Welcome to immediately’s Photo of the Day! Right here we’ve got an Allen & Wheelock Heart Hammer Lipfire Navy revolver manufactured within the early 1860s. A technological dead-end – good thought executed nicely that arrived at precisely the incorrect time.
The lipfire cartridge was Allen & Wheelock’s try and dodge Rollin White’s bored-through cylinder patent, which Smith & Wesson had locked up tight. As a substitute of drilling chambers during, the lipfire used a protruding rim or “lip” on the cartridge that sat in a groove reduce into the rear of the cylinder. The firing pin struck this lip to ignite the priming compound inside. On paper, it labored. The design averted patent infringement whereas providing the pace and comfort of metallic cartridges over cap-and-ball loading.
The issue was timing and practicality. By the early 1860s, the Civil Warfare was creating large demand for revolvers, however the army wasn’t taken with adopting a proprietary cartridge system that solely labored in a single firm’s weapons. Percussion revolvers just like the Colt 1860 Military had been confirmed, out there in enormous numbers, and used ammunition already within the provide chain. Civilian consumers weren’t way more . Why spend money on a lipfire revolver when percussion weapons had been cheaper and extra dependable, or when you would get a Smith & Wesson that used customary rimfire cartridges?
The lipfire cartridge by no means caught on commercially, and as soon as Rollin White’s patent expired in 1869, there was no cause for anybody to hassle with various designs. Allen & Wheelock didn’t make these in enormous numbers, and most that had been made in all probability received transformed or scrapped as soon as lipfire ammunition grew to become unimaginable to seek out.
Most of our POTDs make the most of photographs from our associates at Rock Island Auction Company, the premier firearms public sale in the USA. Take a while to browse their current auctions – who is aware of, possibly you’ll discover a piece of historical past to take dwelling!
“Scarce Allen & Wheelock Heart Hammer Lipfire Navy Revolver.” Rock Island Public sale, www.rockislandauction.com/element/1049/337/allen-wheelock-center-hammer-lipfire-navy-revolver. Accessed 4 Nov. 2025.
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