[Stephen03]

Good morning,

I found this close to a river near Richmond in South West London. all I can tell is that it’s a revolver of some kind. I Don’t know much about guns but it has like a stem that goes underneath the barrel so it’s not a Webley service revolver or anything From the world wars I don’t think. It kind of resembles a colt - but apart from a passing ‘boys’ gun knowledge and a heavy interest in history I have no knowledge about them in such specific detail as to be able to identify one from its rusty barrel and chamber. can anyone help as I’d love to know how old it is.

kind regards
stephen

Hello!

 

[1942Arisaka]

A little oil and you should have her firing in no time! Very interesting find, but my initial impression is that it's a cap/toy gun. It looks like a seam runs the length under the barrel.

 

[Stephen03]

1942Arisaka
well she still shoots straight, but no doubt the oil will give the trigger a bit more slickness! 😂
yes it’s totally ruined!
But I didn’t even consider it could be a cap gun or toy gun!
thank you so much for your reply and help! 😊

I can’t believe I didn’t consider it could be a toy! Doh!

it’s just that it was heavy and it’s because It’s by an old shot tower and where King Charles Used to do lots of military exercises Before the English Civil War. The road parallel is actually called Powder Mill Lane. (I have a few musket balls I’ve found around there) and also I pulled out a German incendiary bomb out of the same bit of river a few days before that So I didn't consider it.
It looked like a mortar missing the fin. I placed it by the river bank and totally forgot about it: (I Like geology so was looking for something but I have adhd...so if I get distracted And I can forget) until my neighbour was telling me about how the main road was completely closed as someone walking the dogs in the park found a ww2 bomb by the side of the river bank near the road..., 🙈😬
i knew it couldn’t be live...as the way I found it was by smacking it Super hard with a pick axe as it was buried so I didn’t see it! Or all that would be left was two Wellington boots!
many thanks again!

 

[Stephen03]

1942Arisaka
well she still shoots straight, but no doubt the oil will give the trigger a bit more slickness! 😂
yes it’s totally ruined!
But I didn’t even consider it could be a cap gun or toy gun!
thank you so much for your reply and help! 😊

I can’t believe I didn’t consider it could be a toy! Doh!

it’s just that it was heavy and it’s because It’s by an old shot tower and where King Charles Used to do lots of military exercises Before the English Civil War. The road parallel is actually called Powder Mill Lane. (I have a few musket balls I’ve found around there) and also I pulled out a German incendiary bomb out of the same bit of river a few days before that So I didn't consider it.
It looked like a mortar missing the fin. I placed it by the river bank and totally forgot about it: (I Like geology so was looking for something but I have adhd...so if I get distracted And I can forget) until my neighbour was telling me about how the main road was completely closed as someone walking the dogs in the park found a ww2 bomb by the side of the river bank near the road..., 🙈😬
i knew it couldn’t be live...as the way I found it was by smacking it Super hard with a pick axe as it was buried so I didn’t see it! Or all that would be left was two Wellington boots!
many thanks again!

Can I assume it’s still quite an old toy gun? For it to be made with such a substantial amount of iron/steel and for its rust?

 

[Stephen03]

And also...if it’s a toy - can I scrape off the rust to reveal more detail as it’s unlikely I would be ruining a historical specimen?

 

[BigBoy99]

With the Draconian UK Gun laws, I'm sure it will be confiscated as an illegal firearm!

 

[Stephen03]

With the Draconian UK Gun laws, I'm sure it will be confiscated as an illegal firearm!

Telling someone: “Your going to put a cap in their ass” in UK means literally stuff a hat up here backside!
I think I’m looking at “15 to life” for just picking it up! 😂

 

[Caledonian]

1942Arisaka
well she still shoots straight, but no doubt the oil will give the trigger a bit more slickness! 😂
yes it’s totally ruined!
But I didn’t even consider it could be a cap gun or toy gun!
thank you so much for your reply and help! 😊

I can’t believe I didn’t consider it could be a toy! Doh!

it’s just that it was heavy and it’s because It’s by an old shot tower and where King Charles Used to do lots of military exercises Before the English Civil War. The road parallel is actually called Powder Mill Lane. (I have a few musket balls I’ve found around there) and also I pulled out a German incendiary bomb out of the same bit of river a few days before that So I didn't consider it.
It looked like a mortar missing the fin. I placed it by the river bank and totally forgot about it: (I Like geology so was looking for something but I have adhd...so if I get distracted And I can forget) until my neighbour was telling me about how the main road was completely closed as someone walking the dogs in the park found a ww2 bomb by the side of the river bank near the road..., 🙈😬
i knew it couldn’t be live...as the way I found it was by smacking it Super hard with a pick axe as it was buried so I didn’t see it! Or all that would be left was two Wellington boots!
many thanks again!

I would be verty wary of old incendiaries. A huge quantity of munitions and surrendered submarines were dumped into the North Channel, between Scotland and Ireland, which is a geological fault line, 600 feet deep. I have a marine chart, given to me by a friend whose tanker was being scrapped around 1970. There is a note warning that underwater explosions were sometimes heard, and someone has marked the area in pencil.

In recent years incendiariesor their fillers have been washing up on the beaches and igniting spontaneously, as the magnesium cases wroded away in seawater. It isn't the sort of ignition that would be satisfactory if you wanted an incendiary, but not what you want in your pocket.

