Any room for improvement in revolvers?

[antiquus]

When I read that, I was thinking that the weight is critical to a good shooting experience with a serious caliber. Barrel length is important too.

Push it a little harder. Save a bunch of weight in frame, and use it to make a larger cylinder, longer barrel, more sophisticated mechanism. Opportunities arise.

 

[tomrkba]

I was thinking it would be based upon the mechanical action of the hammer.

 

[JRWhit]

Another improvement could be a full auto revolver.

S&W already did. One of those accidental discovery type deals. I guess you would call it an accidental bump fire.
Here is one of many videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=C4OE78spknk

 

[Sox]

I think the stick as many rounds as possible in a wheel gun is plain stupid. It makes the gun too wide for anything and looks dumb.

I wish S&W would branch out a bit and try some cool stuff. Things I'd like to see..

K frame along the like of the 337 PD, but on the K frame.

Snubbie in .45 ACP / .44 Special 5 rounds

a gun like the Taurus "View" but with S&W quality.

Explore the .38 Bodyguard more without the laser device.

 

[goon]

Unless I'm mistaken, the S&W L-frame was designed to give longer service life with .357 Magnum rounds. Since the .44 Special runs at a lower pressure and won't cause as much cutting of the topstrap, is there any reason a K-frame snubby or semi-snubby couldn't handle it?

I think something K-frame sized with a 3" tapered barrel would be pretty cool. Not exactly what you'd call a technological leap forward, but there are some of us who have an appreciation for old school stuff.

 

[Sam1911]

Not sure about the physics of it, but I did handle the new S&W "69" today at the PA Outdoors Show (.44 Mag/Spc. L-frame 5-shot) and it is a REALLY nice piece of gear. It's a 4"...a 3" or maybe 2.5" would be incredibly tempting!

 

[WestKentucky]

Belt feed a handgun in a revolver format.SA/DA setup. Up from left side rotate into battery, drop out right side. As long as it's done with a light round it would be interesting. Maybe a 223 or 30 carbine. Anything heavier would pull you off target as it swung around. Eliminates the capacity issue and let's you get away from relying on auto actions. Probably not practical but would be neat.

Another neat idea is a tube fed revolver. Shoved back in from a tube much like a ejector on a SA and then dumped out somehow in the rotation

 

[RealGun]

Unless I'm mistaken, the S&W L-frame was designed to give longer service life with .357 Magnum rounds. Since the .44 Special runs at a lower pressure and won't cause as much cutting of the topstrap, is there any reason a K-frame snubby or semi-snubby couldn't handle it?

I think something K-frame sized with a 3" tapered barrel would be pretty cool. Not exactly what you'd call a technological leap forward, but there are some of us who have an appreciation for old school stuff.

In 44 Special, I believe anything below an N frame would not be 6 shot. Just something to keep in mind, not necessarily a deal breaker for everyone.

Any new gun will have a trigger lock, which again can be innocuous, but some obsess over it.

Once you get to K frame, you may have to go to a smaller caliber to keep the round count up to even 5.

The Ruger SP101 is a 5 shot 357. If you get the 3+" barrel and take away the full lug, you might have a gun that no one wants to shoot or which would not even support full power loads. I think you might want to take a close look at the SP101 as it is, understanding that it is a little monster to shoot. Opinions differ, but mine gets custom reloads. I avoid shooting 38 Special except in guns made for that caliber. The custom loads in the 357 cases may not be much different than 38 Special +p.

 

[goon]

Any new gun will have a trigger lock, which again can be innocuous, but some obsess over it.

I hate those S&W locks too, but they're making some little J-frames without them these days.

The bigger thing is that S&W has gone cheap. While a 5 shot 44 Special K-frame does sound cool, I'm not sure there's a profit margin there for it. Even back in the 1950's through the 1980's when they could have had a chance of selling such a gun, they didn't.

So now that I've got this idea in my head, maybe I'll have to watch for an old M-13 that's been just about destroyed that I could maybe have built into this (after consulting with a gunsmith to make sure it could be done).

