greg might do the test with the grip screw.
 
I asked this before in an earlier post but no one answered so I'll ask again.

The thumblatch looks very similar to the one on my 1899 M&P Navy shipped in 1900 with serial number 5445 and navy number 355. The major difference is the number of lines of checking. Mine has around 13 and the OP's gun has almost 21 IIRC.

Does anyone have a revolver from the 1895 to 1905 time frame with 21 or so lines of checking on the latch???
 
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JSR III said:
I asked this before in an earlier post but no one answered so I'll ask again.

The thumblatch looks very similar to the one on my 1899 M&P Navy shipped in 1910 with serial number 5445 and navy number 355. The major difference is the number of lines of checking. Mine has around 13 and the OP's gun has almost 21 IIRC.

Does anyone have a revolver from the 1895 to 1905 time frame with 21 or so lines of checking on the latch???
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In post no. 45 examined the differences in the latch shapes. If you look at my 1899 No. 785 shown on that thread you will see a proununced 'cup' shape in the thumbpad area of the latch that is not evident in the mystery gun. Also noted is the much finer and shallower checkering cuts.
 
Sorry Drew, thought that I had read every word of every post so far but must have missed that. The other thing that is evident in your photos and those of the mystery gun are the location of the rounded pins that show up on the left side of the frame. On your and my 1899's, the large upper pin in almost under the thumb latch. On the mystery gun it is much lower. Mine and yours also have a pin on the frame that lines up with the trigger and the cylinder notches. Also my front sight is a half round on a raised boss that appears to be forged in the barrel. IIRC, the mystery gun does not appear to have the raised boss.

On the flip side, the recoil shield shape looks very similar and there is a raised flat portion on the barrel above the extractor rod that runs from the front of the frame to where the knurled rod tip joins the rod.

Who knows, maybe one of the machinists was fooling around when the design changes were being discussed between the top breaks and the swing out cylinders and came up with this prototype???
 
JSR III said:
Who knows, maybe one of the machinists was fooling around when the design changes were being discussed between the top breaks and the swing out cylinders and came up with this prototype???
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James, I remain dubious.

I've seen tool room mock-ups and they rarely have a commercial finish. This gun also exhibits signs of having been fielded. Seems to me that if it had been part of a Military Trial, or even a foreign contract submittal, there would have been documentation to that effect either with the gun or in the Smith & Wesson corporate records. Look how thoroughly documented the 1906 Luger Trials were.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but in this case I think that the story is better than the gun.

Drew
 
Jim, SWCA #819, Yes, a test of the grip screw would be better than nothing. If the grip screw will fit another pair of S&W factory grips, at least we know it's a S&W grip screw. I think the owner would be foolish not to allow a teat of a screw, as it's certainly to his advantage to determine a link to S&W by the gun's parts. I think we can pretty well discard the idea that it is a European copy, especially if it has S&W screws. Ed.
 
From the gunshop's post #65: "My customer told me that he obtained it from a close relative of his that received it as a gift from a little old lady in Rock Island, Illinois. This little old lady received it from her father-in-law, who worked at the Rock Island Arsenal from 1890-1920......"

If this is truly the case, it provides a greater chance that this might really be an employee "one off". Working at the Rock Island Arsenal, depending on his position, an employee would have seen a number of different weapons over the years and have access to materials and the expertise needed. But I don't know about the likelyhood of getting something out of the arsenal in those days.
I live near the Rock Island Arsenal. I think I'll visit their museum of weapons in the next few days and see if I can find anything similar hanging in the display cases. Not likely, but who knows?
 
What possible point would there be in an employee making a 'one off' which used an entirely different Frame profile? That would require enorous additional labor and time, as well as all new Lock Work...verses making a period 'one off' or
custom' using a regular production Frame or even an obsolete S & W Frame from an earlier period, where standard Lock work would be used, and, no enormous effort to produce a one-off Frame.

