Figure 8 Savage

The start of the North and Savage revolvers appears to have coincided with the decline of the North interests as contractor for the United States in 1851. At that time Henry S. North and Chauncy D. Skinner patented a bar-hammer revolving breech arm illustrated in the patent as a handgun (incomplete) but apparently only made as a rifle. Cocking the hammer and rotating the cylinder was accomplished by pulling down on the trigger guard. Importandy, this wedged the cylinder against the barrel to seal off gas. The guard at the front was mounted on a frame strap which went below the cylinder, and was hinged at its front end to the barrel. The guts-falling-out mechanism rather suggests the later Winchester (Browning designed) Model 1894 series of rifles. Patent No. 8, 982 of June, 1852, covered this first step. “The World’s Revolver” appears hopefully stamped on one example of this unsuccessful rifle.
Defective commercially and mechanically, this first design was abandoned by North who concentrated on revolver pistol design. On June 17, 1856, he was ready to buck Sam Colt’s patent expiration by having a new style of arm which resembled a pepperbox in internal principles, with a cylinder and barrel attached. The cylinder was surrounded by a solid frame. No loading lever was illustrated, and a prototype semifinished pistol of this form in the William Locke collection has no lever. The lever which works the mechanism is a ring-trigger, with a separate small trigger for dropping the hammer. This real trigger is hung in a slot in the ring trigger, above the ring— the index finger sears off the shot; the middle finger rotates the cylinder and cocks the piece. Though Smith & Wesson had thoroughly proved how clumsy this principle was in their defunct Volcanic arms which Oliver Winchester was having B. Tyler Henry elaborately re-design at this very time, North seemed to like the idea. Apparently many of the shooting experts, not yet shown what the main line of small arms development would be, were not sure the ring trigger was such a bad idea; Colt, ultimately to win out in setting the style for the century, had abandoned the idea in 1842, and had never applied it to handguns. Edward Savage bent his mind to the problem and on May 15, 1860, patent No. 28,331 was issued to Savage and H. S. North jointly on what is known to collectors as the “Figure 8 Savage” revolver.
The exact details of incorporation of the Savage Revolving Firearms Company we do not know, but it seems reasonable to assume that the major share of inspiration in the Figure 8 pistol was Savage’s and that his was the ownership of the capital that he and North contributed to the new corporate identity; else there seems to be no good commercial reason for abandoning the North name, good since 1799 on U.S. firearms, and introducing a new one. The cognomen “Figure 8” is from the shape of trigger, the ring trigger mating a curved guard in front; the real trigger is at the back of a complementary ring in the upper portion, the whole assembly looking like an 8. Distinctive also is the spur at back of grip, the frame otherwise having much in common with pepperboxmaking practice of the era. Well perfected in this design is the forward-back shifting cylinder, the chambers of which fit over the end of the barrel to seal off the gas escape when firing. The build-up of black powder fouling was gradually a problem, but the high heat of the discharge at that point by the chamber kept this at a minimum.
The idea has current use in the Model 1895 Nagant revolver used by Russian forces until the Korean War. The difference between the chamber sealed, and unsealed, is the difference between 1100 feet per second and about 750 feet per second, muzzle velocity for the .30 caliber long revolver cartridge. Closing off that escape of gas at the breech of a revolver has always been the desire of the inventor, probably no one more than North and Savage due to their experience with an identical sort of gas escape, in the Hall breech-loading carbines and rifles.
As nearly as can be determined from a study of existing specimens, the rounded brass frame is the earliest in the Savage-North Figure 8 series of revolvers. The early arms have a hinged loading lever with the plunger not well supported and incapable of seating a conical bullet really concentrically. One specimen, unnumbered, in the Locke collection, has the ends of chambers finished to protrude inside the barrel, instead of the barrel coned to fit inside the chambers. This seems to have been an experimental variation and no benefits were obtained by the more complicated form of manufacture. Numbered in the same series as the brass framed Figure 8’s was the round iron-framed issue which appears to have been introduced after several hundred had been made with brass frames.
Henry S. North patented a rack-pinion type of creeping lever for his revolvers April 6, 1858, No. 19868. Though the 1860 patent for the Figure 8 shows a hinged rammer with an eccentric guide groove in the lever and a pin in plunger, by which the plunger is given a straight line motion, it seems probable that the 1858 patent has some relation to the dates of actual manufacture of these arms and that on a jobshop basis, Savage and North were working out the bugs and trying to produce, with the use of modest capital, an acceptable revolver. Apparently the Figure 8’s were more or less available some time after 1858. With the use of the creeping lever, a more shrouded frame element beneath the barrel was used, changing the profile of the pistol.
The round frame not being quite the answer, North and Savage modified the design to use a flat frame, with boss turned at the back like the Colt behind the cylinder. Brass was again used for the frame, and the spur at back of grip was considerably shortened to a hump or, as the British call it, a “prawl.” The idea was to help the hand hold its position while working the finger lever. The use of brass has been common

 Casing believed contemporaneous holds only known set of Savage Figure-8 revolver with accessories. Flask is type also supplied with Remington ,36s, while bullet mould casts ball like Colt’s Belt .36 moulds. Gun now in famous Independence Hall, Chicago, gun collection.

in machine production as a method of proving the tools. Details of set-up can be examined without the need for the heavy chopping incidental to roughing out steel or iron parts, since brass is much softer and easier on the cutters. The scarcity of the brass-framed Savages and their placement prior to iron-framed, with the change back to brass when a major manufacturing modification occurs, seems to confirm the reason for its use. The end of production of the Figure 8 series was a flat iron-framed, creeping lever rammer pistol.