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A Real LeMat


Cholla

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I had the privilege to photograph an original LeMat for an article I am working on. It is #451. This is solidly a CW piece. #427 went to Confederate General Beauregard and #475 went to General Patton Anderson. At 25 to a crate, it should have been with one or the other. This is a nine-shot .42 caliber revolver with a single shotgun chamber of 18-gauge.

I wanted to get a reproduction to play with and compare but Taylors is out until next year!

 

 

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Neat!

Now if you could only shoot a stage with it!

Fully loaded.

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Just now, Cold Lake Kid, SASS # 51474 said:

Neat!

Now if you could only shoot a stage with it!

Fully loaded.

1. It's not mine.

2. It's worth $20K to $100K

3. A reproduction can be used but only with five shots according to PWB, but it would be cool to load all ten.

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I have one posse member who has one and has shot it at the odd match, loading 5, but as you say, Loading all 10 would be a WOW !

Maybe we'll ask him to bring it out and allow it for a monthly match next year. Not sure what that shotgun barrel ball(s) would do to a target, but we are using AR500, swinging from conveyor belt straps and angled downward.

I didn't realize an original would go for that much, at the upper end.

Several decades ago, an old timer I used to visit and bring fresh milk, eggs and bread etc. on occasion in return for being allowed to hunt ground hogs, deer, grouse etc. on his fallow fields, showed me an original he had. 

Wish I knew what happened to it after he passed.

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19 minutes ago, Alpo said:

What is that stud on the flat on the barrel? And there also appears to be a much smaller stud at the muzzle?

 

Could have been for the reloading lever.

 

image.thumb.png.89e5c33a3bb0fb4b2065c81d5cf3960c.png

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Back in the damn dark recesses of my memory, when the Italian copies came out, they said that since real ones were so rare and therefore so valuable, it was quite likely that people would attempt to pass the copies off as real ones.

 

So they made a few minor changes. Real ones are 42 caliber. Italian copies are 44 caliber. And (so my "getting worse every day it seems" memory tells me) real ones have the loading lever on the right, so the Italian copies put the lever on the left.

 

I've seen Italian copies, and they do have the loading lever on the left. But I've never seen a real one. Before this I had never seen a real one from the right side. so I don't know if real one's actually had the loading lever on the right, or if that is just my faulty memory.

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My original statement referenced the DIM dark recesses of my memory, but otto apparently thinks DAMN dark recesses is better.

 

I believe I will leave it the way he changed it.

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1 minute ago, Alpo said:

Back in the damn dark recesses of my memory, when the Italian copies came out, they said that since real ones were so rare and therefore so valuable, it was quite likely that people would attempt to pass the copies off as real ones.

 

So they made a few minor changes. Real ones are 42 caliber. Italian copies are 44 caliber. And (so my "getting worse every day it seems" memory tells me) real ones have the loading lever on the right, so the Italian copies put the lever on the left.

 

I've seen Italian copies, and they do have the loading lever on the left. But I've never seen a real one. Before this I had never seen a real one from the right side. so I don't know if real one's actually had the loading lever on the right, or if that is just my faulty memory.

Injun Ryder is correct. That was the stud for the loading lever. When the US Army board reviewed the pistol they didn't like the lever on the right so LeMat switched it to the left. There were many evolutionary changes over the brief history. The reproductions are based on later models.

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