Ian has finally found the perfect gun for The Chieftain. It even has a track tensioning system!

Imagine Clint Eastwood with this weapon - " You're thinking "Did he fire 80 shots or only 70?" Now to tell you the truth, I've forgotten myself in all this excitement. "

A "rocket-ball firing chain-rifle" legitimately sounds like something a 9 year old would come up with if you asked them to make the coolest gun they can possibly think of.

I LOVE your persona. You’re an absolute gun nut, but not from the demolition ranch style. You’re a scholar of firearms, not a clickbait redneck. Your appreciation of firearms, their history, & so much more, really shines through in every video; I respect & appreciate it.

Imagine your surprise, in 1880, fighting an opponent who fired 80 times in a row without loading.... The cartridge may be weak, but the sheer volume of fire would be frightening

Brings new meaning to the term "chainfire".

You know, this mechanism is actually quite elegant. I can totally imagine such a thing today in .22 with some sort of transparent side panel to see how the mechanism operates and some tweaks to the reloading system, like a crank powered tool. It would be a really cool, novelty plinker to have fun with.

Gives a whole new meaning to chain gun. Honestly one of the most unique guns out there, one I'd love to see in a game

Unironically makes for a pretty good period varmint rifle to clear off a large property without needing to reload.

I would think it would be a lifetime level achievement to get all 80 loaded and have all 80 actually shoot.

Thanks, this is the very definition of a Forgotten Weapon

Sweet!! Very interesting. Even if it doesn’t have the energy of a modern break barrel pellet gun, props to the dudes who made this work.

Here in Italy, from the 1960s onwards, companies like Molgora and EDISON Giocattoli have been manufacturing cap firing toy guns that feed in exactly the same way! :D

It's a good thing that the cartridge is so underpowered because it's fairly safe to assume that you will accidentaly fire it a minimum of 5 to 10 times during the full reloading process...

I'm not a gun person but an admirer of mechanics and artistic design. You have nailed it with your description as a cool gun. These guns are brilliant examples of clever design and careful craftsmanship. I really enjoyed this video.

Fascinating. I love to see these “paths not taken.” Makes one think of the Volcanic in America. When I look at my old carton of VL caseless .22 ammunition (relic of Daisy’s short lived venture), I think about alternative arms. I wish the Gyrojet had been further developed. It might be a good gun for Space Force.

It doesn’t matter how underpowered the ammunition is, by the time you reload your opponent will have died of old age anyway.

Actually this type of system would be kind of cool to be brought back for like a .22 short or long.. obviously it probably won't happen, but the idea of it just sounds kind of fun

Thanks, it’s a while since I watched a rifle video and this one was fascinating. So ‘metal storm’ was around a long time ago and appears to have suffered the same fate.

The ingenuity is pretty impressive. Imagine a modern day version of this in a 22 short or lr.

That's the most fascinating gun you've shown in a while. I'm surprised I've never seen these. You'd think they would be on the cover of gun collecting books.

What a magnificent series of words with which to make a title.

I'd like to see someone manufacture some appropriate ammo for those rocket ball ammo guns like Guycot or Volcanic and see how powerful they really were

This seems like it'd be an absolute nightmare to load, and I was thinking that BEFORE you revealed you need to pull the trigger dozens of times to load it. Sheer tedium and the risk of negligent discharge, the perfect combination.

This is a perfect example of a gun that I really wish there was a company doing a replica of. It would bankrupt the company, and be wildly out of my price range but man this is a cool piece.

Would be very interesting to see a live firing and gel testing if ammo can be made.

The most unusual firearm I've ever seen! Thanks Ian!

Very cool and unusual gun. Thanks for showing it.

For those who say there's no history of "high capacity magazines" in older firearms...

What a great throwback, my uncle introduced me to this channel by showing me the original Guycot pistol video. Keep it up guys!

It would be so cool to see a "modern" redesign of this. What a cool system, I love when you show us radically different designs, also thanks for showing the insides! Absolutely beautiful rifles, I wonder how they shoot? Wink wink nudge nudge

ive been waiting for this video!

I didn’t expect a sequel

Not the first multi shot rifle, but a dang cool one!

I love the quirky engineering that goes into things like this.

