One version of the Remington had a modified cylinder pin especially ordered by the U.S. This entire process can be completed by the author within 5 seconds, I am sure a soldier with practise could certainly do as well or much better! Modern 6 shot revolvers with speed loaders cannot do much better then this. The soldier is now ready to fire 6 more bullets. Then he would slide back in the cylinder pin and snap shut the loading lever. When his pistol is empty, he can drop the loading lever, slide out the cylinder pin, and quickly pop in a freshly loaded spare cylinder. On a Remington style pistol a soldier could carry with him an extra loaded cylinder with all of its 6 chambers loaded and capped. The Remington and its copies had a very real advantage in battle, because of the following reasons. This was not as effective as the Remington system as the pins could be easily sheared off or the hole in the hammer get filled with crud (technical term meaning crud) and allow the cylinder to turn and bring a capped chamber under the hammer.Ī third major advantage was in loading and firing the Remington. Some Colts (1860 3rd, Army, IIRC) did have small pins on the rear of the cylinder that fit into a small hole in the hammer for this same purpose. Please note there is a minor exception to the above. Around camp, while traveling and on horseback the extra safety notch would be a definite advantage. With the enemy shooting at you presumably a soldier would load all 6 rounds no matter the safety issue. It is hard to say how definite an advantage this was when a war was being fought.

If the gun were dropped the hammer would simply push deeper into the safety notch causing no problems. This allowed the gun to be fully loaded, all 6 cylinders and still have the hammer placed in between a firing chamber, by placing the hammer into the safety notch. The Remington models had the extra notch for hammer placement. If the revolver had all 6 cylinders loaded the hammer would rest upon a live cylinder, if the gun were dropped or fell upon its hammer the gun could fire. To use a Colt style revolver a shootist would normally load only 5 chambers of a 6 cylinder gun, this is because the hammer must rest upon a firing chamber of the weapon. Not all Remington models had this but the large majority did. This gave the Remington models a huge advantage, both in strength of the firearm as well as accuracy over time.Ī second lesser advantage was the special hammer groove ground into the cylinder in between each firing chamber on the cylinder. It had a solid frame wrapping completely around the cylinder, notice the 'top strap', as it is called over and above the cylinder. The Remington had three large advantages over the Colt style revolvers.

1858 remington serial number dates