Reading the recent thread by Darthfuster on his son's hangfire incident I was struck by the thought that it seems odd that revolvers have that gap in the first place.

Now, I haven't shot a revolver in almost 10 years, and don't own one, so maybe this is a dumb question. But why don't they scoot the cylinder forward to close the gap after the fresh round rotates? I don't think it would be that hard to design a mechanism and it would seem they could use the recoil to open the gap back up if needed to make it easy to revolve the next shot when the trigger was pressed.

I must be missing something fundamental. Could someone familiar with revolver design please enlighten me?

I vaguely recall that there was at least one attempt to do this. It would probably be far more complicated than you think. The beauty of a revolver is its simplicity and reliability, both of which would be compromised by such a mechanism. And the benefit would be marginal.

The Nagant model 1895 revolver uses special ammunition and a forward moving cylinder to try and address this.

Ah, the Nagant. I knew I saw a video on this and behold:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIePW1wYZds

quote:

Originally posted by GaryBF:
And the benefit would be marginal.

The cylinder gap reduces muzzle velocity by releasing part of the gas, but most revolver shooters simply accept that as a fact of revolver life. Want more velocity?* Choose a different cartridge or different load (or gun).
As stated, the mechanism to do what you describe would be complicated and subject to malfunctions. It doesn’t take much to prevent a revolver cylinder from rotating when the trigger is pulled.

* (And there is a current crop of defensive handgun experts who will quickly tell us that handgun bullet velocity makes no difference in wounding effectiveness. Anyone who believes that is certainly not going to spend an extra dime for a mechanism to improve revolver velocities by eliminating the cylinder gap.)

Interesting, indeed. Thanks for the background and the video link.

On the positive side, if I understand correctly: noise, safety, no loss of pressure through the gap.

On the negative side: design complexity with risk of reliability/cost impact.

I think I'll keep an eye open for a chance to shoot a Nagant 1895.

Dan Wesson revolvers with their interchangeable barrels require use of a feeler gauge to set the gap when swapping barrels. You can experiment with settings other than the original factory one.