For some time around here people have been buying Ruger 10/22 rifles and immediately replacing the perfectly good barrel with something… I dunno. Fancier? More tacti-cool? Whatever, it meant that for some time the barrels could be had quite inexpensively. I bought two for $15 each. One of them I turned down into barrel liner and a pistol barrel. The other I saved for an eventual project.

As chance would have it I came across some 3/4″ x 2-1/2″ brass for dirt cheap, and decided the time had come to build a rifle. But what kind of rifle? I know the various ways that guns work, and I mulled over several options. My first time ought to be a simple single-shot. I considered variations of bolt-actions, a lever-action falling block, a tilt-breech, even a trap-door. In the end I settled on a rolling-block as the simplest ‘real’ breech mechanism.

I had no actual plans drawn up, I just headed in the shop knowing what I wanted. I’d just figure it out as I went… The one goal (aside from making a functional rifle) was that I didn’t want the end result to look like some schmuck made it in his garage.

I decided on a carbine, so I cut the 10/22 barrel to 16-1/4″. I wanted to preserve the front sight assembly so I cut it from the breech end, then turned the end down to fit into a receiver and ran a chamber reamer in to cut a new chamber. Next I set up a ‘working block,’ just a bar of steel to set up the basic geometry of the parts.

On a Remington Rolling Block part of the hammer blocks the breech from opening when the hammer is down. I opted for a simpler version of this that allows the mechanism to be more compact. When the hammer is down the breech is locked, and when the breech is open the hammer is unable to drop.

Once I had that set up I set to work on the brass. I opted for brass because I thought it would look nice and, more importantly, I was pretty sure I could mill it on my drill press with a milling vice. Turns out I was correct, and I transferred the breech-block and hammer to the new receiver. The barrel is closely fitted to the receiver, and glued in place with glass-filled epoxy.

The breech rides on a pin screwed into the frame. In the pictures the hammer is shown mounted on a bolt, but this was replaced with the same sort of blind pin that the breech uses. Once this was all working satisfactorily I added the trigger-

At this point I drilled the breech-block for the rebounding firing pin. This has a 3/16″ shaft narrowing to a bit over 1/16″ where it passes through to strike the cartridge rim. There is a short section of spring (liberated from a ball-point pen) to return the firing pin when the hammer is cocked. The hammer-end of the firing pin is slightly reduced in diameter and the breech-block is staked with a punch to hold the pin in place. Time to test!

I had some .22 blanks on hand, and fiddled with things until it would fire those reliably, then I moved up to CB Caps. Problem- while it had no problem with the copper-case blanks the brass cases of the CB Caps were too much for it. The spring just couldn’t accelerate the hammer fast enough. I tried several different springs with different thicknesses and geometry before arriving at one that worked without rendering the gun too hard to cock.

The new spring worked a treat with CB Caps, and then with .22 Long rifle. I made a side-plate for the receiver, and a trigger-guard, then is was time for the stock and fore-stock. I had a piece of Quilted Maple allocated for this and gor things cut out on the bandsaw. I fitted the tangs into the stock, then shaped it to what I wanted. I soldered a block of brass to the barrel. A screw passed through the forestock and engages a threaded hole in this block to retain the fore-grip. It’s very solid! After shaping the wood bits with the belt-sander, I stripped all the parts out of the receiver and shaped it to match.

I finished the wood with multiple coats of Fiebing’s Light Brown leather dye, then applied a hand-rubbed Carnauba Wax finish. I finished the internal parts and screws with Van’s Instant Blue and assembled it. Looks very rifle-like at this point!

I Still needed sights and a butt-plate. As it turned out I had a front-sight, and it was easy to mount in the existing dovetail. I ground a small flat on the barrel just ahead of the receiver, then filed a dove-tail for the rear sight, donated from a Kimber 1911a1. Most likely I’ll replace these sights with something more precise eventually, but they’ll do for now.

Testing with CB Caps at three yards it put five into one hole precisely at the point-of-aim. I’ll get out to the range soon and see how it does at 25 yards with .22 LR ammo.

As it sits the carbine is 33-1/2″ overall with the 16-1/4″ barrel. It weighs 4.65lbs. It balances dead-center of the action; it’s a pretty handy little package for small game or target shooting.

I’m pretty jazzed about this project; it’s gone very well with fewer bobbles than many previous projects. The polished brass receiver looks good and the wood is gorgeous. With more coats of wax and polishing it will be spectacular. I can hardly wait to get it out to the range.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 7 Feb, 2018

I like going shooting, and I do it frequently. But it’s always a bit of a production; get cleaned up from the shop and change out of work clothes, gather the ammo and decide which guns to take this time, drive 20 minutes to the range. I occasionally have to wait for a lane to open up. It’s a good time and all that, but some days I’m worn out and would just as soon pass.

It took a box of the least-powerful commercial ammo you can readily buy to reacquaint me with the simple pleasure of shooting. I have some issues, and it’s been kind of a rough couple of weeks. It’s been hard to get much done, and even when I do get something concrete accomplished the satisfaction of that is tainted by the fact that I didn’t do more, and the thought of how much more needs to be done.

After work I futzed around the shop a little, did some lathe work on a project but I really wasn’t into it. I plopped down in my chair in the clean-shop to have a smoke, and my eye fell on a pistol on the work-bench.

This is a single-shot .22 I made a couple of years back. OK, it was originally a .22 Magnum, but I got tired of paying center-fire prices for rimfire ammo that I couldn’t even reload, and I rebarrelled it for .22 LR.. I remembered I had bought a box of .22 CB Caps to test-fire the H.C.Lombard pistol…

For those not familiar with them CB Caps are a 29gr. bullet in a .22 Short case with no powder- just the primer. They are about as powerful as an old pellet-rifle. I had a stout board with two layers of plywood backing it up at the other end of the shop- about five yards from my chair… I got up and made a square of blue masking tape and returned to my chair, dumped out a small handful of CB Caps and had at it.

