Lewis Gas Operated Prototype Pistol
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ธ.ค. 2016
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Isaac Newton Lewis is best known as the designer of the Lewis light machine gun, of course - but that was not his only work in the firearms field. In 1919, he patented a semiauto handgun using the same gas-operated, rotating bolt mechanism as the machine gun. It is a pretty massive steel beast of a handgun, and interestingly fires from an open bolt, despite being semiautomatic only. This is a questionable choice for a handgun, as it substantially hinders practical accuracy because of the heavy mass moving during the firing process, forcing the shooter to have exceptional followthrough to make hits.
That said, this pistol is very well made, and operated quite smoothly (except when the cocking sleeve rotates slightly out of alignment and prevents the bolt from falling). It even has a reversible firing pin. This pistol is chambered for .45 ACP, and is depicted in patents as having a double-stack magazine with a 15-round capacity. The magazine is missing from this example, but I am aware of another Lewis handgun of different design that does have a magazine of this basic type, so it's not just a patent sketch. The gun is devoid of any markings, and I have no information on how many were made in total - but I suspect the number to be very low - possibly only this one.
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As an April Fools video you should do a review over a really well known gun, but make it seem like it was very rare or was unfavorable.
Greyson Mills Glock 17.
Hi-point!
they should do it with a colt python or 1911 or a mp5
Greyson Mills, "the AK-47, one of the least effective, most expensive failed platforms to have ever come out of Russia"
Totally agreed!
"This pistol doesn't have its magazine."
Man that sounded so sad!
Now it has nothing to read during down time in the holster, poor thing. :(
And this is what he said
Oh sweet nuthin' it ain't got nothing at all
Oh sweet nutin'
it ain't got nothing at all
Lewis probably would've gotten his contract if he'd designed this as a compact machine pistol.
We're all presuming that this Lewis pistol actually has a disconnector, but Ian didn't mention how it doesn't just keep firing on auto until the mag is empty with the trigger held back.
@@dj1NM3 seeing as how he said there was no manual safety. i am going to make the assumption the small leaf spring screwed onto left side with the vertical pin above the grip is the dis-connector as that is where the transfer bar for the trigger is as well. [according to ian in video]
Or even as a "not so compact" SMG, say one about Vz25/Uzi sized. But WAY lighter.
The mechanism could have been used to produce a compact SMG. Lovely engineering. Thanks for sharing.
@tanmay chatterjee finally someone who thinks this would be a good smg
I want a military game that only uses obscure or non adopted weapons
Battlefield 1: allow me to introduce myself
Any modern Battlefield game: Allow us to introduce ourselves
Like an alternate history where the USSR adopted one of the bullpup AK variants, West Germany adopted the G11 and the US adopted one of the Combined Weapons System prototypes. Sounds too good.
I want a game that let you design gun contraptions to do challenges with.
@@murmenaattori6 Alternate history where the US doesn't force NATO to adopt .308 then make the shitbox M14
This is why I'm a patron. Keep finding them. Document them. Make them available to everyone. maybe a hundred people have seen this gun in the last hundred years. In three days you showed it to twelve thousand!
and 4 years later up to 140k, really nice to have these "archives"
Really seems like a much better system for a compact 45 ACP SMG.
i cant help but think this would have made a better Pistol caliber carbine or sub machine gun than a handgun
God of Thunder carbine maybe, but it's semi-auto only, so it would require retooled to be a smg.
God of Thunder I'll admit, when I first saw that hole in the back I thought it was slotted, like for a shoulder stock like a grandpa nambu. which would probably help with the control problems Ian mentioned.
Maybe that slot in the back was a fire selector?
All that is needed to turn this gun full auto is to disable the disconnector. At least this is how I would have done it; dont let nice FA potential go to waste :3
Does somebody have a link to the patent drawings?
@@clarknapper3933 It's an open bolt. Wouldn't be that hard to change
If it was a closed bolt striker style it likely would have been a decent pistol for the era especially for that capacity of 45
Now that this video is in the internet, the next WW1 FPS better have this gun converted to full auto in it.
I'd play a game that ONLY had unsuccessful or runner-up weapons in it.
