I for one am looking forward to getting my hands on one:
http://www.merwinhulbertco.com/
If you haven't been keeping up with the far more frequent updates in www.merwinhulbertco.com's Forum section, here's the facts:
1. The Merwin 2nd Model Open-Top (1876-1880) Pocket Army and Frontier Army are completely designed in SolidWorks CAD (same program S&W and Ruger use for their pistols) by the engineering team, have had plastic prototypes run from the CAD to test their fit with the original revolvers we laser-scanned and hand-measured, and are being checked over by our West Point-educated Weapons System Engineer of 40 years gunmaking/ammunitionmaking experience. The parts can start running from that CAD at the team of shops (mostly in Montana) in our supply chain across March-May with the revolvers assembled, finished and tested at our riflemaking plant in Wyoming this summer.
2. The Third Model top-strap double action Merwin Pocket Army & Frontier Army are mostly designed (we standardized on the best Merwin solutions across the models so there's really not a lot of changes) and CAD will wrap up in March so we expect those to be finished guns in the Fall. Not sure when or if we'll make the 4th Model TopStrap, that'll depend on sales and serious requests.
3. The website is getting a long awaited overhaul including the order form which has driven us nuts even more than it's bothered you. We assumed too much Merwin Hulbert knowledge of customers and gave too many confusing options. It'll be a lot clearer. We're also adding more Merwin history and other useful content as well as making it far easier to update (it was taking 6-12 months for no good reason.)
4. While we'll be adding video down the road, there's a good intro to Merwins already on www.YouTube.com from the NRA Museum's Curators Corner with longtime collector/auctioneer/Museum Director Jim Supica lucidly explaining and demonstrating the Merwins.
5. It's taken way longer than folks that have never manufactured anything seem to think it should take (or assume manufacturers fill up a warehouse or two with finished products before trying to sell any, assuming there's a real and ready demand.) In real terms it's gone pretty fast as we're bringing back a proven design made in the hundreds of thousands for roughly 20 years. Which leaves us puzzled at the demand for working prototypes as though this was a new untried design. We are prototyping for assuring measurement errors didn't creep in from the originals (a few did, 2/1,000ths of an inch for fit of the grip panels) but are going straight to final parts from the CAD. We've made some subtle strengthening choices to a few parts but it's all original Merwin designs...the 9 designers or more who came up with this series of big .44 revolvers were very smart guys we're not going to second-guess. Metallurgy and precision are of course better given this era's choices. We make the
proof ammunition for many of the large gunmakers as well as some of the biggest rounds in the world for rifles (up through .700 Nitro Express which has a 1,000 grain slug) so we're more obsessive than most about strength and reliability.
6. Calibers (this has changed between feedback and engineering): .38 Special, .44 Special, .44-40 Winchester, .45 ACP, and we're still debating how to chamber for .45 Long Colt but not allow the smallest version of the .454 Casull to be used (while the top strap would likely be strong enough, we don't want to stress the open-top design with magnum loads since we assume you'll shoot these a lot.)
7. Barrels have been designed so all of our models can have a set of 3 interchangeable barrels (or just 1 or 2, your choice) at 3.5", 5", and 7" lengths. Those were both historically accurate (well 5.5" is actually more historical for Merwins, but more of you wanted shorter than longer barrels so we went to 5"). You really can change the barrels in a few seconds and without a tool, a feature still basically unknown with only a few semi-automatics like the SIG and Glock offering barrel switches or the long out of production Dan Wesson revolvers. Barrels have been one of the most significant challenges to this since a Merwin barrel isn't just a steel pipe with 5 lands and grooves threaded on one end but part of the whole front of the gun and rifling revolver barrels is a mostly lost art. That's a step we're having revolver barrel rifling experts do (you already probably own some of their pistols) even though we have our own Pratt & Whitney cut rifling and button rifling inhouse
for rifles.
8. When the new order form on the website goes up in the next few weeks, I urge you to place your orders (we'll honor your place for what you sent in already but want to confirm with the new specifications and your own interest.) Like anything ordered over the web (shipped to the FFL dealer you use), you'll pay by credit card for it, satisfaction is guaranteed (as you know Mastercard and Visa help you on that too) and we're offering a 5 year warranty on parts and workmanship. Service and repair will be available at our factory in Wyoming (but Merwin parts vary so much even within the original series of big .44's that new parts fitting your originals will be more varied than any of us expected, even with all of the parts on the new Merwins coming from original parts.
9. We've lined up a few dealers that really focus on the CAS market in the U.S. and Europe but we expect that 98% of the Merwins will be sold directly from the website and then shipped to your favorite FFL dealer for whatever transfer fee he charges for that service and in compliance with local and federal laws since these are fully functional modern guns that happen to be 1876-1886 designs unlike say cap and ball revolvers.
We appreciate your continuing interest and helping us figure out what to make. Let us know if you still want one or two, what you want (from what we're making above, we're past wish lists but those were quite helpful early on.) You'll be seeing these in a lot of magazine and television coverage (far more than we expected early on) but not a lot of ads-this is a small, craftsmanship project of one of our divisions rather than the next major handgun maker in the world roll-out. We expect to sell 1000-2000 of these a year and would rather make them right than often and durable rather than cheap. This confuses a lot of folks but not you. If you're ready for the revolver that most police chose back then as well as the one many of the West's top pistoleers adopted after years of shooting everything else in mortal combat, let us know.