It was excellent. Sitting in my comfy office-chair, enjoying a smoke and casually plinking away with the little pistol. The CB caps aren’t even loud enough to require hearing protection. OK, it might still be a good idea, but I wasn’t going to stir myself to fetch them. It was relaxing, casual and felt almost decadent.

After about twenty rounds I taped up the target (a pretty decent group, actually) and fetched out The Cherub and ran a couple of cylinders through that too. Hmmm… hitting low and left with the CB Caps, but not a bad grouping.

It was very relaxing, and I was not only shooting, I was getting to enjoy my own handiwork, which made it just that much more satisfying. I only spent about fifteen or twenty minutes and fired around forty shots total, but at the end of it I was relaxed and in a pretty good mood.

It really reminded me that shooting is fun, and it doesn’t always have to be about testing a gun, trying out a new load, training or trying to nail down an impressive target to post. Sometimes it’s OK to just kick back and shoot just for the pleasure of shooting. Sometimes it’s better than OK, it’s just what I need.

I think I need to buy another box of CB Caps…

I’m not sure where the term ‘Belly Gun’ came from, but it was a slang term for a hide-out gun in the Old West. Some have suggested that it meant the guns were intended to be used when you were ‘belly to belly,’ but the fact that these guns were often equipped with reasonable-length barrels and sights casts doubt on this notion. Initially at least this seems to have indicated a use for a gun rather than a type. After the Civil War the term seems more and more to have referred to short-barrelled firearms, and by the 20th C. it seems to have been firmly fixed as referring to a snub-nose revolver.

In point of fact any hideout piece meant to be employed with stealth and surprise was termed a ‘Belly gun,’ and many of them were not revolvers. I’ve seen reference to a Hammond Bulldog, a single-shot pistol chambered in .44 Henry Rimfire, as a person’s ‘Belly Gun.’ Certainly in modern terms though, this term is now applied almost exclusively to revolvers.

There have actually been revolvers intended for concealed carry for about as long as there have been practical revolvers. The original Colt Patterson was a .28 caliber revolver, and was quite svelte enough to be carried concealed. Being underpowered, fussy and rather fragile it was not a commercial success.

After Colonel Walker’s commision for 1000 Walker Colt horse pistols, the first new commercial endeavor Colt undertook was the .31 Caliber ‘Baby Dragoon,’ a small .31 caliber revolver intended from the outset as a concealed self-defense pistol. This was followed immediately by the 1849 .31 Pocket Model, which incorporated mechanical improvements and a loading lever, and the ‘Wells Fargo,’ an 1849 with a short barrel and no loading lever. The 1849/Wells Fargo line became the best-selling Colt percussion revolvers, with over 300,000 produced between 1849-1873.

Smith & Wesson jumped into the game in 1857 with their Model #1 revolver, chambered in .22 Rimfire (which we now call .22 Short) and shortly thereafter with a .32 Rimfire. These were not short-barrelled guns as such, but they were quite svelte and easily concealed under the clothing of the time.

Both the Colt and S&W concealable factory revolvers of this era were rather anemic, and some people wanted something with a bit more punch. This led to chopping the barrels off of Colt Navy .36 caliber revolvers. Early Mormons were notorious for this, and they came to be referred to as ‘Avenging Angels’ or ‘Mormon Avengers.’ When the 1860 Army .44 was introduced this treatment was applied to them as well. Judging from the numbers of surviving examples this appears to have been widely done, but not necessarily common.

Remington cast it’s hat in the ring in 1857 with several percussion revolvers, including Remington-Beals single-action models and Remington-Rider double-action percussion revolvers ranging in caliber from .31-.44. These included several pocket models, which were available in .31 and .36 caliber, and all of the early Rider revolvers were intended as pocket-guns. The did introduce a variant of the 1858 using the Rider double-action mechanism in 1863 that was a belt pistol.

After the Civil War metallic cartridges began to supplant percussion guns. S&Ws monopoly on the bored-through cylinder expired and others, including Colt began to introduce pistols and revolvers that used metallic cartridges. Initially these were conversions of percussion revolvers, but in 1871 Colt introduced their first solid-frame, purpose-built cartridge revolvers, the House Pistol and Cloverleaf (so named due to it’s four-shot cylinder) chambered in .41 Rimfire.

By 1885 a bewildering variety of small cartridge revolvers were being marketed, all intended to serve the concealed carry market. All the big-name makers offered pocket revolvers, and ‘British Bulldog’ revolvers were imported both from Britain and Belgium. In the US Forehand & Wadsworth made their fortune on their domestically-produced ‘British Bulldogs.’ Colt did market their 1873 in an ejectorless model, which were available with very short barrels, but it was increasingly rare to see cut-down versions of full-sized belt revolvers.

Any and all of these might have been used as, and referred to, as Belly Guns. Of course just covering these would be the subject of a book- or more likely multiple books!

In the early 21st Century Cowboy Action Shooting competition has sparked a renewed interest in the ‘Belly Gun,’ but since of all the vast majority of period revolvers only Colts and Remingtons are normally available as reproductions they are based entirely on cut-down versions of those guns. As long-time readers will know I make a good few of these myself, usually in the form of cartridge-conversion guns.

So the western Belly Gun is alive and well in the modern era, but with scads of more practical options it’s all for fun now. I’m fine with that; I enjoy my modern guns and amenities. But every so often it’s nice to take a step back…

Michael Tinker Pearce, 20 January 2019