Jump out of your burning f-23 and snipe people with your Gyrojet survival rifle etc etc
Alternate history game
confuseatronica Chrysler TV-8s and Objekt 279s engaging in armored warfare against each other.
Well, now I know what to bring to a duel against Flash Gordon in a dark alleyway. I've just got to find that magazine, though.
Depending on how thick the magazine well is you may be able to get an FNX45 magazine to work, given a 15 shot .45 mag would be about that bulky. It'll be finicky. If you're daring enough you could try to make one
This is so cool. Machine gun scaled down to pistol size. I could almost see it evolving into a submachine gun or a semi-automatic rifle with relatively few changes.
Such a sweet looking little pistol.
AKlover A bit yes it could stand to be a bit smaller. If it had an 1911 Sleeve design it wouldn't look as oversized.
@@vguyver2 0000p0p0ppppp000⁰⁰p]p
I feel like this could have been a good smg of done correctly.
Could the mystery hole be a select switch? Huge mag, open bolt... US has picked a pistol, but maybe this was intended as a PDW for tank crews, truck drivers, air crews etc.. So, you either use the gun out of a port at very short range, OR, you need to suppress the enemy for emergency egress - tanks, trucks and planes were the big new thing that just "won" the war and Lewis saw a new niche for an ultra compact select fire for the cramped vehicles of the time. Could it, instead of the trigger bar, pull the disconnector out of engagement?
Maciej Pociecha that's exactly what I thought!
So basically a Vz. 61 Skorpion.
Great video as usual. And the blooper at the end : priceless. Thanks for the information on an unusual firearm.
I love these. No chance this would beat out the 1911(especially as an open bolt semi-auto pistol). We would have never seen or heard of this if it wasn't for Ian. Thanks for the work you do
just saw I was automatically unsubscribed -_- youtube, get your shit together
Do they give any notification about that?
puskajussi37 Nope, I've had to resub to multiple channels where I only found out because I went to go check their channel due to a suspicious absence or in case I missed a video, or to watch their old content; the part of me that gets compulsive about not forgetting things has been having a fit since I discovered that this is a thing that's happening, especially channels that are less regular.
Same here. TH-cam has been doing that a lot lately.
Antonymus 19 I'm having similar issues not cool
Antonymus 19 It happened to me about 3 weeks ago. Irritating !!
Ian, thank you so much for what you do, you've educated me so much on firearms, you're one of the reasons I started taking interest. Your channel is awesome!!! Keep it up man
Such a neat design for a pistol. Thanks for all the work yall do to make these videos!
Brilliant design, rotating lockup but then fires from an open bolt!
Love your videos. How you have so much knowledge in your head is beyond my comprehension.
Lol at the ending... Thanks for another great video, you are doing an invaluable service for firearms history.
As always I learned something,Thank you for that!
Awesome ! Seems like it would have a lot of muzzle flip due to the piston moving so high over bore axis
I really wish you weighed and measured a lot of these things (or put them on a measured grid mat or some such), mostly out of idle curiosity.
Also in metric for both weight and dimensions that would help the folks in the rest of the planet.
Francis leMatt We don't measure in Commie units.
murica
Make America Great Britain Again!
I've made some 3d models using stills from Ian's videos as they're the best quality reference I can find of some guns. I can usually find out a gun's length somewhere on the internet and then the other dimensions I tweek until it looks right. This would be helpful though.
awesome find my friend 😆 keep it up, thoroughly enjoy your videos.
another fascinating video from an outstanding channel. My favorite videos of yours are of the early autos. So many different approaches back then, now its all the same....
Looks like it would have made a GREAT SMG throwing the Thompson right out of the market on cost and weight (and simplicity). Assuming that the concentric tubes wouldnt jam up when hot or dirty..
I enjoyed the piece at the end.
Extra firing pin built in. That is thinking ahead.
Amazing pistol! This recoil-spring/backplate assembly makes me think of the Sten gun...
Indeed, I did not know this existed. Thanks for the video.
My sides are in orbit with how this thing fires.
i found a strikingly similar example at a gun show 2 years ago, but it had a brass charging tube and several mags that didnt fit. if i ever see that seller again ill give him a link to you.
some one should remake that fine piece of pistol!!
