[Curt Cummins]

I couldn't find any pictures to post, but John M. Brownings father, Jonathan Browning made some simple revolving rifles for the Mormons for their trek West. The cylinders were turned by hand, and featured a camming lever that forced a recess in the cylinder onto a corresponding fit on the barrel as a gas seal. He also made a model that fed a flat magazine through the breech on the same principal.

Having shot modern cartridge revolvers with poorly aligned cylinders and been sprinkled with molten lead and having had a repro Remington .44 New Army chain fire in my hand, I personally would not fire a revolving rifle of any type.Too much fire, too close to your face.

More practical but, admittedly heavier were the two barrel flintlock rifles. They had two stacked barrels with individual locks, that rotated to the up position on a pin in the buttstock.

Re: Major Ferguson, My great, gr, gr, gr, grandfather Moses Guest, was an officer on the American side at the battle of Kings Mountain.

[Hugh Fuller]

That bit about Browning's dad is interesting. I had not heard it before. Have you ever heard of the Russian Nagant revolver that preceded the Tokarev 7.62 auto in Russian and then Soviet service. it used a similar system to force the cylinder forward onto a cone at the end of the barrel in order to minimize gas loss. The general opinionseems to be that, with modern manufacturing keeping the tolerances pretty low, the gain was not worth the added complication.

[Curt Cummins]

I've seen a couple of Nagants at gun shows, but not fired one. Weren't the bullets also seated inside the brass to enhance the seal?

Curt