Given how many pinfires served in the Civil War, you'd think there'd be a market for replicas and ammo. And they wouldn't even necessarily need to be actual pinfires. Centerfires with pinfire lines would work.
Given how many pinfires served in the Civil War, you'd think there'd be a market for replicas and ammo. And they wouldn't even necessarily need to be actual pinfires. Centerfires with pinfire lines would work.
There were Lefacheax revolvers used on both sides if I recall correctly, and surely some random pinfire guns were pressed into service on the Confederate side, but I don't think they were particularly common overall. And they certainly weren't as iconic a weapon compared to others. There is a small niche of people who make their own pinfire ammo so they can shoot old guns.
Modern cheap steel-case copper-wash (Tula style) pinfire ammo wouldn't be too expensive to make.
I don't think there's anything technically challenging about it. But I do think there are two big problems:
a) your target market is tiny, at least until someone starts making pinfire repros that suddenly become popular. that's a major financial risk to take.
b) currently, your target market owns antiques which are well over 150 years old. Undoubtedly some of those people are going to have problems with their guns. Do you want to wade into that liability and customer service nightmare?
Fair assessment. Replicas wouldn't be too difficult. No more so than, say, cap-'n-ball.
Agreed, though then it's a dumb chicken-and-the-egg thing. Who is going to make ammo if there are no guns? Who is going to make guns if there's no ammo? It would take an organized approach with an ammo company and someone making guns but I don't think too many companies want to make that gamble these days. Sadly we just get more minor variations on ARs, polymer wonder nines, and tacticool shotguns.
I've handled old pinfire ammo, the pins are not loose. However, they are more dangerous than rimfire or centerfire in terms of setting one off accidentally. That is one of the reasons why pinfire fell out of favor so fast. But that said, ammo going off outside the chamber of a gun is not very dangerous. Julian Hatcher describes doing a variety of experiments setting off rifle and pistol cartridges electrically, while sitting on ballistic soap and covered with a thin cardboard box. In no case did he find so much as a cut on the soap, and in one instance a piece of brass was lodged in the cardboard but did not penetrate to the far side. Without a steel chamber to contain the pressure the brass bursts and most of the powder never gets a chance to burn. It's just not very dangerous.
cap and ball get the benefit of much larger market due to being license free in many European countries, especially Italy with their western movie obsession.
Two things that have always bothered me with pinfire ammo. What's keeping you from losing the pin, and what's keeping the ammo from going off if dropped on the pin or stepped on?
I don't think the pin can come out. And it's probably similar to a modern primer in that you need a great deal of force to set it off
Modern primers don't require that much force to set off. They're just protected by being set into the case so that it's unlikely anything will directly hit them with the force necessary to set one off. An anon here a while back managed to set off a round in his Mosin Nagant by loading one into the chamber, loading the magazine, then trying to close the bolt causing the tip of the round being fed to impact the primer of the round in the chamber.
The pin typically is wide enough to be a tight fit in the hole, also to help waterproof it, but a thin wax seal could also help both of those. Yeah, accidental discharges were a concern, partly why pinfire fell out of favor. But normally the friction between pin and case is enough that you need a good sharp blow from the hammer to fire it.
I just hate how 4/5 replicas are SAAs (3/5 of the last 1/5 are Remington new armys) is it too much to ask for a couple of H&R safety hammerless reproductions?
I imagine all those pinfires in the civil war fell out of use the moment the war ended if not sooner. They probably shipped most of them back to Europe for the Franco Prussian war.
Austro prussian war more likely
actually thinking about it, if you were in say 1866 in America, a 1858 Lefaucheux seems like a pretty perfect gun to have. A double action cartridge revolver seems pretty nice at that time.
Honestly wouldn't be too expensive to convert to center or rim.
I want repros of all those spur triggered .22/.32s like the S&W number 2 and Colt New Line revolvers.
I love pinfires.
Pinfire rounds need to make a comeback so I can justify buying pic related somewhere down the line.
Does the barrel swing sideways to load the gun?
No, it has a loading gate, you can clearly see it in the pic.