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James Reid's "My Friend" by Daniela Lehmann
James Reid, gunmaker and firearms designer, was born in Belfast, Ireland in 1827 and learned the gunsmith trade in Glasgow, Scotland. He left home at the age of about 30 and arrived in New York City in 1857. There he settled as a gunsmith, where he initially built typical pistols and revolvers for the time.
During the US Civil War he made handguns for other weapons manufacturers under contract, but had already developed his idea for the later "Knuckle Duster" for which he is still known today. In 1865, he moved his workshop from New York City to the Catskill mountains of Green County, New York due to the illness of one of his children. He received the patent for the small revolver the day after Christmas of the same year.
In the Catskills, Reid is eventually to hire up to 17 employees in his machine shop to build the small pepperbox revolvers that were in demand at the time. These revolvers were the ideal size for a lady’s purse or a poker player's vest pocket.
The "My Friend" is a pepperbox revolver with “knuckle duster” grip, which is listed under US patent number 51752 of 26 December 1865. It is not clear how it got the name "My Friend". Some sources attribute the name to the fact that development of the weapon may have been quite lucrative for Reid, but it seems more sensible that the name was chosen because, due to its modest size, it could be easily carried and was equally well suited as a “brass knuckle”, should the cylinder be shot empty or if the encounter need not be fatal. The “knuckler”, as Reid is said to have affectionately called the revolver, was made in 3 calibers: .22 rimfire, .32 rimfire and .41 rimfire. The .22 revolver shown in the pictures has a safety lever in the front of the frame which was used to lock the position of the cylinder, to prevent the gun from being cocked. This safety lever was eliminated in later production. In the frame, a hole is made at the front for the bullet to pass through. There is no barrel.
To load the weapon, the cylinder must be removed by means of a screw-out pin. The cylinder pin has a left-hand thread, which means that it is rotated clockwise to remove and counterclockwise to install. The pin is also used for ejecting the cartridge shells. The serial number is located at the bottom of the grip ring. On the cylinder as well as the cylinder pin is the last digit of the serial number: guns with 5-digit serial numbers show the last two digits. With a total length of 10.7 cm, the gun is actually quite small, and with no barrel precision shooting is out of the question with the .22 Revolver. It can only be effective in the immediate vicinity; it was constructed purely as a near-distance weapon. At the time, this weapon cost US $10 in 22 RF caliber, while the models in 32 RF and 41 RF calibers are said to have cost US $12. The daily wage of a simple worker was perhaps 10 to 20 cents, of a postal worker about 50 cents, so the price was about more than a month’s wages at the time. When Reid closed his shop in 1883, about 20,000 pieces of the .22 short variant had been produced. There were about 3000 copies made in .32 rimfire, and only 150 pieces in .41 caliber. You could get the. 32 revolver on special order with a 1¾ inch barrel, but this embodiment is correspondingly very rare. Exact numbers made are not known. In March 2016, one of these extremely rare custom-order pieces was sold for the low collector price of just $3,163. In the same auction, a copies in all three calibers were also sold. Only the .41 achieved a 5-digit sum.
Profile of the Reid Revolver Serial No. 51752
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Copyright 2025 by Daniela Lehmann. All rights reserved. |
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