This is a cool one, thanks!
not gonna lie, i was very dissapointed ian didnt say ¨or it will go flying across the room¨ after he said he had to keep a thumb on the recoil spring.
Works about what I would figure an open bolt gas operated pistol would. Very cool piece.
Lewis guns were fired from a closed bolt as designed. The design was altered to open bolt firing to reduce overheating problems.
love this pistol
This thing would be incredible in 5.7x28 and with a lewis gun style barrel cooling shroud on it. I can only imagine how freaking cool something like that would be to shoot.
it seems like this action would have made for a phenomenal smg. It's amazing how many great ideas they overlooked due to a lack of context. In 2017 it seems so obvious.
Too complicated for SMG. It should be simple blowback for it to be usable smg.
@@vulekv93This likely has far less recoil though as opposed to an open bolt straight blowback smg. Remember that the bolt for most Sten and Sten-like guns is almost 1.5 lbs... if this was intended to be used as a stockless PDW in the vein of a G18 or VZ61 it could be ideal
Gotta love the tool room project guns
has a pretty interesting look to it!
I realoze this is a really old video, but I think this mechanism would have been ideal for a light weight, relatively low cost (especially if the locking lugs were moved to the front of the bolt, with a locking collar on the breech of the barrel), low weight, short receiver, reduced materials usage, SMG. And much cheaper to produce than the Thompson
this thing would be really sweet if it was operable in full auto such as the full size Lewis gun, maybe with 25 or 30 round extended magazines
Looks similar to the Frommer Stop.
From a machining and production standpoint it is actually a pretty clever design as most of the machined parts is round (the internal cavitys of the gun, and the bolt and gas piston part) so it can be made easy and quickly on a manual machine by drilling and turning.
Scaled up that would make an interesting SMG. Probably half the weight of a Thompson.
LoL, that gas tube made me wonder "what if Kalashnikov made pistols?"
this would make for an interesting carbine.
indudablemente el mejor canal de armas de youtube y IAN el mejor de todos 😎
Gracias :)
That almost looks like a gun designer's hobby project
Hi Ian, could you make a video about the history of gaz operated firearms ? I've read that the first gaz operated firearm was in 1880 and was a design by the Clair brothers in France, but I haven't been able to find a lot of info on those designs and their subsequent evolution into what we know today as gaz operated weapons.
That is mechanically very interesting.
This is the most interesting semi auto pistol I have ever seen.
Hi Ian. Love the show. I wonder if in your travels you've stumbled across a 'Welrod'?
The entire time I was watching this video, I just kept on thinking to myself. I bet it would be cheap to manufacture that.
Ian, where did you dig up this kind of unique piece?
Such a cool design...
Man that pistol was definitely ahead of its time with a 15 round 45 magazine, and being gas operated That's pretty freaking cool. you should see if you can get a magazine made for it so you can fire that bad boy.
Very very cool pistol, I personality would love to have one.
Very cool!
Very cool. I wonder if that space on the back might of been for a different location for the grip safety maybe? Or perhaps a shoulder stock attachment point. Wish we could see what that trigger transfer bar looks like, if it had a groove cut out that would let us know if it was originally for some type of safety.
extra cool gun!
If he had given that thing a longer mag and select fire, and it would have been one very cool machine pistol :)
Obviously all the time Lewis spent dealing with Military ordinance bureaucracy drove him completely insane.
That would make a cool range toy
It would have been interesting to see how this might have worked out as a submachine gun.
WOW... really clever gun...
2:45 Ian: ...that fires like this...
Gun: Maclunky!
thats awesome I wish I could have one
A three round burst option would have made it worth while.
I think if he went with a closed bolt it might've been more successful on possibly the commercial market or limited military contracts. Could've also been a decent basis for a machine pistol if Lewis designed a stock for it.
Very neat, but I can't help but notice the resemblance to a hand-held super soaker without the water tank on top.