Al Jones
VP Marketing & Sales
Merwin Hulbert & Co.
al@merwinhulbertco.com
This message originated by: Merwin, Hulbery & Co., 6209 Mid Rivers Mall Drive, 315, Saint Charles, Missouri 63304
http://www.merwinhulbertco.com/
If you haven't been keeping up with the far more frequent updates in www.merwinhulbertco.com's Forum section, here's the facts:
1. The Merwin 2nd Model Open-Top (1876-1880) Pocket Army and Frontier Army are completely designed in SolidWorks CAD (same program S&W and Ruger use for their pistols) by the engineering team, have had plastic prototypes run from the CAD to test their fit with the original revolvers we laser-scanned and hand-measured, and are being checked over by our West Point-educated Weapons System Engineer of 40 years gunmaking/ammunitionmaking experience. The parts can start running from that CAD at the team of shops (mostly in Montana) in our supply chain across March-May with the revolvers assembled, finished and tested at our riflemaking plant in Wyoming this summer.
2. The Third Model top-strap double action Merwin Pocket Army & Frontier Army are mostly designed (we standardized on the best Merwin solutions across the models so there's really not a lot of changes) and CAD will wrap up in March so we expect those to be finished guns in the Fall. Not sure when or if we'll make the 4th Model TopStrap, that'll depend on sales and serious requests.
3. The website is getting a long awaited overhaul including the order form which has driven us nuts even more than it's bothered you. We assumed too much Merwin Hulbert knowledge of customers and gave too many confusing options. It'll be a lot clearer. We're also adding more Merwin history and other useful content as well as making it far easier to update (it was taking 6-12 months for no good reason.)
4. While we'll be adding video down the road, there's a good intro to Merwins already on www.YouTube.com from the NRA Museum's Curators Corner with longtime collector/auctioneer/Museum Director Jim Supica lucidly explaining and demonstrating the Merwins.
5. It's taken way longer than folks that have never manufactured anything seem to think it should take (or assume manufacturers fill up a warehouse or two with finished products before trying to sell any, assuming there's a real and ready demand.) In real terms it's gone pretty fast as we're bringing back a proven design made in the hundreds of thousands for roughly 20 years. Which leaves us puzzled at the demand for working prototypes as though this was a new untried design. We are prototyping for assuring measurement errors didn't creep in from the originals (a few did, 2/1,000ths of an inch for fit of the grip panels) but are going straight to final parts from the CAD. We've made some subtle strengthening choices to a few parts but it's all original Merwin designs...the 9 designers or more who came up with this series of big .44 revolvers were very smart guys we're not going to second-guess. Metallurgy and precision are of course better given this era's choices. We make the
proof ammunition for many of the large gunmakers as well as some of the biggest rounds in the world for rifles (up through .700 Nitro Express which has a 1,000 grain slug) so we're more obsessive than most about strength and reliability.
6. Calibers (this has changed between feedback and engineering): .38 Special, .44 Special, .44-40 Winchester, .45 ACP, and we're still debating how to chamber for .45 Long Colt but not allow the smallest version of the .454 Casull to be used (while the top strap would likely be strong enough, we don't want to stress the open-top design with magnum loads since we assume you'll shoot these a lot.)
7. Barrels have been designed so all of our models can have a set of 3 interchangeable barrels (or just 1 or 2, your choice) at 3.5", 5", and 7" lengths. Those were both historically accurate (well 5.5" is actually more historical for Merwins, but more of you wanted shorter than longer barrels so we went to 5"). You really can change the barrels in a few seconds and without a tool, a feature still basically unknown with only a few semi-automatics like the SIG and Glock offering barrel switches or the long out of production Dan Wesson revolvers. Barrels have been one of the most significant challenges to this since a Merwin barrel isn't just a steel pipe with 5 lands and grooves threaded on one end but part of the whole front of the gun and rifling revolver barrels is a mostly lost art. That's a step we're having revolver barrel rifling experts do (you already probably own some of their pistols) even though we have our own Pratt & Whitney cut rifling and button rifling inhouse
for rifles.
8. When the new order form on the website goes up in the next few weeks, I urge you to place your orders (we'll honor your place for what you sent in already but want to confirm with the new specifications and your own interest.) Like anything ordered over the web (shipped to the FFL dealer you use), you'll pay by credit card for it, satisfaction is guaranteed (as you know Mastercard and Visa help you on that too) and we're offering a 5 year warranty on parts and workmanship. Service and repair will be available at our factory in Wyoming (but Merwin parts vary so much even within the original series of big .44's that new parts fitting your originals will be more varied than any of us expected, even with all of the parts on the new Merwins coming from original parts.
9. We've lined up a few dealers that really focus on the CAS market in the U.S. and Europe but we expect that 98% of the Merwins will be sold directly from the website and then shipped to your favorite FFL dealer for whatever transfer fee he charges for that service and in compliance with local and federal laws since these are fully functional modern guns that happen to be 1876-1886 designs unlike say cap and ball revolvers.
We appreciate your continuing interest and helping us figure out what to make. Let us know if you still want one or two, what you want (from what we're making above, we're past wish lists but those were quite helpful early on.) You'll be seeing these in a lot of magazine and television coverage (far more than we expected early on) but not a lot of ads-this is a small, craftsmanship project of one of our divisions rather than the next major handgun maker in the world roll-out. We expect to sell 1000-2000 of these a year and would rather make them right than often and durable rather than cheap. This confuses a lot of folks but not you. If you're ready for the revolver that most police chose back then as well as the one many of the West's top pistoleers adopted after years of shooting everything else in mortal combat, let us know.
Al Jones
VP Marketing & Sales
Merwin Hulbert & Co.
al@merwinhulbertco.com
This message originated by: Merwin, Hulbery & Co., 6209 Mid Rivers Mall Drive, 315, Saint Charles, Missouri 63304
Jim, I dunno how I could possibly have presumed you could possibly be unfamiliar with the examples I mentioned. I underestimated you, and I apologize. Mea culpa, sir.