The Ruger SP101 is a 5 shot 357. If you get the 3+" barrel and take away the full lug, you might have a gun that no one wants to shoot or which would not even support full power loads. I think you might want to take a close look at the SP101 as it is, understanding that it is a little monster to shoot. Opinions differ, but mine gets custom reloads. I avoid shooting 38 Special except in guns made for that caliber. The custom loads in the 357 cases may not be much different than 38 Special +p.

I find the SP-101 to be pretty comfortable to shoot with both full power 158 grain and Buffalo Bore 180 grain loads. Hogue grips make a lot of difference and the gun fits my hand like a glove. I can shoot it single handed with magnum loads without any discomfort, but for sheer fun I do most of my practice with .38 Special loads. I don't think taking some steel off the bottom of the barrel would make it any less able to handle full power loads, but even if they came out with that tomorrow I don't think I'd need to buy another one. I had two of them at one time but I ended up selling the spare.

 

[RealGun]

I don't think taking some steel off the bottom of the barrel would make it any less able to handle full power loads

Less mass means more recoil, no room for argument. The gun might handle it, but would the shooter?

I am glad you are man enough to handle the SP101 full loads, but admittedly shooting 38 Special most of the time, you are reportedly no different than lots of others with that gun. It's not a fun gun, until you tone it down a notch.

 

[goon]

I am glad you are man enough to handle the SP101 full loads, but admittedly shooting 38 Special most of the time, you are reportedly no different than lots of others with that gun. It's not a fun gun, until you tone it down a notch.

Ignoring your obvious rudeness...

Mine's the 3" barrel, so if you have the 2" version and you're trying to stick to those tiny stock grips, that could explain why you find it so unpleasant. The 3" SP-101 isn't any worse for me than the 4" GP-100 I used to have. It does jump more, but it's not painful. The Hogue grips make all the difference. If you don't have a pair, for $15 or so new, you should try them. They make the SP-101 more pleasant to shoot than my old Security Six was with its tiny factory wood stocks. If I did buy a second SP-101 today, I wouldn't even leave the shop until I had a pair of Hogue grips added to the purchase.

Now the blast with a full power load... grips don't do anything for that. That's most of the reason I find .38 Specials to be more fun. I don't have to wear anything other than cheap foam ear plugs with them and I got a great deal on a bunch of cast 148 grain WC's awhile back. I get more rounds of .38 Special from a pound of Unique and I'm shooting the cheap lead bullets I have, both of which are preferable to using my limited supply of jacketed bullets with stout charges of 2400. I'm mostly just shooting paper, cardboard, and aluminum cans anyhow. No point it shooting a lot of full power loads other than to keep enough of an edge to be able to use them for self defense.

I guess recoil is subjective though. With good hearing protection I can shoot full power .357's through the SP-101 until my trigger finger gets tired. Put a little .380 like a P3AT in my hand and I probably won't even want to finish the first magazine. Those things are just too nasty.



Back to improvements with revolvers though... A K-frame .44 Special with its extra weight and lower pressure round (approximating a .45 ACP give or take) shouldn't be bad at all. It would be more powerful than a .38 Special and would not have the same blast to deal with indoors in a defensive situation as a .357 load.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

Belt feed a handgun in a revolver format.SA/DA setup. Up from left side rotate into battery, drop out right side. As long as it's done with a light round it would be interesting. Maybe a 223 or 30 carbine. Anything heavier would pull you off target as it swung around. Eliminates the capacity issue and let's you get away from relying on auto actions. Probably not practical but would be neat.

Already exists -- the Dardick gun. It was a sort of revolver.

Imagine you're looking at the cylinder from the rear, and it has been sliced like a pie, into six slices, with every other slice removed.

The ammunition is triangular in cross section -- the Dardick used nylon or aluminium cases into which a traditional cartridge was inserted.

There were two magazines, side by side, in the butt. As the cylinder rotated, it picked up a triangular round or "tround." When the tround reached the firing position, the topstrap formed the third side of the triangular chamber.

The fired round was ejected when the next one rotated into battery. You could drop one magazine while still firing from the other, and reinsert a fresh magazine without any cessation of fire.

It never made it as a handgun, but Dardick guns are used in the oil industry to fracture rock in relatively shallow wells where fracking would be unacceptable.