I wanted to see this be used/demo’ed so bad!!! Such a cool firearm of the old days. Would have been neat too see the firepower.

One can easily imagine a kind of novelty rifle in .38 acp with 80 round. The reloading is annoying n' tediously. But you will got fun on the range.

I knew that the gun is going to be goofy, but hadn't expected a fake barrel

WOW, great show mate. I've never seen anything like this before

a great very interesting video and weapon Mr.GJ.Have a good one.

So much for that "no one imagined large capacity magazines" thing.

"I don't think we can use the full barrel length, seeing as our cartridge has roughly the power of an energetic spitball."

THE SEQUAL IVE BEEN WAITING FOR !!!!

Thanks Ian, that was real interesting. Having been a fan of firearms for many many years, beginning in my mid-teens until now at 60+ years old, I don't recall this gun from my old books. Yes a basically 6.5mm ball with powder charge comparable to about a .22 short cartridge would be quite a challenge for a barrel more than 6 inches.

*Guycot: Fifteen minutes of loading can give your fifteen percent or more in shooting time.* 😂

If you could cycle the chain in reverse while reloading it would be a lot more "functional" in battle, as it would allow you to load 3, 5, 10, whatever amount you wanted/could load and immediately return to firing it.

thanks Ian...again very cool "1879" rifle..!...love when u show the workings on the guns internals...!... amazing that they had a glue that held the stock together back in 1879...!..😲

I wanted to see this be used/demo’ed so bad!!! Such a cool video irregardless

When I was a child I had a toy rifle that worked on exactly the same principle. You could load it with tiny plastic caps with a minimum charge (20 shots if I remember correctly) It could even "shoot" a rolled paper ball from the barrel. I'm not joking: when you opened the slide on top I smelled burnt powder (which my mother hated) Other times......

Finally, the sequel to the danger pistol

As we learned from Ian's series on Winchester's lever guns, some of the early models (not branded Winchester) fired rocket balls too.

Ian, I've just seen this. It's amazing 👏

Another great video about a lesser-known weapon generously provided to us by Ian.

Ian, are you bringing this to the next Two Gun Match? What will be the pistol...😏 A Gyrojet? 🤣. Or a Volcanic? 😛

I absolutely love this gun, & your content. What an Amazing piece of history!! TY4SHARING ❤

very comprehensive video thankyou

These 4 words are pretty cool individually, but even better together.

The Sig Air MCX Virtus operates in a similar way. I bet that thing was fun for plinking.

Very awesome. Thanks Ian.

Fascinating weapon!!!!! Thanks for sharing.

Thought i just found another hidden 8 year old gem on the channel.

As someone running a fallout rpg, obscure black powder is a sweet spot for me

Thanks for sharing!

I find this an example of the importance of iterative design: had they made a simple breachloader prototype to try out the cartridge beforehand they would have known from the start the cartridge would be too underpowered to excuse having this many rounds in it.

Glock: "To disassemble, Unload and then pull the trigger, ya think you can handle that?" Guycot: "To load, fire the gun 80 times, but have the safety on. Do remember which position safe is, we will not hold your hand on this."

just when you think you've seen it all. Thank you for your time and knowledge.

I could only imagine the vibration from shooting that thing combined with the cartridges that are hanging upside down, the amount of jamming that would occur way back inside the stock, sounds like a fun time of repeated disassembly

I could see that if they were produced around 1900 in the US it would probably have been a prolific gallery gun in fair games and the like. They would probably have been a big hit. I can see two young guys working the booth trading turns, one loads while the other sells. I know that I would have put a nickel down to win my sweetheart a prize.

Honestly really neat. I'm imagining a version of this that uses a lever action to cycle the chain instead of putting all that work through the trigger.

Very cool, i have never seen or heard of this gun before. Thanks for sharing !

PLEASE! Do a range video with one of these firearms!

Basically a pistol hiding inside a rifle skin.

Would this be 'California compliant'? It has a nice wooden stock but an 80 round magazine.......🤔

The original video on the Guycot chain pistol is the first Forgotten Weapons video I ever watched, so it's neat seeing a follow up all this time later.

I love your channel!

Imagine an 80 cartridge "chain" fire.

