.32 Teat fire ammo

The Roland White patent covered a bored straight through chamber in which the metallic cartridge is loaded through the rear. The chamber on a teat fire is not bored all the way through and it loads from the front, thus getting around the patent. Colt circumvented White's patent with it's Thuer conversions which although were bored through were tapered and also loaded from the front. It is interesting the ingenuity of all the gun manufacturers in the mid to late 1800's and that most of their designs are still usable today.
 
If 9mm were as scarce as Moore teat fire or Plant cup fire, things would really be bad!

Mike, that was my thinking also, but have not been able to confirm it.

Jim
 
Jim,

Just a thought...

How long were the cup fire rounds in production?

Phoenix Metallic Cartridge Company used a raised P headstamp in its ammo starting around 1878...

That might be kind of late, though...
 
Well, ammo makers keep cartridges in production long after manufacture of the guns that use a cartridge stops, so it is hard to tell. I have seen something to the effect that teat fire ammo was made into the early 1800's, but there were a lot more of those guns than there were Plant revolvers. I would WAG that they probably made ammo until about 1875.

Still, Phoenix is a good bet, since they did use a raised "P" as their headstamp.

Jim

P.S., I have a Plant also and a few rounds of (unmarked) cup fire rounds for it. I don't think I can find the stuff in plinking quantities.

P.P.S. I wonder how many old rounds that don't sell well will not be brought back after the current ammo panic is over. The makers used WWII as something of an excuse to drop a lot of the old obsolete stuff that had minimal sales.

JK
 
"I have seen something to the effect that teat fire ammo was made into the early 1800's..."

I KNEW Mr. Moore was a Time Lord and moving backwards in time!


" I wonder how many old rounds that don't sell well will not be brought back after the current ammo panic is over. The makers used WWII as something of an excuse to drop a lot of the old obsolete stuff that had minimal sales."

There were actually three distinct purges in the first half of the 20th century.

1916-18 or so was the first one, when a lot of the older, marginal black powder rifle rounds were dropped from production to free up space for war production. That also spelled the doom of black powder loadings of cartridges that remained in production, like the .44 Special.

The second, in the mid to late 1930s, saw the end of a lot of rimfire rounds like the .32 Long and Extra Long. It just wasn't feasible to keep producing them when their sales were marginal to being with and the companies were in financial trouble.

Then, when civilian production resumed after World War II, rounds like the .401, .32, and .35 Winchester Self Loading rounds were never resumed.
 
I really should proof read better. That date should be early 1880's not early 1800's.

FWIW, the Rollin White patent was interesting. It is not what most people think, just the use of bored through chambers to use a rimfire cartridge. It was more complex than that. It actually used what we would call a single column magazine of some indefinite size mounted on the left side of the revolver. That fed paper cartridges to a sort of tray behind the cylinder, and then a plunger pushed them into the cylinder one at a time. There was one percussion nipple at the top rear of the gun with a channel leading down through the frame to the chamber that was on top. If I understand correctly, it was a bit like the later Dardick gun, feeding cartridges from a magazine to a cylinder.

Anyway, it was pretty impractical, but it had one key point, a revolver cylinder with bored-through chambers, and that was what S&W wanted.

I have a picture but it is in TIFF; I will try to translate and post if I can.

Jim
 
I hope this comes up OK. This is the original Rollin White patent. Not too good, but you can see the magazine, the plunger to push the cartridge into the chamber and the percussion nipple to fire the round.

Jim
 

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What amazes me about the White patent is that he first offered it to Colt, and they turned him down flat, figuring that the entire system was unworkable.

When it turned out that it paved the wave of the future, they tried to break S&W's ownership by attempting to claim that since White had been a Colt employee at the time it was developed they still owned the patent, even though they had turned him down.

The courts didn't buy that, and S&W kept the rights.

S&W ultimately screwed itself, though.

During the civil war they adamantly refused to allow other manufacturers, even the Federal government, to use the bored-through cylinder, even under license.

In 1869 the White patent expired, and S&W attempted to get another period of exclusivity, which even back then was pretty much a given. The Patent Office, though, extended a big old Fickle Finger of Fate to S&W. There are some who have even speculated that the President at the time, Gen. Ulysses Grant, had a hand in denying the patent extension.
 
What? A president interfering with non-partisan civil servants just doing their job? That would be as unthinkable as, say, having the IRS crack down on an administration's political opposition!

Jim
 
they adamantly refused to allow other manufacturers, even the Federal government, to use the bored-through cylinder, even under license.
Click to expand...

Yet after the War of Northern Aggression :D, in 1868 S&W did license Remington to convert (or new manufacture) their New Model Army .44, so it accepted a metallic cartridge. And S&W got paid a fee for each of these conversions. I believe that the US Army used some of these conversions out West, as they shortly did the S&W Model 3 in .44 American.

The caliber used in the NMA Remington was .46 Rimfire Short, although I understand .46 Rimfire Carbine would fit . That second would result in a powerful handgun!

Bart Noir
 
S & W did license Remington after the War of Southern Stupidity, primarily because wartime sales had evaporated. But, they only allowed conversions, not new guns.
 
Sorry to bump up an older thread, but it's not too old, and some questions in it were still unanswered!

Anyone have any idea what the "P" on the cupfire cartridges stands for? One source also says there was an "A", also unidentified.
Click to expand...

P is indeed for Phoenix Metallic Cartridge Company
A is for American Metallic Ammunition Company

Here is an article I did on cupfire with pictures and the history and such. It will give a good idea as to the history of teatfire too, as it exists for the same reason.

http://freemycollection.com/?page=articles/cupfire


Also, here is my teatfire revolver and a couple cartridges.

teatfire.jpg
 
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