 

[B!ngo]

A few ideas - some in line with jeffmack's comments. Note that the more innovative the ideas are that bear of the OP's question, the less the resultant invention might look like a revolver. So with that in mind:

Yep, factory brass-integrated 'moonclips'. A throw-away plastic disk with the cartridges set in the circular cutouts on it. Open the box, pull out 6 rounds on a disk and throw it in the cylinder. After use keep the brass and discard the disk.

Lightweight snap in cylinders. Stiff plastic with metal liners. Keep a few pre-loaded in your pocket and quickly snap them in and out. Might be quicker than moon clips and would lighten up the gun if they held up.

Belt-fed instead of pre-loaded cylinder. Of course this one borders on whether it's still a revolver but a small 'package' below where the cylinder used to be, feed in the first round of the belt, and have the expended belt feed back in to the package. 50 rounds and drop it, and replace it.

Finally, I think a lot of people conflate the 6 o'clock location of the Chiappa revolver from their bad implementation. That is, there seems no reason but to make the 6 o'clock design the standard. The improvement in recoil and flip is irrefutable. It makes hand and finger placement a bit more tricky. But Chiappa's name associated with questionable quality as well as the complexity of their implementation has people thinking that it's a bad design. It's a great design but a bad implementation. If Smith, Springfield or Colt was capable of doing any innovation (instead of just importing some eastern european designs and labeling it their own) they would succeed in doing a quality design. I'm not holding my breath. It's going to take the auto industry's equivalent of Tesla (e.g. Desert Technical, Bobert, etc.) to create something interesting here.

B

Instead of a cylinder, think of a circular magazine, sort of like the old Tommy guns or Johnson rifles, but removable. After the magazine is empty, take it out and pop in a new one. The "revolving" happens inside a circular can.

You might even be able to have a wind up spring in the magazine; as you load you tighten the spring. Then, allow the rotating of the cartridge spring to interact on the hammer spring, so that the trigger doesn't have to pull the double action hammer back. Rather, the trigger feels more like a Glock trigger.

The Dan Wesson interchangeable barrels need a revival, too.

 

[Sam1911]

The problem with the hand position and 6 o'clock barrel position is difficult enough that it appears possibly insurmountable. In other words, barrel flip or no, dropping the barrel seems to introduce a lot of logistical hurdles which produce a gun that is MORE awkward, not less.

Kind of like determining that a car is a whole lot more efficient if you put the passenger compartment down low and in the rear. Yeah, you can't see to drive, but it is better in some way.

 

[Sam1911]

they would succeed in doing a quality design. I'm not holding my breath. It's going to take the auto industry's equivalent of Tesla (e.g. Desert Technical, Bobert, etc.) to create something interesting here.

That, and a huge awakening of widespread interest in revolvers, especially new and innovative ones.

...as cool as a steampunk-ish belt-fed revolver with a 6-o'clock barrel position and maybe a few brass dials )) would be, most folks are going to look at what it actually accomplishes and say, "why not just buy an auto?"

 

[Nom de Forum]

I think you are more likely to see a modern Webley type design created than another 6 O'clock design and I think it is highly unlikely that we will see a modern Webley type design.

 

[goon]

I think revolvers would be good candidates to try caseless ammo out with. We're already used to gas flashing out of the cylinder gap... with caseless ammo you'd have two gaps for it to flash out of, so you'd need some kind of shield at the rear at least to divert that away from your hands.
You don't have to worry about chambers overheating because only one round is getting fired per chamber before you reload.

 

[RealGun]

goon - Back to improvements with revolvers though... A K-frame .44 Special with its extra weight and lower pressure round (approximating a .45 ACP give or take) shouldn't be bad at all. It would be more powerful than a .38 Special and would not have the same blast to deal with indoors in a defensive situation as a .357 load.

My Taurus 430, preferably with the 431 adjustable sights, would be a good model for the gun you describe.

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As far as rudeness goes, I 'm not sure where you found that, but you are still bragging, no doubt aware that the SP101, and yes mine is 3+", is commonly known as a knuckle and wrist buster. I have a rosewood Hogue on mine, which does mitigate knuckle punishment and fits the palm better.

