Home / Series / Forgotten Weapons / Aired Order / Season 2019 / Episode 62

Genhart Horizontal Turret Rifle

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forgotten-weapons Heinrich Genhart was a Swiss designer working in Liege, Belgium in the 1850s making horizontal turret rifles. His design was actually pretty decent, and included recessed chamber mouths and a calming barrel which would lock more or less solidly into each chamber for firing, thus minimizing cylinder gap flash. This particular example is a roughly .38 caliber rifle with a 10-shot cylinder, in a pretty rough stock (I suspect a replacement). Genhart patented this design in Belgium in 1853 and in the United States in 1857, but turret rifles quickly fell out of popularity and his production ended by about 1860. The Genhart guns were designed for a specialty cartridge, formed of lead or tin foil using tools sold with the gun. They used a type of tube primer set into the base of each cartridge during assembly, which was crushed by a hammer moving directly upwards. The whole system seems quite good, but doomed by the advent of much better cartridge technology. Contact: Forgotten Weapons PO Box 87647 Tucson, AZ 85754

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  • Originally Aired February 23, 2019
  • Created September 28, 2021 by
    TVDB-Editor123
  • Modified September 28, 2021 by
    TVDB-Editor123