The factory's manager, Henry Schlund, held a patent in his own name for a revolver that was similar to the double-action six-cylinder Tranter revolver. Kynoch renamed the factory "The Kynoch Gun Works" in 1885 and changed the address on its packaging from Birmingham to the more posh Aston. Tranter retired in 1885, with his patent rights -Between 18 Tranter secured 24 patents firearms design patents and 19 cartridge patents- as well as the Tranter factory later being acquired by munitions manufacturer George Kynoch. This was the last official use of Tranter revolvers by the British military. 450-calibre centrefire cartridge revolvers for use in the Zulu War. In 1878, he received a contract from the British Army for the supply of. īy 1867, his company expanded its production with a new factory in Aston Cross, Birmingham, West Midlands under the name "The Tranter Gun and Pistol Factory". As early as 1868, Tranter had also begun the manufacture of centrefire cartridge revolvers. In 1863, Tranter secured the patent for rimfire cartridges in England, and started production using the same frame as his existing models. Īfter the American Civil War, production continued of the Tranter percussion revolver (despite the increasing availability of cartridge-firing designs), because many people thought percussion firearms were safer and cheaper than the "new-fangled" cartridge-based designs of the time. 50 being the most popular, while Tranter developed an Army model (.44 calibre) and a Navy model (.36 calibre) for the American market. The Tranter was originally produced in six calibres, with. Īs a reliable, functional, and proven design, Tranter revolvers soon enjoyed a great popularity among the Confederate military. Griswold & Company, continued to distribute Tranter's guns. Following the outbreak of the Civil War, Hyde and Goodrich dissolved their partnership, and its successors, Thomas, Griswold & Company, and A. At the outbreak of the war, Tranter had a contract with the importing firm Hyde & Goodrich in New Orleans to import and distribute his revolvers commercially. With the beginning of the American Civil War, the demands for foreign weapons in the Confederate States of America increased, as the Confederacy no longer had access to the weapons factories in the North and had almost no local small-arms manufacturing capability of their own. To fire more rapidly, one could pull both triggers simultaneously, making it a double-action weapon. To fire the weapon in the single-action mode, one had to first press the lower trigger, which would pull the hammer back and rotate the cylinder at this point one could fire the gun with a light pull on the upper trigger. The hammer on this model had no spur and therefore could not be cocked with the thumb. On the double-trigger Tranter revolvers, a second trigger below the trigger guard served to cock the gun. Over the course of the 3 models Tranter developed, the only significant change was to the attachment of the ramrod- In the first model it was detachable, on the second model it was attached to the frame by a hook on the fixed barrel, and in the third model (1856) it was attached to the barrel by a screw. The Tranter revolver was a "solid-frame" design, very similar in appearance to the Beaumont–Adams revolver. The first model was sold under the name Tranter-Adams-Kerr. The first model of his own design used the frame of an Adams-type revolver, with a modification in the mechanism which he had jointly developed with James Kerr. Originally operated with a special dual-trigger mechanism (one to rotate the cylinder and cock the gun, a second to fire it) later models employed a single-trigger mechanism much the same as that found in the contemporary Beaumont–Adams revolver.Įarly Tranter revolvers were generally versions of the various Robert Adams-designed revolver models, of which Tranter had produced in excess of 8000 revolvers by 1853. The Tranter revolver was a double-action cap & ball revolver invented around 1856 by English firearms designer William Tranter (1816–1890). United Kingdom & Colonies, Confederate States, United States, Australia, CanadaĪmerican Civil War, Anglo-Zulu War, Fenian raids, Red River Rebellion 44 Army, from the collection of General JEB Stuart Tranter revolver (Second Model with single trigger) in.