![.500 tranter .500 tranter](https://images.gunsinternational.com/listings_sub/acc_60861/gi_100733709/Tranter-Model-1868-500-cf_100733709_60861_DEA6FBBCBC957006.jpg)
It's clear from this picture that whatever cartridge this takes, it's rimmed, which isn't surprising for a 19th-century revolver.Įjection is, as with most gate-loading revolvers, accomplished with a built-in ejection rod. 357 Magnum).ĭespite being double-action, the Webley solid-frame revolvers and their various foreign progeny were gate-loaded, which was still the fashion when they were developed. 38 Smith & Wesson (the forerunner to today's. 380 Rook, now-long-obsolete black powder cartridges that were superseded by. 38-caliber bore or thereabouts, which suggests it was probably meant for the British.
![.500 tranter .500 tranter](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YYjpBro3N-s/maxresdefault.jpg)
I noted above that this revolver has no mark of any kind to indicate its caliber, let alone what specific cartridge it takes. It's as likely to find a Belgian revolver from this period marked only with the name of the shop that sold it as the factory that made it, or, as we see in this case, nothing at all. This was not all that unusual for the Belgian gunsmith scene at the time like Eibar in Spain, the greater Liège area had a great multitude of small factories (sometimes the use of that word stretches the reality more than a little) producing firearms more or less to order. Whoever made this revolver, he (or possibly she, but given the place and time, probably he) preferred to remain anonymous. The front sight is reasonably substantial for a gun of this type, though. There's no manufacturer's roll stamp hiding up on the top, like on the Franco-Spanish Mystery, either just the shallow top-strap groove that typically served small revolvers of this period as a rear sight notch. These were (and I believe still are) assigned to individual inspectors at the Liège proof house, so the letter under the star can be anything. I've also seen that this mark was used by a Swedish proof house, but that seems unlikely to be relevant to this example. That's a crown over a C I haven't found a definitive explanation for this one, but I suspect the C stands for cylindre, in the same way that the R is for rayé (rifled). On the next chamber web, there's this one: This is the stamp of the Liège proof house ( Epreuve de Liège) post-1893, and shows that the firearm received its final approval. This one's small and was particularly hard to see, but it's a crown over an oval cartouche with a tiny E, L, and G in it.
![.500 tranter .500 tranter](https://giga.joesalter.com/40494/40494-16.jpg)
Getting pictures of these one-handed was a bit tricky, but with a little fiddling in Photoshop I was able to make them reasonably clear. In addition to these, there are stamps on three of the webs between the cylinder's six chambers. The "star B" mark below it is an inspector's mark. The only marking anywhere on it are the various proof stamps required by Belgian law, starting with the small group on the upper right side of the frame, at the base of the barrel.Īccording to a 1978 article from Gun Digest, multiple references to which online are about the only thing I can come up with on the subject, the "crown R" proof was introduced for rifled black-powder revolver barrels in 1894.
.500 tranter serial#
There is no manufacturer's name, no serial number, not even a stamp to indicate what cartridge it requires. This revolver is almost completely unmarked. Belgian gunmakers, in particular, offered knockoffs of Webley's pocket revolvers in a wide range of different loadings. 380 Auto).Īll of Webley's designs of the period were popular, but fairly pricey, so another thing they have in common is that they were all copied fairly extensively outside the UK. 32-caliber revolver cartridge or the much later. 380 revolver cartridges (not to be confused with any other. A bit later, Webley began offering further-scaled-down versions of the same design in more realistic pocket-revolver loadings, such as the British. This, despite its smaller size, was also originally chambered for. 500 Tranter Centrefire.įour years later, Webley introduced a scaled-down pocket version of the basic RIC design, the British Bull Dog. 442 model, RIC revolvers were also available for a range of other large-bore cartridges of the day, up to and including a monumental specimen called. Having been adopted as the standard handgun of the Royal Irish Constabulary (the police force of Ireland, which was then not-altogether-willingly part of the UK), this became popularly known as the Webley RIC revolver. Webley & Son (Birmingham, England), well-known manufacturers of revolvers since 1854, introduced its first double-action model, a large, solid-frame five-shot revolver (in contrast to the company's later, and more famous, top-break models) chambered for the. Here we have a bit of an oddity from Europe, which needs some background to make any sense.