Thursday, June 30, 2016

Portuguese Homemade Revolver uses Homemade Cartridges



This image from homemadeguns.wordpress.com appears to be from a Portugese  police agency.  Shotgun shells are often used for the clandestine manufacture of pistol ammunition.  It many countries it is much easier to obtain shotgun shells than pistol or rifle ammunition.  In countries where severe restrictions on the private ownership of firearms have been imposed, shotguns are the least restricted. 

In the extremely restrictive Soviet Union, shotgun cartridges were relatively available.  In England, the easiest firearm license to obtain is the shotgun license, as it is in Japan.

With a source of shotgun cartridges, you have everything you need to make pistol cartridges.  You have lead, from which bullets may be cast.  You have shotgun powder, which makes a good pistol gunpowder.  And you have shotgun primers, which can work for pistol primers.

In this case, the ingenious person who desired free market firearms, made a homemade double barrel shotgun.  It is a fairly simple, yet extremely effective firearm.  Improvised shotguns may be the most common homemade gun around the world. If you can obtain shotgun shells, a single or double barrelled shotgun is an obvious first choice.

But this budding Portugese Colt went much further.

Desiring a reliable, multi shot, easily concealed and portable firearm, they built their own six shot revolver and unique, homemade cartridges.

From the picture, the cartridges use shotgun primers, shotgun powder, and homemade cases and bullets.



On the lower right, you can see the salvaged shotgun primers used in the homemade pistol cartridges.  The left circular tin appears to hold gunpowder.

The bullets, in the plastic bag, are of the "heeled" design, which is what early revolvers used, to simplify the construction of the cylinder.  The chambers for "heeled" bullets are simple bored through, without a step to take into account the thickness of the case.  Caliber appears to be approximately .38/9mm.  The case seems a little longer than a .357 magnum.  I suspect energy levels and velocities on the order of a .38 special.

I do not know if the barrel is rifled or not.  As no sights are shown, it is likely smooth bored, but the person who put this together showed enough technical ability that they could have rifled the barrel.

The box to the left of the shotgun shells looks like a homemade reloading kit.  The shotgun shells seem to be typical 70mm or 2 3/4" 12 gauge.

©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch


3 comments:

Wireless.Phil said...

But!

2nd video down the page.

He must be nuts!

Who in their right mind would back a target with steel plate and use it in the basement?

The ricochet is too risky!

Anonymous said...

There is an old western movie where a guy had made a 16 shot 12 gauge shot gun fed by a drum. seamless pipe and a few tools and some basic know how and you have your very own close quarters assault weapon. You might be surprised at how some of the special attributes of fire arms can be over come. Such as how to line up the barrel with the chamber. trigger mechanism and hammers springs. some plate steel and some taps and dies, and some files. a drill press and you are in business.

Anonymous said...

It is simple to make a bullet trap for use in your basement. A box made of half inch plate steel large enough, say 2 feet wide, three feet high and three feet deep. make a steel plate that will pivot on a bar at the top front of the box give it about three inches of an inset. and have the box filled with dry sand at a bevel from the front of the box to the back. Bullet hits the plate target steel plate swings back bullet is deflected into the sand, You will need at least 6 inches of sand in the front of the box. the sand should fill up to the back of the box giving the steel plate for the target enough space to move back when struck by the bullet for .22 caliber a target plate will only need to be about one quarter inch A good way to save cast bullets for re casting.