Working Hopkins & Allen Revolvers, Part 1

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The current level of interest among firearms collectors in old, nickel-plated pocket revolvers of the 1880s through post-WWI is amazing. Online auctions and sale listings show these .22s, .32s, and .38s with asking prices of as much as $250 and higher, depending on the manufacturer. Hopkins & Allen was one of the most prolific manufacturers of inexpensive and often nickel plated pocket revolvers firing metallic black powder cartridges.

At their peak, H&A produced thousands of handguns annually under about 30 "house" trade names, in addition for other retailers under their private labels. Below center: The paddle-shaped cylinder axis pin release is a telltale for H&A-made revolvers of the Forehand & Wadsworth design. The cylinder axis pin is left-hand threaded and features a thin slot at its forward end. Remove the pin and the cylinder literally falls out to the right; there’s no loading gate. 32 RF.

It is a bare bones singleaction revolver with a nickelplated cast iron frame, walnut grips, and a five-shot cylinder. This series of four articles outlines design features and disassembly procedures for four basic Hopkins & Allen revolvers types: the spur-trigger single-action solid frame; double action solid frame; top break, hinged, self-extracting revolvers; and the top break, hinged, self-extracting Safety Police with its unique cam-operated hammer.

This first article will cover background on the H&A spur trigger models. Compound-named New England firearm manufacturers were once plentiful—Smith & Wesson, Harrington & Richardson, Merwin

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Make sure the hammer is fully forward. Above center: Remove the hammer by first unscrewing the hammer axis screw, then withdrawing the hammer upward and forward so that the hammer’s "tail" clears the rear of the hammer slot in the frame. Disassembly is not recommended unless the hand spring requires replacement. & Hulbert, Hopkins & Allen, Forehand & Wadsworth, etc. In doing research for this article I discovered that three of those mentioned above were connected.

Merwin & Hulbert was a distributor of Hopkins & Allen firearms and H&A bought Merwin & Hulbert and made and marketed the handguns so named. These were of very high quality of materials and workmanship and were effective commercial rivals of contemporary Smith & Wesson and Colt revolvers. Current market prices reflect the quality and relative scarcity of examples of the Merwin & Hulbert brand.

The other business connection was that Hopkins & Allen purchased Forehand & Wadsworth and not only manufactured F&W revolvers after the purchase, but also incorporated F&W features into H&A handguns. Charles W. and Samuel S. Hopkins together with Charles Allen founded Hopkins & Allen Firearms Co. in 1867 in Norwich, Connecticut with the purchase of the Bacon Mfg. Co. building. In 1878 they relocated to anew, much larger facility at Willow and Franklin Streets in Norwich.

On February 4, 1900, a devastating fire completely consumed the factory. Hopkins & Allen purchased Forehand & Wadsworth immediately following the fire, with F&W revolvers being made in the F&W factory under both the F&Wand H&A marques. Four years and considerable debt later, Hopkins & Allen was producing as many as 188 models of handguns, rifles, and shotguns.

Break top models dominated H&A production output between 1906 and 1914; models with solid hammers, folding hammers, and enclosed hammers (hammerless) were offered. By 1914, Hopkins & Allen was insolvent, taken over by majority shareholders, declared bankruptcy, and ceased production of new firearms. The company assembled what guns they could from parts on hand, with their dealer network selling the last such guns in 1917.

During its 50-year history, Hopkins & Allen was responsible for dozens of patents for firearm innovations, with 17 that are particularly noteworthy. These included several variations on swing-out cylinders, hinged hammer, hinged breech block, a Colt Single Action Army-style case extractor mounted on cylinder axis pin, adjustable set

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Be aware of it lest it fall out after removal of the cylinder stop. trigger, hammerless safety catch, frame-mounted firing pin, and a cam-mounted hammer that withdrew the hammer into the recoil shield and away from contact with the frame mounted firing pin, similar to howa transfer bar blocks hammer impact until withdrawn by the lockwork during firing. Early Hopkins & Allen revolvers were solid framed, spur-triggered and single-action in design.

In appearance they’re not unlike the Cylinder, hammer assembly, grips, mainspring, grip/frame, hammer axis screw, trigger and trigger reset V-spring, cylinder stop with spring fitted, and cylinder axis pin. About as simple as a revolver can get. Below center: Close up showing where the upper end of the mainspring seats against the hammer. It drives out fairly readily but locking tweezers are recommended to hold it for reinstallation.

It’s best not to remove the pin and hand spring unless absolutely necessary. currently-produced small North American Arms .22 and .22 Magnum derringers but larger and usually nickel plated. Nickel plating was the standard finish and the preference of manufacturers of such handguns because the majority of the revolvers were made of cast iron and for black powder propellant cartridges.

Cast iron being porous did not lend itself to being chemically blued and the chemicals used in the bluing process would deteriorate blued finishes rapidly unless the cast iron surfaces were highly polished or porosity sealed using sodium silicate ("water glass"). The nickel plating process of the day was more amenable to being applied to unsealed cast iron without deterioration. H&A advertisements of the era showed an extra cost of $0.50 for blued finish.

