The Winans Steam gun

Hello yet again we have quite the weapon to talk about this time. The Winans steam gun, which was designed in 1858 and built in 1860 by the confederate states of america during the civil war.  This gun as you can guess is steam powered, it uses a steam engine just like in trains back then but instead if powering wheels is spun the barrel of the gun and as the round lead bullets dropped into the barrel they were stopped at the end by a mechanism that only allowed one shot to leave per revolution.  The competition of weaponry in the civil war included multiple very efficient rifles like the very famous Henry repeating rifle.

The rifles of that time had a very decent fire rate but this steam machine gun had a fire rate of supposedly 400 rounds per minute which is ridiculous for that time.  But this weapon wouldn't be here if it had succeeded. The gun is massive and its lethality is nothing compared to its gunpowder powered competitors and its effective range is no where near as good.  There was only one of these built so all of these statistics are coming from an episode of mythbusters that built a version of it and had very interesting results.

The reason I think it failed is due to its size and relative ineffectiveness. It is a great idea but a little late to the game.  If a modern steam powered machine gun were made today i really doubt it would have any effect. with modern body armor and large armored vehicles this weapon would be turned to scrap metal in a matter of seconds.  I do have to hand it to the confederates though it is an ingenious idea but it didn't win them the war.  Thank you again and next week, Pepperbox guns.

Volcanic pistol and rocket ball ammunition

Hello again, in this blog I will be talking to you about the volcanic pistol and its rocket ball ammunition.  the volcanic pistol is a lever action pistol. for all you non gun people this means that one bullet is fired with each pull of the trigger and to chamber your next round and cock the gun you pushed forwards a lever.  This design was great for its era having been invented in the 1860's meaning its only competition was revolvers.  Now don't get me wrong revolvers are great but in single action they could not shoot as fast as the volcanic pistol and in double action the trigger was a very long pull making shooting it accurately more of a challenge. 

Let's talk about the efficiency. I did already mention a little about the gun itself but let's get into the details of the rocket ball ammo.  Many people who are not familiar with the volcanic pistol don't know of rocket ball ammo, it is a bullet where the back half is hollowed out and the powder and primer are in the back of the bullet. When it is fired the bullet leaves the barrel and there is no casing to be extracted.  This to me seems like a good idea there are less things that can go wrong due to no casing but the ballistics of the round suffer.  the Bullets are .31 caliber which is not bad but because the powder needs to fit in the back of the bullet you can't fit as much which lowers the velocity of the bullet which makes it as effective as a .24 ACP round.  Compared to its competition and the in .41 colt it is blown out of the water.


That is the reason I think this gun failed.  The design and idea of the gun itself is great but the lack of power is probably what killed it off, if everyone wanted a gun that could do more damage then it was not sold very much and was discontinued.  If a lever action pistol were made today I still do not believe it would catch on. Modern hand guns can hold more bullets and shoot faster due to self loading semi-automatic actions. Thanks for reading and next time we jump on over to the civil war to talk about a steam powered machine gun.

Welcome to the graveyard of guns

I am Josh Ostrowercha and I will be writing this blog to tell the world about some ideas that DID exist in the world of firearms and military weaponry but failed either because of malfunctions, them being impractical or just not catching on.  These firearms come from all over the world from the years 1858 till 2010 and all are very original in design.  Each of these guns could have changed the industry of fire arms for ever but the fact they never became popular leaves us with only a few remaining versions, or in some cases only designs for these guns.

The things I am going to cover on these designs and ideas are the functionality and efficiency of the weapon for its era, its practicality and price (if possible), and the reason it failed. After that I will give the weapons a rating and my own personal opinion on what I think of the idea and if I think something like this, maybe a more modern version, would work today.

Like I've mentioned before the guns range from mid-1800’s like pepperbox guns, to the civil war and the Winans steam machine gun, WWII and a few Nazi experimental artillery pieces, and even in 2010 with the Armatix smart systems iP1.  I will be writing about eight or nine blogs in total and depending on feedback I might continue past that.  My next blog will be about the volcanic pistol and rocket ball ammunition, an amazing idea from the mid-1800’s to give repeating firearms a practical projectile.  If you have any comments or questions I will do my best to get back to you ASAP. Thanks for reading, keep checking back for updates and remember, if you have an idea for a gun design bouncing around in your head, it probably won’t be as bad as some of these.