As i,after a LOT of trouble,took deliver of my Freeman a few years back i soon enough realized it needed a little help. Being gun savy in its own right,but the thing here is that the Freeman revolvers do NOT work as you average Colt or Remington within.
Indeed,depressing the little plunger makes very short work of removing the cylinder on these.
Cylinder takes the "regular" 225-32 nipples and these are installed at a slight angle,like on the Remingtons et al. As is clear to be seen,cylinders carry the serial too. In this case 1906
It has been said that approx 2000 of these were made in 1863 and 64 which might very well be on the money. Fact is that Hoards armory ran into trouble and the machines used to make these Freeman revolvers were sold to the R&S company,and thus are a part of the later fabled Roger&Spencer revolver.
Another rather characteristic difference vs most other revolvers of the time is the use of a trapeeze thread for the barrel. As the rest of them it lacks forcing cone et al, what we today regard as parts of a revolver design.
Mine didn´t work but..being an engineer after all i just sat down and looked at how the various pts interacted and it soon enough became evident enough for me the fab what was needed,and presto..we had ourselves a working Freeman again.
One MAJOR culprit though was that the rifling of the gun was basically gone. Or?
...no. No it was not. As i took to clean the barrel out it simply wouldn´t stop producing crud n soot. So,got tired of that and went at it the more "hardcore" way. Barrel in the vise and..heat. From a torch. The thing lit up like friggin 4th of july,it was that dirty within.
Lo n behold...rifling.
What i presume had happend was that someone less into blackpower had used petroleum products for grease. Thus,"caking" the entire thing up long run. The rifling that came to show was rather rough,but at least present and i´m happy to report that as this is a few years since..the thing has cleaned up as good can be expected by simply using it.
Uhu. Both the stock lock and front sight are rather minescule to size. No doubt. The former had been gorilla´d in place by someone i guess as it was soldered on there,threads still there. Anyways..
Having the gun back together,having slugged it and the full 9 yrds it not only works once again it actually prints very well. Yes. This is a "50 points gun" at 25m,no doubt.
At the top of the absolute rear of the trigger guard is a small pin showing. This holds a small "fill in" piece onto the frame,where the cutout for the hand was made.
This..is very very often missing sry to say. Here you can also clearly see the lock setup for the plunger for the cylinder retention.
So? What can be said that aside? Well. First up the thing feels WAY more modern as far as ergonomics than the regular Colt,Remington,Starr or what have you not. Nimble almost,seeing what time frame we´re talking here.
Its stock 7,5" barrel is ample,and tapered to boot as you can see. All in all this makes the thing WAY less nose heavy than a regular Remmy for instance.
Owning several of these old warhorses it becomes rather interesting to compare them so...
That said...