Remington-Beals Pocket Revolver

About the Remington-Beals Pocket Revolver

The Remington-Beals 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, in the late 1850s. It is a compact five-shot single-action arm built on a solid frame with a short octagonal barrel and a spur (sheath) trigger rather than a guarded trigger. Produced in three successive models between roughly 1857 and 1860, it was Remington's first successful revolver line for the civilian pocket-pistol market: the earliest models loaded by removing the cylinder from the frame, while the final Third Model introduced the attached hinged loading lever that became a hallmark of Remington's later Civil War percussion revolvers. The Beals pocket line preceded and led directly to Remington's larger Beals Navy and Army revolvers.

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

Remington-Beals Pocket Revolver specifications

Based on Fordyce Beals' pocket-revolver patents of the mid-1850s. The line comprises the First, Second, and Third Models; barrel length grew from about 3 inches on the early models to roughly 4 inches on the Third Model. Overall length and weight vary by model, barrel length, and grip, and are not consistently documented. See remington-beals-1st-model and remington-beals-3rd-model for individual-model entries.