The Gibbs carbine is fantastic illustration of just how difficult it can be to actually manufacture a new firearm. The gun itself is a breechloading, percussion fired cavalry carbine designed to use paper cartridges. It was patented in 1856 by Lucien Gibbs, and he was joined by financier William...

Carbines made by the Columbus Armory are particularly scarce, and their history is not really well understood. They were manufactured by John Gray of Columbus SC, whose brother William Gray was a partner in another (better documented) Georgia arms factory under the director of J.P. Murray. John G...

Cook and Brother was one of the largest and most successful of the private ordnance factories in the South during the Civil War. It was formed by two British brothers who had moved to New Orleans, Frederick and Francis Cook. They opened a rifle factory at the intersection of Common and Canal stre...

We're going to jump back a hundred years, and take a look at a design from 1854 today - although it was a design well ahead of its time. The Treeby chain gun was a percussion rifle that could fire 14 rounds in rapid succession, unlike anything else available at the time. We took a look at one in ...

In 1863, the Confederate military decided to design a new standard pattern of cavalry carbine. The designs was put together rather quickly at the Richmond Arsenal; a 25 inch barrel, brass furniture, and Enfield type lock. Before production could begin, however, Richmond was deemed too risky of a ...

The North & Skinner was an early 6-shot percussion-fired revolving rifle design. Its design was patented in 1852 by Henry North and Chauncy Skinner (US Patent #8982), and the guns were manufactured from 1856 to 1859 by the Savage & North company (which was Henry North and Edward Savage - not the ...

The final production version of the Hall was Simeon North’s Model 1843 Carbine, of which 10,500 were made between 1844 and 1853. It used North’s percussion update to the design, and a cleverly simple calming lug connected to a lever on the right side of the action to open the breech. These were s...

In 1863, the Bilharz, Hall, & Co firm of Pittsylvania Court House, Virginia (now Chatham VA) received a contract to make 1,000 examples of a simple percussion cavalry carbine modeled after the US Model 1855 carbine. They would work until the end of 1864, but only make a total of 750-800 of them. ...

George Morse was one of the most significant American inventors in the development of modern ammunition. In 1856 he received a patent for the first completely self-contained brass cartridge, and a breechloading firearm to use it. Morse’s cartridge was made of several parts, a solid brass case hea...

James Greene patented this unusual breechloading carbine design in 1854, and arranged to have it manufactured by the Massachusetts Arms Company of Chicopee Falls. He managed to sell 300 of them to the US military, in .54 caliber and with 22 inch barrels. Field testing was done in 1857, although i...