Evans New Model Carbine: High Capacity in the Old West
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 มิ.ย. 2016
- The Evans rifle/carbine was developed in 1873 by a Maine dentist named Warren Evans. Its main innovation was a large helical magazine that held a whopping 34 cartridges of Evan's proprietary .44 caliber cartridge. By 1877 Evans had made a number of revisions and improvements to the gun, including developing a newer and more powerful cartridge for it. This New Model "only" held 28 rounds, but was ballistically very similar to the .56 Spencer.
Evans' rifle was a lever action design, and proved reasonably popular. Between 12,000 and 15,000 were made in total between 1874 and 1879, and testimonials were published from the likes of Kit Carson and Buffalo Bill Cody. The US Army tested the weapon but rejected it on the basis of its awkward loading procedure and failure of a dust test. Sales were made outside the US, though, including Russia, Turkey, and several South American nations.
Judging by the capacity and how complicated the loading process is, I guess this really is a rifle you load on Sunday and fire all week
Or load all week and fire all the next week...
You could say even 2 weeks
Fire all month
Wouldn't the lever pull get really heavy too with a fully loaded magazine? You'd have to turn all 26 of those bullets.
TWO WEEKS. Give or take.
He should’ve mentioned that if you make split point bullets you can increase your dead eye time significantly
TRUE
What are “split point “ bullets?
@@davidlium9338 dum dum ammo, read dead redemption
@@davidlium9338 irl split points are bullets where you split the end with a knife or another sharp object. It was like an early hollowpoint.
I have a god damm plan !!!!!!
Henry repeating arms company: "My rifle has such a high capacity."
Evans repeating arms company: "Hold my whiskey."
Hold my Apple jack
Hold my apple pie moonshine
Henry repeating arms company: "cool. now reload it."
Evans repeating arms company: "Wh... What?"
Henry repeating arms company: "I said. Reload it."
Evans repeating arms company: *heavy sweating*
I read that as "My wife has such a high capacity."
We are Mainers. Coffee brandy and Jersey lightening all all we need or want! Maybe some beers too...
Such a retro-futuristic design. Looks like something out of a Jules Verne book.
Or Moebius
Its looks so Steampunk. If someone showed it to me I would have claimed its a model for a video game or a movie prop.
@@murunbuchstanzangur Dude, I swear that the Contender pistol was the main design inspiration for Emily's Pistol in Dishonoured 2. Without upgrades, they look very alike.
Arthur Morgan doesn't approve
Nailed it!
26 rounds 40 years before ww1. that's quite impressive.
Girardoni air rifle had 20 round capacity at similar energy to this before the civil war. No mechanical parts in the magazine either.
@@metamorphicorder yeah but you had to pump it 1500 times with an airpump to fire the whole mag
@@sneakysnake7695 im not exactly sure of the pumps needed to charge the mag, but it WAS definitely a lot. However, the military loadout for that weapon was the rifle plus 3 speed loaders with 20 rounds each, three precharged cylinders, a pump and equipment for casting additional bullets.
The pumps for the individual soldiers were eventually supplemnted with what ive heard called a wagon mounted pump which im assuming was a pump that would reciprocate powered by the wagon wheel as it moved. Three cylinders and three mags would allow someone to shoot 60 shots pretty much on demand. It allowed them to drop 20 shots with low audible profile and nearly zero visible profile compared to powder burners of the time with comparable power through most of the shots.
While it took them longer to change a cylinder when depleted, and to fully reset when they were depleted, they could lay down fire much faster in intervals than a similar sized squad armed with powderburners.
And given an initial load out a twp or three man fire team could drop a lot of suppressive fire on a enemy detachment by firing in intervals. One man spots while one shoots through a mag and cylinder then the next one fires while that guy readies his weapon to go again. Im betting that if one got good at operating the rifle, one would be able to swap a cylinder and refill the onboard mag in the time it would take someone else to acquire and service 20 targets. To service a similar number of targets with contemporary firearms of the day would require either a similar sized team using preloaded weapons, or a much larger team of say 6 to ten men shooting in coordinated intervals.
Theres a lot of reasons this was in some sort of service for about 10 years, which seems like a small ammount of time compared to something like the ak or ar platforms (i know they arent called ar in the military but its the design im talking about) or other weapons that have seen multiple decades of continuous service, but its actually a pretty good run when you look at how fast the technology was evolving at the time.
