Anyone heard of a LeMat revolver?

[Armed_Canuck]

I was watching pawn stars tonight and someone brought in a very interesting firearm, it eventually sold for $10,000. A civil war revolver that fired 9 rounds of .42 cal and 1 round of 20 ga. The thing looks crazy and supposedly only about 3000 made it to north america. Just curious if anyone has shot or even seen one in person. I tried searching and seems no one has brought up the gun before, figured I share.

 

[Skinny 1950]

The LeMat is an awesome if somewhat finicky black powder revolver,reproductions are available from this site sponsor:

http://www.marstar.ca/dynamic/category.jsp?catid=76192

 

[Clotho]

Very cool firearm. Pietta makes a reproduction of one of the Lemat models.

Skinny beat me to it. A much better source.

Does anyone know what the differences are between the Army, Navy and Cavalry models?

 

[MTF]

"Clotho", the gun you show looks like the cavalry model. The one introduced by "Armed_Canuck" is either Navy or Army (I think), but I can't recall the special features of each. LeMats were never produced in great numbers and there was a fair amount of variation in production because they were made in Europe as a kind of cottage industry for Confederate forces. I believe JEB Stuart's cavalry carried them. They had a swivelling hammer nose to enable firing the caps for the balls in the chambers around the periphery of the cylinder, and to fire the central shot barrel. Maybe Clint Eastwood will make a movie where one is used and they'll become popular. Although they were definitely used by Confederate forces, they were specialty guns and there never were many of them.