Normal cartridge guns require a long barrel the caliber of the gun because the impetus on the bullet comes from the expanding gasses in a semi-sealed chamber. The higher the chamber pressure for the longer period of time, the higher the speed of the exiting bullet. That is why longer barrel lengths equal higher muzzle velocity. ( assuming the expansion of the gasses from the powder is still at some level of overpressure as the bullet exits. ) A rocket powered bullet accelerates from the Thrust of the gasses escaping the round. It does not need to be in a sealed tube, it needs the gasses to be able to accelerate freely out the back of the round. Barrels can not fit tightly because the friction of the barrel is just another force for the thrust to overcome, as opposed to being the ‘seal’ that builds chamber pressure in a regualr bullet. The over-wide outer barrel in this gun serves 2 purposes, it allows the escaping gasses to expand freely and thus does not create back-pressure on the rocket exhaust, and it acts as a rough guide tube for the acceleration of the bullet to a stable trajectory. For a regular round you want the propellant to burn off as fast as possible, to build the pressure that pushes the bullet out. The bullet on exiting the barrel is going as fast as it ever will and it loses speed from then on. For a rocket powered round, what you want is a slower burning propellant that will continue to add velocity to the round for as long as possible., given its size and relative propellant load. Unlike a regular gun, something like a gyro jet round ends up going Faster the further it flies from the barrel, until its propellant runs out at which point it has attained its maximum speed. This creates the situation that with a true rocket propelled round, it actually hits with higher kinetic energy the further the target is, up to the range at which it runs out of fuel. The hard part with rocket rounds is accuracy. If they get pointed in a different direction as they burn, they will thrust way off target. The gyro jet stabilizes its projectiles by having several jets angled to impart a gyroscopic spin to the projectile. The makers of this gun likely were not so clever, and the long barrels may represent the literal length of rocket burn time for acceleration of the round, figuring that once it left the barrel with no more rocket exhaust it would keep going the direction the barrel confined it… but that still allows for a pretty wide trajectory variance. I doubt that power was the downfall of this design, but that it was exceedingly inaccurate.

Wow! That’s uniquely cool-thank you.

Never stop being amazed by the inventiveness of our ancestors. I used to be an engine builder and one time we got an early motor, I don't recall anymore what model it was but it was interesting tracing down the internal oiling system and how much thought went into it. It shows that same degree of thought going into this.

I'm imagining an improvement with the addition of an external knob or handle attached to the striker and a safety notch like an open-bolt submachine gun. It would definitely make loading the thing a lot less nerve-wracking, especially if you also had a crank or key or something to advance the chain without pulling the trigger.

Hilarious and hard to clean! I hope that there is a master link so you can disassemble for chain maintenance!

One of the most interesting guns I've seen here! Cool.

Very cool. Thank you

Great to see a forgotten weapon on Forgotten Weapons rather than a state-of-the-art not old enough to be a forgotten weapon weapon.

I'm sure none of the ammo exists but it would be really interesting to see some tested. Even if it was replica ammo made on the known specs.

Man I absolutely love this.

Such a wild mechanism and interesting idea.

I'm curious how the bullets/cartridges/whatever don't fall out when they're facing downward? With all that jostling from being moved one link at a time not to mention the gun firing, you'd think you'd end up with little bits rolling around inside the stock of the gun.

This is where Hollywood got the idea for guns that never need reloading.

Totally awesome firearms!!

Wow! I never knew this rifle/gun existed. Amazing engineering for the time. Thanks for sharing!

It is a very clever design. There are probably a number of single point failures that can happen but kudos to the outside the box thinking.

One suspects that the time spent loading wouldn't be that much of an issue for most owners as they'd just have a servant do it... I love the concept of these guns though - it would be fascinating to see one fired.

Thanks, Enjoyed, I had never seen one of those firearms.

Very interesting concept

It occurred to me that having the barrel so much shorter then that external sleeve would likely mean that this weapon would have zero flash. A primitive version of a flash hider built directly into the mechanism

Would have been cool to see a picture of the ammunition.

Wow very Interesting ' Great Stuff 💯Thank you Ian 💥💥💥💥💥💥💥

i know nothing about guns but loved this video. thank you.

i remember watching the pistol verson years ago and i still think a 40 round pistol is remarkable even for today