@@metamorphicorder I want to see it in more media, it's honestly a feat of engineering considering it was made in a time when people when still using single shot muskets
@@sneakysnake7695 it has a video on this channel. There are about a handful of videos on it from other channels, including some where someone made a very faithful functional replica . Air guns very likely predate powderburners, they certainly do if you include blow guns. But thats a nuanced perspective and not really useful.
But even today we have available many types of high power air rifles that rival even some of the more powerful powder burning pistols.
Its a really old technology.
Us army rejected it because of dust problems so continued to use a single shot rifle? I swear you could go back in time and give them an m16a4 to test and they would still find something to complain about and use their damn Springfields
yep, they'd go, well that's great but there's no way we're adopting that, supply would be a nightmare.
Hell that little ity bity bullet it's only good for mice and rats Maybe squirrels under 20 yardsLOL.
Do a 300 yard test on pigs and show them the grapefruit-size exit wounds the itty bitty bullet causes when it fragments. They'd have to be impressed by that.
@Frank Castle Its more the fact that it wasn't economical to equip everything with a BAR, the Bolt Actions were much cheaper and easier to mass produce
Yeah that rejected lever actions for the most part cause they wanted pointed bullets.
They werent very smart.
so the magazine is basically a Archimedes Screw.
Yes.
Good point!
spoiler alert! lol
A little like what Calico Arms used to make too.
One wonders why he didn't just make the screw able to work backwards.
So that you could load it from the top, in order to top off the magazine instead of cycling it completely in order to fill all spaces on the "conveyor belt".
Either have it cycle backwards, or merely a way to unlock it or cause it to disengage from the lever and the action, so it could be done manually.
Another idea would be to have it unlock the screw from the action, and then have a manual screw at the buttstock, next to the loading gate, so you screw the magazine all the way back until you come to a loaded round. Then turn the manual screw the other way (causing the rounds to move forward one step) and start loading as if you had started from empty. IE put one round in, cycle it, repeat until it spits out a round, at which point you know it's full all the way up.
Damn. A 26-round lever gun that you could ghost load to 28 rounds in the 1870s. Wildly ahead of it's time. Actually hilarious to note how this rifle would be illegal in California due to its mag capacity.
It is an internal magazine, so it would still be legal I think. Henry’s have a 16 (more than 10 rounds) round capacity, but they are still used in Cali in place of AR's
Well they couldn't it's not an a semi auto rifle with a detachable Magazine, it's a fuckin lever action rifle made in the 1800s it's bypasses all there laws
@@keatotherealone520 the California magazine restriction is in place for ALL guns, even manually operated...
@@crazysilly2914 And Canada! Currently still legal, was a almost banned a month ago.
@@crazysilly2914why speak if you dont know what your talking about
Great job, yet again...
Now I can die happy...
A kid brought one to shop class to clean up. It had been in a fire, and was in really bad shape. . 1964 was the year... And this is the first time that anyone could tell me what it was..
Now I can die happy...
Hehe, well that is quite the find!
*me imagining what would happen if someone walked into my school with this rifle*
Update: I had to talk to the dean of students cause I was watching a forgotten weapons video during lunch... Rip
I can shoot Cha with muh AR since yous wantin ta die so badly and all and think it's funny
@Straight Busta alright CJ calm down lmfao
Beautiful rifle. I love the way the stock is designed - namely how the wood "wraps" around the metal.
Yeah agreed, I'd love to see a repro in satin SS/nickel and rosewood.
Brass/bubinga or padauk
Workamanship on these rifles is unmatched, but i personally dont find this rigle soothing to look at, at all. But still really cool and impressive weapon
@@anttitheinternetguy3213 yay I'm the year later response, but yeah this thing is super cool. The problem is the evens looks like it was made in a high school shop class
Demonkiller47 No. lmao.
Damn O' Driscoll's
You're god damn right, but Dutch weren't the same after Colm hung.
@@carll.freemanjr.9867 Dutch weren't the same after the Blackwater Massacre
Tlknghds_1980 Dutch was always crazy
You got worms in your brains?!
yup. thats why im here
I should imagine the auctioneers must be blessing the day when Ian stepped in to make these videos.Their communication range must have increased considerably. Terrific series!
