Remington-Beals First Model Pocket Revolver

About the Remington-Beals First Model Pocket Revolver

The Remington-Beals First Model Pocket Revolver is an American .31 caliber cap-and-ball percussion revolver designed by Fordyce Beals and manufactured by E. Remington & Sons of Ilion, New York. It was the earliest of Remington's Beals-patent pocket revolvers, a compact five-shot single-action arm with a solid frame, a short octagonal barrel, and a spur (sheath) trigger rather than a guarded trigger. The First Model lacked an attached loading lever, so its cylinder was removed from the frame for charging with loose powder and ball. Produced in modest numbers in the late 1850s for the civilian pocket-pistol market, it preceded the improved Second and Third Model Beals pockets and Remington's larger Beals Navy and Army revolvers.

The Beals pocket revolvers were Fordyce Beals' first designs to reach production at Remington, and their solid-frame layout foreshadowed the rugged top-strap frame that would make Remington's later Civil War percussion revolvers famous rivals to Colt.

Remington-Beals First Model Pocket Revolver specifications

Based on Fordyce Beals' pocket-revolver patents of the mid-1850s. The First Model is distinguished from the later Beals pocket revolvers by the absence of an attached loading lever, requiring cylinder removal to reload. Overall length and weight vary with barrel length and grip and are not reliably documented for this early model.