Remington Smoot 30 Rimfire
by Kevin Callahan
Title
Remington Smoot 30 Rimfire
Artist
Kevin Callahan
Medium
Drawing - Graphite On Paper
Description
This is the very incomplete, but surprising tale of an antique pistol. Back in the 1990s while living in the Philadelphia area I was wont to haunt various antique and gun shops looking for unusual firearms to add to my little collection. While returning from a client meeting I stumbled on an old shop located in the western suburbs. It was a treasure trove for me. Among other treasures there were old Bowies, Kentucky long-guns, and a shelf of common and uncommon handguns.
The handguns were not seriously collectable but they did have interest for one who liked to fill out a collection with a couple of affordable toys. That fit me to a T. Eventually, after several detours from my work I purchased some of the diminutive examples of history. One of the pistols is an unusual one. It is a Remington “Smoot” in .30 caliber, rimfire. It also turns out that it is a Number One issue from 1873.
Well in due time I arrived home with my new treasure. One of my life pleasures is to explore everything I can find out about my new toys after I have them in hand, so to speak. Reading up on antique firearms required a fairly extensive library in the 90s as this was before Google and unfettered access to the Internet.
In my initial research I was not surprised to discover that the Smoot shot rimfire ammunition, but I was surprised at the .30 caliber designation. I had up until then never heard of a .30 rim. Long obsolete ammo means the pistol is certainly a wall hanger. The real surprise came when I disassembled the little gun.
Now I do not recommend most folks doing this to their antiques without experience and a good reason. Experience I have and the reason was that the cylinder moved freely but the cocking mechanism would not catch. Why? Generally it has been my experience when one finds this problem it is wear and tear on the trigger catch. An easy fix is to gently re-file the groove on the bottom of the hammer so the trigger can “catch” locking it in place until the trigger is pressed.
Imagine my surprise when, after I disassembled the gun I discovered that there was no trigger catch on the hammer. This was a puzzle. I had to think on that one for a while. Then, with a flash it hit me the gun was altered intentionally! Some would-be bad man filed down the hammer in order to make the gun a slip shooter.
I am sure we have all seen the old westerns where the “gunny” fans the hammer on his gun for rapid fire. People did, though it was a very poor substitute for accuracy and was hard on guns to boot. Slip shooting means one just thumbs back the hammer and “lets it go.” Repeated rapidly one never needs to pull the trigger as it has been disabled.
Who owned this gun? A policeman? Detective? Gambler? Of course I will never know. And far from making the pistol more valuable, the altering of this gun by some yahoo more than 100 years ago assured that the value would be far less than if not altered. But… it makes a great tale.
Uploaded
January 8th, 2014
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