First time I ever heard of the Evans carbine was in the movie "Crossfire Trail," when one of the characters asks Wilford Brimley's character, "How come you carry that old Evans," to which Brimley's character replies, "Because it's got 28 bullets and I ain't a very good rifle shot," or words to that effect. Interesting old rifle. Thanks for giving us a look at it. Cheers.
Man I was searching for this comment but I figured I wouldn't see one. It's my grandfathers favorite movie which we've watched many times. Ol Joe loved that thing even though he couldn't hit a bottle at 10 yards 😂
Another problem with the Evens is that the "follower" had a lot of mechanical resistance applied on it when it rotated to move the 20+ rounds up the magazine tube, so it tended to ware at the point the "paw" contacted the follower, and that ware eventually caused the follower to fail to rotate reliably. I have several old Evens, and they all suffer from this problem. Also, 30-40 Crag cartridges can be modified to serve as Evens .44 long cartridges.
I own one and have shot it for CBA. It cycles slower than a Winchester but it really can handle 100 bp rounds in a day without collapse... usually. But if it jams, it is usually a mess.
Does Uberti make a replica?
@@crazysilly2914; I have never heard of one.
To bad you couldn't pull the entire helix out the back and load cartages onto it and then shove it back in. Would be neat to carry multiple pre loaded helixes.
Or some sort of key or winding mechanism to back the helix up so you could top off the magazine without having to cycle the action 26 to 34 times, depending on the model. Who knows, maybe the next revision would have had it.
Bob Rees The world may never know. I really want a company to make reproductions of these on of these in a modern cartridge would be nice awesome. Maybe if a company does ever plan to make these they can offer a model with some time of faster loading mechanism.
TheScoobby1996pl I don't think it would be that weird. Look at the spencer from the Civil war it loads thru the back of the rifle and soldiers used to carry around preloaded tubes of ammo.
In 44 Special or even 44 Russian..
detachable magazines weren't even conceived back then...
All the main stream westerners with Winchester 73's and Colt SAA's in 44-40, while you got that one hipster with a 2nd model Evans and a double action 44 Merwin and Hulbert. I'd be ok being that guy
Why do you shoot that old Evens Joe? Well it holds 28 bullets and I an't a very good shot. ---Crossfire Trail
Less likely a hipster than an appalachian.
The original 44 Evans Long cartridge that I disassembled used a .419 300 grain bullet. It was not heeled, but had two massive lube grooves. Very smart design.
Imagine if John Marston had to reload this realistically rather than using the fake Kings style loading gate.
That would make me feel like dying
Yea, John alway did complain alot.. -sigh- and I've had to save his ass I don't know how many god damn times. He was almost as much a pain as my tuberculosis.
Arthur Morgan bet u haven’t place rdr1
Jeremiah bet u haven’t played rdr2
snake well I have
"You don't need to be a better shot, you just need to shoot MORE bullets"
Adie Vladof anyone?
This seems like a really awesome idea for a gun with just enough issues that prevented it from being a truly great gun. I am amazed at the innovative design of this rifle when you look at some of its competitors during its period.
This is TH-cam content done right; well researched, intelligent, and brief. Kudos Ian and kudos to forgotten weapons!
reminds me of red dead redemption, this was my favorite rifle
mw2?
The bolt action Krag though...
buffalo rifle for me, pick off people for days
I was looking for the requisite Red Dead comment.
I was looking to post that exact comment....
Very slick rifle. Never heard of that one before. Would love to have one in .22 LR These videos always get a like from me, before I even start playing them.
Bushmaster left Maine and moved to New York after Remington bought them out several years ago. Windham Weaponry is the current premier firearms manufacturer in Maine.
Also congrats on 250k subs. Really surprised it's not more.
Love that your older videos can be discovered, another great 20 minutes, cheers Ian
Ian you are a treasure man. Thanks a lot for all this work and giving me a vast library of high quality videos.
“You don’t need a high capacity repeating rifle to defend you home if you want to defend you home buy a shotgun, a muzzle loading double barrel shotgun”- Henry Jacob Biden ca1868
"tHeN fiRe tWo BlAsTs bLiNdLy iNto tHe NiGhT"
Haha thats a silly rumor spread by teams of 3 or more burglars at a time.