The early "birds head" gripped, spur trigger, single-action Hopkins & Allen revolvers were made in two basic frame sizes and chambered in .22 Rimfire, .32 Rimfire, .32 Centerfire, .38 Short Colt, .38 S&W, and even .38-40. Many of those chamberings carried over when H&A started producing solid-framed, double action revolvers with triggers protected by trigger guards.

Like their older spur-trigger relatives, the double action H&A revolvers initially did not offer extractors, requiring the empty cases to be pulled or pushed out manually. A later H&A patent described a spring-loaded extractor lever, similar to that on a Colt SAA, that was mounted off the cylinder axis pin and offered on large frame H&A revolvers.

H&A included on many models a spring-loaded lock lever that retained the cylinder axis pin, permitting quick removal of the cylinder full of empties, and facilitating their ejection using the cylinder axis pin. Pressing the cylinder axis pin retaining lever allowed quick removal of the cylinder axis pin/ extractor rod assembly as well as

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The seat for the lower end of the mainspring is above the first serial number digit. This is evidence of why these revolvers are not robust and should not be fired—the sear contact point is unevenly worn and has a fragile "wire edge". the cylinder itself on large frame models equipped with the optional extractor rod.

Many solid frame models featured a gateless loading groove in the right side of the receiver for purposes of loading cartridges and perhaps removing empties as an alternative to removal of the cylinder. The disadvantage of this loading groove is that unfired car- Wiggling the hammer into place for reinsertion of the hammer axis pin withdraws the hand back into its resting position in the frame. tridges could fall out if the cylinder was rotated with the handgun held in a muzzle up orientation.

At some point, H&A began fitting loading gates to some of their small, medium, and large solid frame double action revolvers to ensure retention of cartridges. There are examples with loading gates machined with a thumbnail groove not unlike that found on a pocketknife blade with later production models with loading gates exhibiting a small round or cylindrical knob as a pull point to facilitate opening.

With the advent of the later Webley-like hinge-framed top break Hopkins & Allen variants and the improved Triple-Action Safety Police top break revolvers, the loading gate issue became a moot point. Undoing a catch at the rear of the top strap on atop break revolver allowed the barrel to be rotated downward and the rear of the cylinder pointing up, with an extractor star operated by a cam lever in the frame/barrel hinge.

Rotating the barrel open and downward smartly resulted in simultaneous ejection of all five, six, or seven (in the case of a .22 revolver) cartridges or empty cases, permitting more rapid reloading. This was a huge improvement over the solid frame single and double action revolvers and the feature remained in production until H&A ceased operations in 1916.

Hopkins & Allen was fond of the model designation XL for their solid frame revolvers, apparently a phonetic play on letters of the word "excel." A number H&A-marked guns carried the XL imprint during H&A’s production history.

In addition to the H&A XL-marked revolvers, the following "house" trade/model names were just some used on spur trigger and solid frame revolvers: Czar, Tramp’s Terror, Excelsior, Range Model, Cap’n Jack, Essex, Scott, Ranger 22 Long, Ranger #2, Hinsdale, Mountain Eagle, The Challenge, Bull Dog, Life Guard, Old Hickory, Safety Police, Towers Police, Buckeye, Acme, Wolverine, Morley, and Dictator.

The last H&A revolvers were in the distributor pipeline and sold as late as 1917, a few years after the company’s bankruptcy and liquidation. This was well after the introduction of smokeless powder but black power cartridges were still manufactured and widely

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available when the sun set on H&A. Because of the cast iron frames of these revolvers it is strongly recommended that they NOT be fired, especially with smokeless powder cartridges. The reasons for this are that metallurgy and manufacturing process control 140 years ago was nothing near what it is today. Additionally, no one knows what use any of the existing H&A handguns have been put through.

Some may have been purchased and never fired, while others may have changed hands a number of times and have seen a steady diet of a few hundred rounds of smokeless .38 S&W cartridges. There’s an old story told about Hopkins & Allen revolvers alluding to their superior strength.

According to their 1910 catalog, a Hopkins They are visible just to the right of the serrations, directly under the left end of the cylinder. & Allen Triple Action Safety Police revolver was fired successfully 923 times in government testing. This sounds impressive but "923" is an odd number of cartridges to be fired. Did the 924th round blow up the gun? The takeaway: Collectors of H&A and other pre-WWI pocket pistols should enjoy them for the historical pieces they are, leaving them unfired.

It is recommended that one should instead shoot the more modern handguns in one’s respective collection. For the reader interested in more about Hopkins & Allen, Cornell Publications has a number of reproduced catalogs and collector references with material about the founders, the company, and numerous models of revolvers, rifles, and shotguns. Visit Cornell Pubs. com/old-guns/historic-hopkinsand-allen.php.

The remainder of this series of articles describes the takedown of four Hopkins & Allen models that generally represent the basic configurations manufactured. These include the Dictator, representing spur trigger models; the XL, standing in for the solid frame extractorless variants; an unnamed H&Atop break automatic extracting hinged frame example; and atop break automatic ejecting hinged frame Triple Action Safety Police revolver, the pinnacle of H&A revolver design, Merwin and Hulbert revolvers aside.