 

[Sam1911]

Look, no one's bragging, so let's get off the acrimony wagon.

Recoil affects everyone differently. I've sat with a pal (of almost identical size and weight as myself) and played with his 2-1/4" SP101 and found it to be a lot of fun and very easy to shoot bill drills with. I was shocked when he told me he was done after a few cylinders and complained that his hand and wrist were very sore. Just something about the mechanics of our bods was different and it was hurting him and not me.

It happens. It isn't something to get heated up over.

 

[TRX]

> Yep, factory brass-integrated 'moonclips'. A throw-away plastic disk with the
> cartridges set in the circular cutouts on it.

I just encountered a (Webley?) patent for that yesterday, except they specified a metal clip, not having plastic in 1893 or thereabouts.

 

[TRX]

There have been a few attempts to lower the barrel centerline by moving the cylinder behind the grip. This resulted in a bulky Borchardt-looking pistol.

 

[Nom de Forum]

Take a look at some of the Sabre style grips ordered in the 19th century on some revolvers. It lowers the bore axis relative to the hand. It may not however make the muzzle flip of the revolvers any more controllable.

The Webley WG series appears to have a relatively lower bore axis than most revolvers of similar size.

 

[goon]

Look, no one's bragging, so let's get off the acrimony wagon.

Recoil affects everyone differently. I've sat with a pal (of almost identical size and weight as myself) and played with his 2-1/4" SP101 and found it to be a lot of fun and very easy to shoot bill drills with. I was shocked when he told me he was done after a few cylinders and complained that his hand and wrist were very sore. Just something about the mechanics of our bods was different and it was hurting him and not me.

It happens. It isn't something to get heated up over.

Though I'm an average guy and definitely no hulking bodybuilder, when I can get a good hold on a gun the recoil isn't too bad. But when I can't... it gets unpleasant.
Same with the SP-101. The stock grips were too small for me but luckily, I'd shot a friend's SP-101 with Hogue grips first. I've had Hogue rubber grips on mine since the day I bought it. I wouldn't want to own it without them.
And with something like the Kahr P-9 I used to have, I just couldn't get a good grip on it. It was too narrow and not enough of it made contact with my hand. The recoil on that thing stung too much and I'd usually give up after 15 rounds.
And I shot a P3AT twice... Exactly. Then I unloaded it and handed it back to the owner. I'd rather shoot an SP-101 all day than ever touch one of those nasty little hornet nests again!


Back to the topic at hand...

Consider this - ammunition that looks like a combination of a moon clip and those old 8-shot ring caps. The rear part contains the primer and a small section of polymer to help seal the rear of the chamber during firing. The rest of the "ring" could contain caseless cartridges and the projectile. I'm envisioning this loading like a moon clip. Even just the ammunition could be an improvement if it could be made compatible with all the revolvers we own now and especially if it could be made cheaper... which it should be because there wouldn't be any brass in it.

 

[Nom de Forum]

Improvements for off-the-shelf revolvers

Improving the strength and durability of the method of retain the yoke and ejector rod to reduce problems from numerous speed loadings. Strong solid frame designs that are the equal to sideplate designs in being tuned for smooth, light, and reliable double action fire. Better hammer design geometry for lock times faster than currently available. Cylinders designed for factory ammunition that is rimless, pre-loaded in full moons, that matches the ballistics of current favorite rimmed revolver ammunition. Modular trigger guards of different sizes for use with gloved hands. User easy quick changing barrels using hand tool for different length choices and fine adjustment of cylinder gap. Top straps designed for easy installation of optics. The list of possible improvements to current conventional designs is almost endless. Many of these improvements have been done to revolvers but no factory revolver has them all. I think we are a long way from the end of the road for revolver improvements and are unfortunately moving slowly. I hope we will make some more progress in my lifetime.

 

[Sam1911]

I think the one clear advantage revolvers do have is the ability to handle larger and more powerful ammunition than autos generally can.

Now, the question that logically arises from that, is have we hit the limits?

Unfortunately the Raging Judge XXVIII was never really released, and (so?) no one came up with a compatible solid projectile cartridge to fire in it.

But the world is still young.