"That Evans boy ain't working on no high capacity magazine - that's gonna be a 'normal capacity' magazine! Let's organize" -- William C. Church, Nov' 1871
101Elric stupid fucking joe Biden
@@beentrill8492 Cope harder
One I thing I noticed with my example was the rifling grooves had flat bottoms rather than radiused. That made it difficult to load a bullet large enough to seal the bore
I always enjoy the amount of historical information you include with these videos. Have you ever considered making a video discussing where you generally get your information? It would be interesting to get a glimpse inside the research side of the project and see where you go to for hard to track down knowledge. Keep up the great work!
Another great video Ian very informative and excellently researched as usual.
I love seeing guns like this ,
a truly interesting piece.
Thankyou. 🙂
I would almost call this gun the Calico Carbine of the Old West, but it does seem a lot less...gimmicky...
>Maine
>"old west"
The biggest difference is this one actually works.
The first time I saw this vid I knew it reminded me of something. DUH. I've got a 22caliber Calico pistol. I've not shot it in yrs. It's pretty cool to shoot. The cylinder mag holds 100rds.
..those italian guys, oughtta take a lesson from Mr Evans : namely, NO SPRINGS , NEEDED !!!!
@@petersack5074 and it failed.
Such a cool system!
Too bad they went out of business - but, hey, at least they weren't bought and subsequently shut down by Winchester.
I really enjoy your videos, Ian.
Thank you.
Love what you do Ian! keep it up.
I’ve been a nerd about tons of military or weapon-related topics since I was a little kid, but I’d still never even *heard* of this rifle until I finally picked up Red Dead: Redemption a couple years back. Glad to see someone giving such an interesting and legitimately forgotten weapon a detailed look. 👍
That's how I learned about the Evans as well. Playing Red Dead Redemption.
Its not red Dead:Redemption. It's Red Dead Redemption. They added the Evans in the second game too
Love Old West weapons. Great video.
Your presentation is great! Informative, interesting and clear. Thanks for the upload!
I have loved these rifles for years but never saw one until I was visiting family in Maine and stopped by the Cabela's up there. They had a dozen Evens rifles filling one of the cases in the Gun Library, most of them in amazing condition. It was pretty cool.
Imagine a tube that could be affixed to the rear with another 28 rounds so that you could speed load by gravity feeding into the hole. You could possibly point the muzzle at the ground and repeatedly run the action and it would auto load from the tube.
Fantastic rifle! Almost 44 magnum ballistics! A modern reproduction with modern bullets and cases could be an excellent hunting rifle as well as self defense carbine!
Enjoyed...never heard of this rifle before... Thanks for showing.
Old Mechanical Technology is SO COOL!
I love the design, it reminds me a lot of Art Nouveau
Very interesting, thank you!
That is a beautiful gun. The action, the stock, all very elegant.
"Inability to efficiently set up..." yep that about sums up every business in maine, Vermont or new hampshire
Why you use that old Evans ?
Cause it holds 28 bullets........ and I ain't a very good shot !
Ken Gamble love that movie! it's a gift
what movie?
Where is that from?
Crossfire Trail.
Crossfire Trail. Wilford Brimley said it.
I appreciate your service ian
Thank you Hughes Enterprises for your response to my questions. pretty cool rifle the carbine, even better my daughters will have it always as a gift from Grandpa Joe who was a B24 crew chief in the Pacific island campaign.
If you think about it, this gun is more of a convenience than anything else, back then people would carry this much ammo at a time but on their bandoliers and maybe pouches. Having to reload after firing an x amount of ammo.
This gun wasn't meant to be reloaded in the thick of battle or hunting. Only in the confort of your home.
Что не ружье, то произведение искусства! Жаль, что сейчас так не делают!
thats actually a neat lookin rifle. thx for sharing
Love these vids and the firearms.
Evans rifle in RDOnline is a good use of $300, pro tip.
For what it is worth, 44 magnum brass will work in these guns. It is a bit short but it still works very well.
Good research like always!
You always put on A good show
Kind of like an auger but with bullets instead of grain
So this chap inspired the Calico carbine's helical feed system 100 years later !