This picture shows my father dumping shells there, in one of the jobs he took to be with my mother rather than going deep-sea. I reember the leather jacket well. It appears in books and the local museum captioned as the dumping of gas shells in 1945.. Actually he was a seventeen-yeae-old lawyer's office-boy sixty miles away. It has to be about 1949, and those are WW1-stule sharpnel shellls, from the days when they were little miniature guns full of lead balls, with a large time-setting nosecap which isn't fitted.

 

[Stephen03]

Telling someone: “Your going to put a cap in their ass” in UK means literally stuff a hat up here backside!
I think I’m looking at “15 to life” for just picking it up! 😂

 

[Stephen03]

I also found this -it was dark and I picked it up not knowing what it was. It’s like a battery pack with an alarm clock bell next to it. Please don’t tell me it’s the actual fuse or detonator off one of these bigger 250kg bombs they dropped!
I checked the blitz map which shows every bomb detonated on London and i know the actual date of when the incendiary was dropped as the town was hit only once.

 

[rogertc2]

Auto part. Nothing bomb related. Sorry Worth nothing IMHO

 

[Caledonian]

Your bottom picture looks consistent with being the barrel unit of a Colt cap and ball revolver. I see what might be the remains of the wedge. If the metal rod is central it would be the rammer, but if low on the right it would be the ejector rod of a cartridge conversion.I've got mine:

alt="3756993"]3756993[/ATTACH]
[/QUOTE]

 

[Caledonian]

Sorry, my Colt conversion attachment somehow got omitted:




As to the timing device, my wife, who was born in Berlin just a few hundred yards from where they built a wall a few years later., pours scorn on the fuss made about unexploded bombs in London, when Germans are quite noncholant about much larger numbers of them. Both sides used delayed action bombs, for the hard fact is that you get a lot better value for your money, or number of highly dangerous combat missions, by eliminating or deterring bomb disposal, firefighters etc. The truth is that German bombs mostly had clockwork delay, but the British ones had copper wires restraining a percussion detonator, and released by acid when a glass vial was broken. It is a whole lot easier for a stopped clock to restart, than an unbroken vial to break. Electricity is funny stuff, invisible, still not fully understood, but in there waiting to jump out and zap you, even without the aid of high explosive. I can't see anybody using it as a bomb fuse if they could get out of it.

During the Northern Irish troubles a friend of mind dThe IRAid diving work as they laid a concrete apron over one of the London underground lines, where it passed under the Thames. The story of ISambard Kingdom Brunel digging the first Themes tunnel far too close to the river bed is pretty harrowing. It might have been wasted money, since the IRA weren't as dim as the 9/11 terrorists about the value of megadeath.

Anyway, they found a German bomb, which was safely dealt with, and they could probably have found more anywhere along the river. Nobody has anything like a complete record of where the bombs went, and least of all the Germans, since the British did some crafty work on distorting their radio guidance beams, to get bombs dropped in relativelty safe places. A few villagers could probably have given you an argument, but the greatest good of the greatest number is one of the things that give war a bad name.

 

[toot]

Good morning,

I found this close to a river near Richmond in South West London. all I can tell is that it’s a revolver of some kind. I Don’t know much about guns but it has like a stem that goes underneath the barrel so it’s not a Webley service revolver or anything From the world wars I don’t think. It kind of resembles a colt - but apart from a passing ‘boys’ gun knowledge and a heavy interest in history I have no knowledge about them in such specific detail as to be able to identify one from its rusty barrel and chamber. can anyone help as I’d love to know how old it is.

kind regards
stephen =it for Shure looks like the remains of a CAP & BALL REVOLVER TO ME??

View attachment 3756989 View attachment 3756990 View attachment 3756991 Hello! View attachment 3756992 View attachment 3756993

 

[rogertc2]

Here you go my HUN

LY toy gun I had since I was a pre teen.

 

[toot]

wasn't the CIVIL WAR CONFEDERATE SUBMARINE BY THE SAME NAME?

 

[rogertc2]

wasn't the CIVIL WAR CONFEDERATE SUBMARINE BY THE SAME NAME?

It was the Hunly Overview - Hunley Submarine History - The Friends of the Hunley

 

[vintovka]

Hubley?

 

[Stephen03]

Thank you all so much for all your help and opinion. I have learned a lot about a few things and realise there are some greatly knowledgeable people on here.
I would also like to say thank you for how courteous and friendly you all seem. Some forums are a bit Snobbish if you don’t know anything and are trying to look for some help ❤

But if it is perhaps a Colt: (The only reason I mentioned colt in my original post is when I scoured google images there was only that and the ruger that I saw with the stem under the barrel, but the ruger’s was shorter and had no gap.)

what would it be doing in Crane Park near Twickenham? (close to Richmond in London UK)

i mean even as a toy. It’s not a commercial one that’s for sure. I’ve grown up in England for 40 years and have always been toy savvy! Big kid always not just at heart!
this is really weighty so must have been a very expensive toy for even 20 years ago no?
im not arguing, it’s just what you say makes more sense.
That it is a toy.
however having it in my hand, it really seems like it was more perhaps a very well made ‘replica’ perhaps? Non firing of course.
but why ditch it in the middle of a forest in the river?

many thanks again!

 

[Stephen03]

Sorry.. that’s my ignorance!

when you said cap and ball - I thought you meant it was a cap gun! 😂

so you mean it could be authentic?