I have to agree with those that say this should have been developed into a carbine or SMG. This little monster is mechanically impressive and I can easily imagine a SMG version made with stampings that would be perhaps a bit more complicated than a SMG needs to be, but the trade off would be that with a locked-breech, gas operated system, it could be made much lighter than the old favorite Thompson. I do have to say though, 15 rounds of .45 ACP in the 20's would be an impressive amount of firepower in such a relatively small package. With some modifications along the lines of those full-auto converted Lebman 1911's that were favored by Baby Face Nelson and Dillinger, this could have been impressive in the hands of someone practiced with it.
OK if I had not just watched this video, I would swear I was looking at a paintball gun lol.
kaCHUNK!
I love that sound!
I personally think this pistol had many features that were advanced for its time
That's a pretty cool design! A shame it never caught on; would've want to see it in action. It looks like it fits perfectly into a Dieselpunk-themed game or something.
That slide could turn into a razorblade punch or eat sand to score and jam
Usually I watch the videos you do on handguns, and drool over them, wishing i had the chance to just hold them, perhaps to fire a few rounds down range, and if all is well, take it home in a locked case to drool over in private. Not so on this particular firearm. Now don't get me wrong, I would love to come across one buried in the sands of the Mohave Desert, wrapped in cosmoline and waxed paper, in a tin sealed in what ever year it was made, but that would be so I could hold it a few seconds while I sold it for enough money to pay off my motor home.
when the bolt is closed, there looks like there's a gap at the front, bottom-front of the ejection port. around 6:06 in the video. Would that actually leave a piece of the chamber open to the air or is it something else?
So Ian, what you telling us that while neat, not a better mousetrap.
Real men fire from an open bolt.
What a cool, weird gun!
With the low bore axis above the hand, this would have been a very controllable pistol and it would not have been that much trouble making it fire from a closed bolt. It might have been a very successful pistol in that configuration.
This is definitely weird by today's standards, but if it was invented in another country I could see it being very appealing. Imagine it being in the "WW1 PDW" role and being offered the choice of an artillery Luger with the awkward snail drum, a stocked stripper clip fed Steyr-Hahn, a stocked stripper clip fed broomhandle Mauser, or this with a shoulder stock in 9x25 Mauser export with appropriate magazine capacity relative to .45.
it might use the same mag as the lewis short recoil pistol i saw a review/look at in another video.. if it had the ability to have a locked breech, longer mag, and select fire variants itd be a wonderful smg..
I aspire to match you in facial hair and gun knowledge, another great video and another cool piece of firearm history.
it's easy to see why this didn't get into producial commercion.
I'm wondering if it wasn't really an experimental SMG/machinepistol, as the mechanism described above doesn't seem to have a disconnector...
A shame that there isn't a magazine for it, but I'm pretty sure as a one-of-a-kind century-old prototype the owner would never let anyone take to a range and run a few rounds through it.
If I were rich enough to own something like this, I'd probably have a new magazine custom made for it and take it out to shoot myself.
Hmmm....Open bolt...This kinda means a lack of precision , but wit 15 rounds of 45ACP it s what we here in Germany call a "Zimmer-Flak", what means an ideal short distance weapon for close range combat ! (Zimmer -Flak actually translates" chamber-anti- aircraft-gun" and it is , of course, slang , but it hits the point)
That is so fucking cool.
Ian, how's the grip on that thing? Double stacked 45 seems like it should be fairly bulky an uncomfortable.
Very cool gun though, although as many has already mentioned it seem it's potential as an SMG would've been a lot higher.
It felt pretty good, actually.
There you go, you never know :) (No Desert eagle brick-thing then)
Ahh man I grew up using one of those as a make shift hammer for building my forts.
sorry if my question is bad:
why wasnt/isnt recoil blowback system used for automatic riffles just like SMG's? or is there?
Long/short Recoil-based actions require the barrel to move back with the bolt at least partway. And while that's easy enough to do on a handgun it's much harder to do with a longarm without running into reliability and accuracy problems. Plus a rifle barrel slamming back and forth is going to take longer and cause a lot more wear than a 5" handgun barrel, plus the extra hardware needed to get it working weights a fair bit.
Ian's actually covered a number of long and short recoil-action rifles on the channel before.
Wow very impressive. I'm assuming it's been fired before. Would you know if it has been fired? Also do you think it would be possible to somehow manufacture a magazine for that?
Imagine 007 with this