A while back we were talking about some old classic guns i

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is the recoil-operated automatic revolver. The entire top half (cylinder and barrel) recoil along a track the turns the cylinder and recocks the hammer.
I was lucky enough to shoot one that is owned by Hamilton Bowen a number of years ago at a Shootists' Holiday.

His was a very interesting piece, and it had a .455 Webley upper on the smaller .38 ACP lower. Hamilton said it was a salesman's sample that had been shown often but seldomly shot.
After several years of being lugged about and shown to customers, the gun had gone back to Webley and was cleaned up, reblued, and sold.

Not Hamilton's gun; just an example

A while back. I think he paid around $600 for it. The prices are all over these days and some quite high. His example is an acceptable shooter and he did ok. I was slightly interested in tinkering with it from an old story. John Taylor claimed to have dispatched a female lion in his goat pen one night. I wanted to explore the mechanics of such an antic. The .455 cartridge is about 15% less powerful than the .45 ACP. The bullet is a bit more pointy but less desirable for energy transfer. Many folks shoot ACP from the Webley and it can handle it in moderation. The ACP is .451 bullets and the .455 shoots .454”. Really one needs to shoot cast bullets throttled back about 100 fps from the ACP. Mr. Taffin has compiled some very useful info.

The gun is interesting and was easy to work on. Parts were not hard to find. We had to replace a trigger and spring, the latch spring too restoring Roman’s piece. It points well and shoots good. To me it just feels more fragile and I don’t like the springs being on the outside of the gun. Reloads are pretty fast but in an actual timed comparison I bet there is not much difference from a side swinging revolver using full moon clips.

Fun to play with and examine the history first hand.

The Beast that started it all,