Remington-Beals Second Model Pocket Revolver

About the Remington-Beals Second Model Pocket Revolver

The Remington-Beals Second 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, around 1858-1859. It is a compact five-shot single-action arm with a solid frame, a short octagonal barrel of roughly three inches, and a spur (sheath) trigger. The Second Model refined the frame and loading arrangement of the earlier First Model but, like it, still lacked an attached loading lever, so the cylinder was removed from the frame to charge each chamber with loose powder and ball. Produced in modest numbers for the civilian pocket-pistol market, it sits between Remington's First and Third Model Beals pockets in the evolution that led to the company's larger Beals Navy and Army revolvers.

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

Remington-Beals Second Model Pocket Revolver specifications

Based on Fordyce Beals' pocket-revolver patents of the mid-1850s. The Second Model is a refinement of the First Model and, unlike the later Third Model, has no attached hinged 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, low-production model.