All the newest gun technology is over 140 yrs old. But they refer to the ar as a modern weapon. The first was built in 1954
One of the most beautiful guns I've ever seen.
15,000 sales in 6 years Doesn't sound Like a Failure to me, It must have had Bad Management or Something? Definitely a Unique Design High Capacity for the time! -Cheers 👍😉
Really cool! I had no idea that such high capacity guns existed back then!
congratz on 250 k !
Great video. Also I can't help but laugh that on the side as recommended , I got loads of videos about Chris Evans 😂
I want a repro in .45 LC.
You should send some threatening letters to A. Uberti, Srl. Tell them you will take hostages.
this firearm exists!! Chiappa is one company, but there are a few more that make them. I believe Taylors does this too
Someone needs to make a modern version in.45ACP or 357 Magnum. 'Shut up and take my money!'
I would love one in 44 mag
If made robustly, the replica in 44mag or 45LC could easily do the original ballistics of 300gr@1200fps.
fuck me runnin'..... I saw one if these at a gun show in 2010 in Colorado. Dude was asking $500..... not sure what it's worth but now I'm kicking myself for not sweeping that up.
General rule of thumb when attending a gun show should always be "if it's antique, weird, and cheap just but it"
+no no *buy, God damnit
toomanyaccounts the blue book of gun values doesn't list most of these antique, unique firearms. This one included.
Great example of creating a terrific solution for a problem no one wanted to solve
It's easy to tell just looking at it that a true craftsman designed and built the thing, a handsome weapon I'd have to say
I have this in Red Dead Online, such a beautiful carbine, definitely my go to in shootouts.
Why? It does bad damage on RDR2
@@calebnation7797 Not at all, i got it ever since it first came out and its the only gun i spent over +10 gold on to decorate. The accuracy is amazing so headshots are easy to land and the big magazine is great for continuous shooting, your enemy will just finished reloading after you killed 8 of his friends.
@@nuke_landjohngaming4183 I once took down on a whole congregation of Ku Klux Klan members by just entering dead eye and marking a headshot for each guy. This was in story mode,by the way.
Wow, army turned down lots of great guns over the years for junk.
Well, it's obviously not got the power of .45-70, it's much more expensive, less reliable and that long reload could easily result in it having as slow a sustained rate of fire as a Trapdoor. It would be great if you knew you'd be well out of a fight after firing 26 shots or so but a typical soldier's ammunition loadout of the day was 100 rounds and they'd be expected to use that much.
Maybe what they had wasn't such junk.
Treblaine although, the fact that you can single load this rifle means that, upon emptying the magazine, you can just go to single load and still maintain a reasonable rate of fire.
couldntthinkofone100 fine. They are junk
@@willkenny5687 thats not a situation you use as a plan b. Or plan c.
@@metamorphicorder It was back then. Even as recently as 1914 Enfield No.1 Rifles still were equipped with a magazine cut off so that you could keep the magazine loaded with 10 rounds on back up and still load loose rounds one at a time. The Krag-Jørgensen which was adopted by the US Army in the late 1800s was a bolt action rifle, also with a magazine cut off.
Ian, there's mention of what must have been the old model Evans being used by a member of the US Army near Fort Ellis, MT. From a diary kept by a Sylvester Waltz, the entry for 31 Mar 1876 reads: "Lieut. Bradly shooting at mark with a gun, an Evens rifle, 36 shooter". Quoted in: Wolf, Derrick. Boys for Men: A Vietnam War Memoir (p. 22). Big Guy Wolf Press. Kindle Edition. Thanks to your review for shedding light on that.
Man it looks really impressive
I feel like he could have improved this by cutting back the helical track to just the loading mechanism and adding a spring to the magazine. Maybe even add a loading bay to the left or behind the chamber to load or top it off.
As silly as it sounds, you could 'fix' this action with a locking wind-up mechanism on the bullet elevator, so you could wind it bac.. no that won't work...
Why wouldn't that work?
You fire three shots. You wind it back. You load to fill the gap, and continue firing. It works.
+ravemastaj Until you fire and the wind up thing snaps off because it's right against your shoulder.
This gun is so beatiful...
i need to find one of these. its just so cool.
Was this the earliest example of a helical magazine fed firearm or were there earlier examples?
