Saturday, December 11, Pistols: Derringers. The name "derringer" is often associated with a class of pistols that are small and designed to be carried in a coat pocket, woman's purse or stocking. They are also called "pocket pistols" or "stocking pistols" for this reason. Derringers are small-sized weapons with usually large calibers, that are neither semi-automatic pistols or revolvers.
We will study this particular class of pistols in this post. The primary goal of such pistols is to be of small size. This is why derringers are short-range weapons. Despite their small size though, derringers can be deadly weapons in close range.
Also because of size and weight reasons, derringers are not repeating weapons, i. Adding such a mechanism would increase the weight and size of the pistol. There are some double barreled derringer pistols, but they have a cam mechanism that alternates the pistol's hammer to strike either one barrel or the other. The name "derringer" derives its name from Henry Deringer, a Philadelphia manufacturer, who became famous for his pocket pistol designs.
The original pistol he made in was a single-shot muzzleloading weapon with a flintlock firing mechanism, which was the predominantly common firing mechanism of that time. The caliber of his pistols was pretty large. Later Deringer models used the newly developed percussion cap technology.
The user would usually carry them loaded with the hammer at half-cock. To use the pistol, the user would pull the hammer back to the full-cock position and pull the trigger. If the gun misfired, the user could pull back the hammer and try again, or switch to a second pistol. Most Deringers had front sight alone, some came with front and rear sights and some came with no sights at all. Since these models were designed with small size in mind, accuracy was not so good and neither was the reliability of the firing mechanism.
One would then remove the remains of the last fired percussion cap and place the handgun on its half-cock notch, pour 15 to 25 grains of black powder down the barrel, followed by ramming a patched lead ball down onto the powder, being very careful to leave no air gap between the patched ball and the powder, to prevent the handgun from exploding when used.
The purpose of the patch on the ball was to keep the ball firmly lodged against the powder, to avoid creating what was called a "short start" when the ball was dislodged from being firmly against the powder. A new percussion cap would then be placed on the tube what today would be called a nipple , and the gun was then loaded and ready to fire.
The half-cock notch prevented the hammer from falling if the trigger were bumped accidentally while carrying the handgun in one's coat pocket. Then, to fire the handgun, a user would fully cock the hammer, aim, and squeeze the trigger. Upon a misfire, the user could fully re-cock the hammer, and attempt to fire the handgun once more, or, equally common, switch to a second Deringer. Accuracy was highly variable; although front sights were common, rear sights were less common, and some Philadelphia Deringers had no sights at all, being intended for point and shoot use instead of aim and shoot, across Poker-table distances.
Professional gamblers, and others who carried regularly, often would fire and reload daily, to decrease the chance of a misfire upon needing to use a Philadelphia Deringer.
A common magician's trick from this era called the " bullet catch " was commonly done with a Philadelphia Deringer without applying a patch on the lead ball. The magician would, with great fanfare, go through the motions of pouring a small amount of black powder down the barrel. He would insert a very light overpowder wad, then drop an intentionally undersized lead ball down the barrel, unpatched, after showing it carefully to the audience and getting one of them to mark it for later identification.
Finally he placed a cap on the tube. Prior to handing the gun to another person, the magician would tip the Philadelphia Deringer, causing the lead ball to drop into a closed palm. The accomplice or a volunteer from the audience would then aim the Philadelphia Deringer at the magician, squeeze the trigger, the gun would fire, a large cloud of black-powder smoke would appear, and the magician would, with great fanfare, have "caught" a bullet out of the air, holding the palmed bullet between his fingers.
The trick was highly dangerous, as the overpowder could kill at short distances, and a real bullet, or other small object, could be dropped down the barrel before the handgun was fired by a volunteer or accomplice intent on malice. Currier and Ives depiction of Lincoln's assassination with a Philadelphia Deringer.
Henry Deringer's production records, and contemporaneous records of his imitators, indicate that these pistols were almost always sold in matching pairs. The choice of buying a pair, in part, was to compensate for the limited power of a single-shot, short-barreled pistol, and to compensate for a design considerably less reliable than subsequent cartridge derringer designs.
Original Deringers are almost never found still in their matched pairs today. Initially popular with military officers, the Deringer became widely popular among civilians who wished to own a small and easily concealable pistol for self-defense.
In total, approximately 15, Deringer pistols were manufactured. All were single barrel pistols with back action percussion locks, typically. Barrel length varied from 1.
The back action lock was a later, improved design among locks, which had its spring and mechanism located behind the hammer, where it was thereby protected from dirt, fired cap residue, and gunpowder residue unlike earlier front action locks that had their springs and mechanism located directly in the path of such residue in front of the hammer, under the tube.
Because of their small size and easy availability, Deringers sometimes had the dubious reputation of being a favored tool of assassins. The Derringer-style guns being made today are mostly patterned after the old single action Remington Model 95 that was in production from the s until the mid s. Because they are single action, and not particularly small next to a polymer pocket semi-auto, these guns are typically overlooked by the more serious self-defense oriented shooters and instructors.
Details in the video below, or keep scrolling to read the full transcript. The Derringer I want to talk about today is this double barrel High Standard made sometime in the s or 80s.
The concept of the Derringer originated in the s with the muzzleloading single shot Philadelphia Deringer. Today we usually use the term to refer to any non-repeating pocket pistols. So with a Derringer, you only get as many shots as you have barrels before you need to reload.
Most have one or two barrels, but some have three or even more. Various types of Derringers were popular for concealed carry through the early s, especially the ubiquitous Remington Model But they were gradually replaced with pocket semi-autos and snub nose revolvers. The derringer pistol has been made in numerous calibers from.
Longer barreled versions in. There are numerous manufacturers of derringer-style pistols today, among them Bond Arms, Cobray Enterprises, and American Derringer Company. The derringer pistol earned it's fame and infamy as being the weapon of choice for gamblers or other men of ill repute, as a woman's personal protection piece stuck in a stocking, but most famously as the weapon of choice for assassin John Wilkes Boothe, who used a.
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