There were many sub-variants in terms of barrel length, markings, grip styles, external hammer and hammerless, grip materials, model names, etc., but for the most part the majority of H&A revolver production falls into these four categories. Everything else are variations on these themes. Excluded from this series are the revolvers made between 1900 and 1906 marked Hopkins & Allen but are essentially Forehand & Wadsworth designs.

These are all solid-frame extractor-less revolvers featuring a paddle-shaped cylinder axis pin release projecting out the front of the frame directly under the cylinder axis pin. Also excluded from these articles are the socalled hammerless Hopkins & Allen revolvers which incorporated an internal swinging hammer in a humpbacked closed frame. Examples of these two types of H&A revolvers were not readily available to this author for review. Note also that license has been taken with terminology of H&A handgun parts.

The parts drawings in reproduced literature utilize ambiguous factory terms such as "cam carry up" for the springloaded actuating catch inside the extractor cam of Triple Action Safety Police revolvers, or some terms being very generic, e.g., "lever" or "spring". More descriptive common revolver parts terms have been used instead. Many American Gunsmith articles incorporate exploded diagrams and parts legends.

This series of articles does not because of the scarcity of reproducible highfidelity images of H&A exploded views. Instead, photos are provided of exploded layouts of the parts of the four types of H&A revolvers examined with the photo captions listing the parts shown. Spur Trigger Dictator Starting with the earliest type of H&A revolver, the Dictator is an example of a nickel-plated, five-shot, spur trigger, solid frame single

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action revolver chambered in .32 Rimfire and wearing walnut grips and featuring a cartridge loading groove in the right side of the frame and the ubiquitous nickel plating. To disassemble, first remove the cylinder axis pin using a properly-fitted slotted screwdriver in the end of the axis pin and turning clockwise as the pin is left threaded. Withdraw the cylinder from the right side of the frame. Remove the grip panels by removing the grip screw.

Hint: Back out the screw until you feel it click as the starts of the threads pass each other. Then, using the screwdriver, push in on the screw head to pop the right grip panel loose. Once the right grip panel is off, the left panel can be pushed off with a finger. Remove the mainspring using a pair of needle-nose pliers gripping the spring at the bottom where it seats in the frame. Pull the end of the spring away from its seat and sideways out of the frame.

The upper end of the spring is rounded and contacts a notch-like seat in the rear of the hammer. This seat is obvious in that it is shiny from contact with the spring tip. Remove the hammer by first unscrewing the hammer pivot screw and withdrawing it. The hammer position will be shifted slightly when the screw is removed due to spring force from the hand, which is attached to the lower left front of the hammer.

Move the hammer forward in its slot as if the firing pin would contact the case rim in order for the "tail" of the hammer to clear the frame. Pull upward and withdraw the hammer from the frame. If the hand spring is intact, the hand will remain attached to the hammer; just be mindful of the hand’s position as the hammer is withdrawn from its slot and have a jeweler’s screwdriver ready to assist with repositioning the hammer as needed.

Next, drive out the trigger pin from right to left using an appropriately-sized punch and light hammer, supporting the frame on a bench block. I usually drive the pins out partially, just enough to remove the pinned component. This keeps the pins where they belong and prevents their loss or confusion as to which pin goes where. Finally, drive out the cylinder stop pin from right to left. Using tweezers or small needle-nose pliers, withdraw the cylinder stop from the frame.

Note that the cylinder stop coil spring is in a recess in the frame and seats in a notch at the rear of the cylinder stop. In this example, the spring was securely seated but in other H&A spur trigger handguns the spring may pop out with removal of the cylinder stop; just beware so that the spring doesn’t go off on a self-initiated adventure into the far reaches of your bench or shop.

The Dictator is now stripped down and ready for detailed cleaning and lubrication or replacement of one or more springs or other components. Note that parts are not widely available. Even if in stock at a firearm parts vendor, these parts were largely hand fitted during original factory assembly. You may well have to fabricate parts and prepare springs from a Wolff spring assortment, so take the cost of that into consideration when quoting the work to make Great Granddad’s pistol functional again.

As is usually the case, assembly is in reverse order but take care to ensure that springs are seated properly and the trigger is precisely in place to facilitate installation of the trigger axis pin. The hand needs to be held back against the hammer for replacement into the frame and the hammer needs to be held forward a bit for the hammer’s "tail" to clear the frame at the rear of the hammer slot.

Reinstalling the mainspring is easy; just make sure the top of the spring is properly seated in the underside of the hammer. Bending the bottom of the spring forward using pliers, slide it into the frame and against its lower seat. Reinstall the grip panels. It bears repeating that these revolvers all had cast iron frames, have wide tolerances, poor metallurgical process control, and individual examples have more or less wear than others.

Hopkins & Allen revolvers were designed and manufactured to use black power cartridges. Despite the availability of modern low-power smokeless loads, it is recommended that H&A revolvers are not to be fired under any circumstances, even using black powder, due to many examples being very worn. Clean them up, lubricate them, even repair them for their owners, but for personal safety resist the temptation to fire them. Preserve them for the firearms history that they are. AG