Wheelgun Wednesday: Double Revolver from San Marino
Welcome back to Wheelgun Wednesday, our weekly article series where we cover everything related to revolvers. For today’s edition, we have a picture of a very interesting wheelgun that is actually two revolvers merged together at a 90-degree angle. For lack of a better term, I’ll call this gat a double revolver. The picture of this obscure little firearm was taken in the Museum of Ancient Arms of San Marino by a good friend of mine and fellow firearms enthusiast Austin Missett who kindly allowed me to share it with our audience. Unfortunately, there was no information about the origin, design or history of this gun, it was in a display case that just said “Revolvers”. Let’s examine the pictures and see what we can tell about the design of this revolver(s).
Wheelgun Wednesday @ TFB:
Our Sammarinese mystery double revolver must be a double-action-only firearm as both revolvers in the assembly have enclosed hammers. The cylinders, which should have a capacity of five or six rounds, likely have to be removed for reloading. The gun has a rectangular grip with a lanyard ring at its corner. Both revolvers are designed to shoot from the bottom chamber and interestingly have different-length barrels. The box next to the revolver contains wooden mockups, probably patent application models or workshop prototypes. The wooden model on the left, which looks more refined and closer to the real gun, has identical-length barrels.
I guess the idea behind this design is to have a higher-capacity carry piece that is still compact enough to fit in a pocket (according to Austin, this is roughly a palm-size gun). After the ammunition in one of the revolvers is spent, the shooter can flip the gun 90 degrees and start shooting the second revolver which must be faster than reloading. Maybe one could also shoot both revolvers simultaneously but I have a hard time imagining a situation where you’ll want to send bullets downrange at a 90-degree angle.
As you can see, this article is mostly composed of speculations because I couldn’t find any information on this double revolver. If you know anything about it, please share the information in the comments section below. Thanks for reading TFB’s Wheelgun Wednesday and we’ll see you in a week.
Managing Editor Being a lifelong firearms enthusiast, Hrachya always enjoys studying the history and design of guns and ammunition. Should you need to contact him, feel free to shoot him a message at Hrachya@TheFirearmBlog.com
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Since it seems to be a prototype along with the wooden mock ups it's possible the two barrel lengths was just because it enabled it's maker to test or demonstrate the different lengths without having to build a second prototype
Ahh...the early Keltecs.
Also, now that this has been put out in the public eye... Expect to see it in the next Call Of Duty.