However, it must be recognised that Patent drawings represent ideas and patent drawings rarely translate into an actual gun.This gun could be carried on pack horses, and fired from a tripod mount, or as one famous advertising engraving showed, from the back of a camel, which gave it the nickname.It is unlikely, however, if the gun was ever used from this mount.This page illustrates the new lock mechanism patented by Richard Gatling in 1872.
Links are provided to more information on some of the more successful ammunition hopper mechanisms. It weighed 135 lbs (61.2 kg). The gun incorporated several features to reduce weight. The lock cylinder and carrier blocks were cast hollow, and much use was made of brass rather than iron. The key feature was the design of the locks, which had been patented two years before (U.S. Patent No. 125563, dated 9 April 1872). The operation of this lock is the main purpose of this page and animation. The firing pin runs through the body of the lock, and is fired by pulling back on the knob at the rear of the pin, and then releasing it at the appropriate moment. A spring loaded detaining cam is then positioned to capture the firing pin knob. As the assembly continues to rotate, the lock is driven further forwards by the cam tracks, but the firing pin is held back by the Detaining cam and then released to fire the cartridge. Thus as long as the gun is being fed with cartridges the several operations of loading, firing and extracting are carried on automatically, uniformly and continuously. G6. Furthermore, if a lock was damaged, or the firing pin broke, the whole gun would have to be disassembled. For this reason, Gatling designed the Detaining cam so that it was spring loaded. With the gun turning in the correct direction, the knobs are captured as they pass and released to fire at a given point. However, if the gun is turned in the wrong direction, the knob on the lock will push the Detaining cam rearwards. The crank is turned until markings on the barrel assembly line up with an arrow on the casing. The lock extractor is then turned 90 degrees to unlock it, and it then can be pulled back, bringing with it one of the locks. The locks can then be replaced or repaired without dismantling the gun, and this can be done in the field. The dimensions of the cartridge shown in the animation are taken from the 1872 patent and show a cartridge with a pronounced shoulder, but in practice the guns would have fired the United States issue 45-70-500 cartridge (.45 inch calibre, 70 grains of black powder, lead bullet weight 500 grains). The animation shows the Broadwell drum magazine, which contained 16 columns of 15 cartridges. ![]() It is interesting that an illustration of the component parts of this model (G1) show a lock very similar to the 1865 model, this is with a cocking lug cut into the length of the lock, rather than the short lock illustrated above for the short model. Further confusion arises where (G1) shows the firing cycle for an 1871 model Gatling gun using the short lock design that was patented in April 1872.
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