I just don't see that as being plausable that an employee made this from scratch for his own amusement as a Lunch Box Gun or related. There is just way too much involved in making a 'one off' which is of an entirely different Frame and Lockwork, let alone, the Swing Out Cylinder feature which is of a different size than those which followed and where the entire frame and swing out assembly would have to have it's own proprietary set-ups to be machined, etc.
 
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I genuflect at the feet of the masters. Greg and I have a date with a mystery gun tomorrow @2pm PST. We will inspect, measure, disassemble everything we can get away with to provide you with more tidbits of tantalizing info to stimulate the great minds.
As far as screw thread and pitch- would the proper stock screw for that period also fit on pre-war magnas or older service stocks? If not, what type of stock is the same???

Mike
 
It's a square butt, and if it measures 1 3/4" on the straight lower edge it has K frame dimensions; if 1 7/8", N frame. I'd guess thinner service width, not Magna.
 
Sebago Son said:
James, I remain dubious.

I've seen tool room mock-ups and they rarely have a commercial finish. This gun also exhibits signs of having been fielded. Seems to me that if it had been part of a Military Trial, or even a foreign contract submittal, there would have been documentation to that effect either with the gun or in the Smith & Wesson corporate records. Look how thoroughly documented the 1906 Luger Trials were.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but in this case I think that the story is better than the gun.

Drew
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It could also have been a prototype which someone higher up ended up liking, which got finished up into a standard Blue of the time, given to them, and, subsequently 'fielded'.


Tool Room Guns are a different matter, and, are references for items which are in production.

This Revolver does not represent anything which any of us recall to have been produced by anybody, anywhere, ever.

Or, the only kin it seems to have far as being a Single Action Swing-Out-Cylinder design, are the Winchester Swing out Cylinder Prototypes, or, possibly, some others as well which never went into production. Kin wise, there may well have been some Colt prototypes predating their DA Swing Out Cylinder design, which were Single Action and a different Frame than the Model P.
 
Varangi, for your screw testing:

The model #3 stock screw (as tested last nite by a forum member) is the same .122" x 44 tpi as the pre war hand ejector stock screw (except the I frames which use a .095" x 48tpi close to a 3-48), and same as all HE frame sideplate screws except as noted next:

The sideplate screws on ALL handejector frame sizes pre-1942 are also .122" x 44 tpi EXCEPT the upper sideplate screw (the bug screw in factory terminology) which is .100" x 48 tpi close to 4-48.

I do not know the thread pitch of the New Model #3 sideplate screws. But if a Handejector sideplate screw or stock screw threads into the 'Mystery Gun' stocks or sideplate, then it's S&W's .122 x 44tpi.

NOTE: By eng change order, a thread size change to .125" x 44tpi (#5 x 44 NF) was initiated in 1942.
 
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Update on NM #3 thread pitch

Hondo44 said:
Varangi, for your screw testing:

The model #3 stock screw (as tested last nite by a forum member) is the same .122" x 44 tpi as the pre war hand ejector stock screw (except the I frames which use a .095" x 48tpi close to a 3-48), and same as all HE frame sideplate screws except as noted next:

The sideplate screws on ALL handejector frame sizes pre-1942 are also .122" x 44 tpi EXCEPT the upper sideplate screw (the bug screw in factory terminology) which is .100" x 48 tpi close to 4-48.

I do not know the thread pitch of the New Model #3 sideplate screws. But if a Handejector sideplate screw or stock screw threads into the 'Mystery Gun' stocks or sideplate, then it's S&W's .122 x 44tpi.

NOTE: By eng change order, a thread size change to .125" x 44tpi (#5 x 44 NF) was initiated in 1942.
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Good morning Varangi,

Just a little caution: apparently there is some variation in NM #3 screw sizes depending on the vintage, although NM #3 screw sizes may not be a factor.

But a caliper and screw pitch gauge would be handy to have along when comparing screws of the mystery gun. This is probably obvious, but I would check all screws with the caliper for equal diameter before interchanging the mystery gun screws with handejector screws to insure an "apples to apples" comparison. And thereby avoid a conclusion that the screws are not S&W when in fact they might just be different sizes.

Thanks for your efforts and I hope this helps,
 
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