Remington-Beals Army

About the Remington-Beals Army

The Remington-Beals Army is a .44 caliber percussion (cap-and-ball) single-action revolver made by E. Remington & Sons of Ilion, New York, and the first of the solid-frame Remington Army revolvers that culminated in the famous New Model Army of 1863. Designed by Remington engineer Fordyce Beals around his September 1858 patent (No. 21,478), it is a six-shot, solid-frame revolver whose enclosed top strap gave it far greater rigidity than the open-top Colt revolvers it competed against. Each chamber is loaded from the front with a loose black-powder charge and a .44 round ball or conical bullet, fired by a percussion cap fitted to a nipple at the rear of the chamber, and the hammer is thumb-cocked manually for each of the six shots. Its 8-inch octagonal barrel is screwed into the frame, with a German-silver cone front sight dovetailed near the muzzle, a brass trigger guard, a color case-hardened hammer, and two-piece smooth walnut grips. The defining feature of the Beals design is its winged cylinder arbor (base) pin, retained by the loading lever beneath the barrel: the cylinder can be removed only by fully lowering the lever to draw the pin forward. The Beals Army saw early service in the American Civil War, with deliveries to the U.S. Ordnance Department in 1862 and an earlier purchase of roughly 1,000 by the State of South Carolina before the war, but its loading-lever and arbor-pin arrangement was soon revised, leading to the Model 1861 'Old Army' and then the improved New Model Army.

The Beals Army's signature was its winged cylinder arbor pin - the basis of Fordyce Beals's 1858 patent - which locked the cylinder to the solid top-strap frame and could be released only by fully lowering the loading lever to draw the pin forward. That clever retention scheme, combined with Remington's rigid top-strap frame, set the Beals Army apart from the open-top Colts, but it also seeded the loading-lever quirks that Remington would chase through the 1861 'Old Army' and finally cure in the legendary New Model Army that collectors later misnamed the 'Remington 1858'.

Remington-Beals Army specifications

The Beals Army was produced in small numbers - sources cite roughly 1,900 to 3,000 .44-caliber Army revolvers made between 1860 and 1862, far fewer than the ~15,000 .36-caliber Beals Navy revolvers. Government acquisition was limited: about 850 .44 Beals Army revolvers were delivered to the U.S. Army by the end of March 1862 at $15 each, and South Carolina purchased about 1,000 before November 1860. Weight is estimated at roughly 1,190 g and overall length at about 349 mm based on the 8-inch octagonal barrel and the closely related solid-frame Remington Army revolvers; exact factory weight and overall length for the Beals Army were not documented in the sources consulted. Muzzle velocity and energy are carried over from the equivalent .44 percussion load used by the related Remington Army revolvers and should be treated as estimates. Designer attribution is to Fordyce Beals, whose patent No. 21,478 (Sept. 14, 1858) covered the winged cylinder arbor pin central to the design.