EnigmusNova
Hmm, dunno.
Update: Quick look I can't find much history on helical loadings, only helical magazines, which many sites say occurred in the 1980's.
I could put effort but hopefully Ian will respond.
Is it me or does the gun shape look sort of like a pigeon with the stock being the tail feathers and the forward wood grip the neck and head?
Nah, not just you. I can see it.
Noticed only after you said it! Nice catch
The physics of the feed mechanism reminds me very much of an Archimedes Screw in a sense, but rather than using an impeller, it's using the negative space and the fact that cartridges are solid rather than liquid to drive the cartridges forward.
Ian, I absolutely admire and love your work. I'm grateful for everything you do for the firearm community and education, its important work, and your Informative videos are a huge gift to every history and firearm enthusiast out there. Have you considered doing a guns of Red Dead Redemption 2 videogame? Video games do bring more people to become interestd in guns, history and Liberty, so I think the appeal would be great if you showcase the weapons from the game. The Evans was added awhile back and being able to see it firsthand like this was very informative. Thanks again for your work, finding your channel has been like finding a gold nugget for an old gun nut like me!
He's done some videos on some of the guns that appear in Red Dead II
Would it have been possible to make detachable magazines for this rifle? I was thinking that you might be able to make the loading spring so it was removable, kinda like a Calico.
Here for Red Dead Redemption 2
uppercut grandma indeed
@@cheesewax5999 - After punching your horse while trying to feed it.
@@keithc904 that's just PC
*L U M B A G O*
Wow! Cool to have a new model Evans with a loop lever mod, paired, as you've almost implied, with a new model Merwyn and Hulbert.
You got me at "High capacity" and "Wild/old West"
Rdronline got me into this
トミー犬ghos̸͠t͘_̨DO͜G Just the online? wtf
If he could've made it front loading that would've been epic!!!
I've only ever seen two of these absolute beautiful rifles in person. One is in the Maine State Museum, and one was just kicking around in a local gunstore. The second one was held together with old wood stove screws, and I wish the cashier knew the story, as it would've had to be interesting.
Love this one Ian.
A wish list Item. Wilfred Bromley and Tom Selick did a movie and Wilford carried one . always wanted one since.
Always thought this looked almost...alien. Like the Covenant guns in Halo.
lptomtom it so does
You could change the colors to purple and pink, add a bunch of needles sticking out of the top, and you have yourself a needle rifle. A very outdated needle rifle, but one nevertheless.
The covenant weapons look great
how strong is this action? If a reproduction was made, could it stand 44 special pressures with smokless powders? (using modern steels of course)
I own one. I would never put smokeless through it. With modern metal, it might be OK.
The undulating lines on that thing make it look more like it was manufactured in Innsmouth imo
Wow that thing is NEAT
Late to the party, just wanted to note that it's Mechanic Falls, Maine, not Mechanicsburg. (Named for the falls on the Little Androscoggin River, on which the mill that was the original reason for the town was built.)
Maine has an oddly rich history of peculiar tinkerers coming up with novel and interesting ways of doing things that were ultimately unsuccessful in the marketplace. The Stanley brothers and their steam-powered cars come to mind. Oh, and a chap called Hiram Maxim, but he did rather better than most on the marketplace side of things, possibly because he'd had the sense to decamp to Europe first.
("Never mind your electrical gadgets, Maxim--if you want to get rich, invent something that enables these Europeans to slaughter each other more efficiently," or words to that effect. :)
I'm from Mechanic Falls its crazy how much cool stuff went on in the town. Considering it still only has about 4000 or less residents
do I even need to say it, I want one of these
Its such a interesting looking gun. I like it.
Little correction, Mechanic Falls, Maine. Love your content, my buddy and I miss that you used to come up here for the auctions at James D. Julia.
Did you say if it was a rimfire or center fire cartridge?
Centerfire.
thanks!
could you still get ammo for that , if not is there a modern caliber you could get for it ?
@@nathanyado357 I'm sure you couldn't
You can not, but it is easy to reload for IF you can get a 300 gr. Spire-point .419 ball. I settled for a .421 mold and got pretty good results with resized .445 Supermag cases.
The rifle probably feels light to you because you don't have 34 rounds in it