Smith & Wesson Model No. 2 Army

About the Smith & Wesson Model No. 2 Army

The Smith & Wesson Model No. 2 Army, also known as the No. 2 Old Army, was a six-shot single-action revolver chambered in .32 rimfire, produced from 1861 to 1874. Unlike the cap-and-ball revolvers of its day, it fired a self-contained metallic cartridge through a bored-through cylinder protected by the Rollin White patent, which gave Smith & Wesson a near-monopoly on cartridge revolvers until the patent expired in 1872. It used the firm's tip-up design, in which the octagonal barrel pivots upward to allow the cylinder to be removed for loading. Demand among Civil War soldiers as a private-purchase backup sidearm outstripped the company's production capacity.

Often credited as the first truly successful mass-produced American cartridge pistol, the No. 2 owed its success to Smith & Wesson's monopoly over bored-through metallic-cartridge cylinders. By tradition it was the gun on Wild Bill Hickok when he was murdered during an 1874 poker game in Deadwood, the hand that became known as the dead man's hand, and General George Armstrong Custer is said to have owned a pair.

Smith & Wesson Model No. 2 Army specifications

Weight is not published on accessible sources. Most common barrel lengths are 5 in and 6 in; 4 in is rare and 8/10 in are extremely rare. The cylinder is smooth/non-fluted, despite one secondary source erroneously listing it as fluted. Production total cited as roughly 77,000.