Year: 1887

page_text: Date of Application, 20th Apr., 1887
Complete Left, 19th Jan, 1888
Complete Accepted, 24th Feb., 1888
1, RICHARD MORRIS of Bennett Park Blackheath in the County of Kent Engineer
do hereby declare the nature of this invention to be as follows:-
My invention relates to the construction of the magazine used in connection with
a rifle or other fire arm for holding a number of cartridges ready to be successively
brought into line with the barrel and discharged. When such a magazine is fixed
to the arm with its mouth opening upwards, a spring is used to press up the cartridges,
and it is a somewhat difficult and tedious operation to refill the magazine with.
cartridges by introducing them successively at the upper mouth and pressing them
down in opposition to the spring. According to my invention, I facilitate this opera-
tion in the following manner. make one side of the magazine as a sliding door
which can bo slid downwards leaving the magazine open on one side for admission
of the fresh cartridges. The door has on it a stud which, when it is pulled down pulls
down with it the moveable bottom that is pressed upwards by the spring, and this
moveable bottom, when it is so pulled down, is held down by a latch engaging at the
bottom of the magazine. When the magazine is refilled with cartridges, the sliding
door is pushed up again closing them in and, at the last part of its upward movement,
it releases the latch which held down the moveable bottom leaving it free to be
pressed upwards by the spring and to deliver cartridge after cartridge at the upper
mouth of the magazine. The door, instead of sliding between guides, may be pivotted
so as to turn down to open the side of the magazine.
Dated this 20th day of April 1887.
ABEL & IMRAY,
Agents for the Applicant.

page_text: I, RICHARD MORRIS, of Bennett Park, Blackheath, in the county of Kent, Engineer,
do hereby declare the nature of this invention and in what manner the same is to be
performed to be particularly described and ascertained in and by the following
statement:
My invention rolates to tho construction of the magazine used in connection with a
rifle or other fire arm for holding a number of cartridges ready to be successively
brought into line with the barrel and discharged. When such a magazine is fixed to
the arm with its mouth opening upwards a spring is used to press up the cartridges,
and it is a somewhat difficult and tedious operation to refill the magazine with
cartridges by introducing them successively at the upper mouth and pressing them
down in opposition to the spring. According to my invention I facilitate this operation
in the following manner. I make one side of the magazine as a sliding door which
can bo slid downwards leaving the magazine open on one side for admission of the
fresh cartridges. The door has on it a stud which when it is pulled down pulls down
with it the moveable bottom that is pressed upwards by the spring and this moveablo
bottom when it is so pulled down is held down by a latch engaging at the bottom of the
magazine. When the magazine is refilled with cartridges, the sliding door is pushed
up again closing them in and at the last part of its upward movement it releases the
latch which held down the moveable bottom leaving it free to be pressed upwards by
the spring and to deliver cartridge after cartridge at the upper mouth of the
magazine.
I will describe my invention applied to a rifle having a. sliding bolt which is
advanced to push the cartridge into the barrel, and which is drawn back to extract
and eject the case of the spont cartridge and allow a fresh cartridge to be pushed up
in front of it.
Fig. 1 is a side view of part of the rifle with the magazine attached to it.
Fig. 2 is a vertical longitudinal section of the magazine.
Fig. 3 is a vertical transverse section and Fig. 4 is a sectional plan on Y Y of
Fig. 2.
The magazine A is a casing made of sheet metal of rectangular form in plan, closed
at the two ends and at the back but open on the front side which is fitted with a
door B that can be pulled down exposing the interior of the magazino into which
fresh cartridges can be introduced at the side thus opened. In order to guide the
door in its sliding movement an arm attached to the door passes under the bottom
of the magazine and bends upwards so as to form a vertical guido bar M that slides
within a guide N fixed on the back of the magazine. In order to obtain rigidity
consistently with lightness I prefer to make the guide M of a piece of metal plate
transversely curved or corrugated as shewn in Fig. 4. Within the hollow of M ig
fixed a spring m which at m³ near its lower end has a latch projection and at m³
below that a projection to receive the pressure of the finger.

page_text: The latch in entering a slot of the guide N holds the door B when it is pushed up
closing the side of the magazine. When it is desired to open the side in order to
introduce fresh cartridges the operator takes hold of the front rim of b and presses
on m² so as to disengago the latch m' and he can then pull the door B down until
it is stopped as I will now describe. Within the magazine the platform or moveable
bottom D is free to move up or down. It is pressed upwards by a spring d and
pushes the cartridges C up through a slot to the hollow behind the breech and in
front of the bolt E. The slot through which the cartridge is pushed up is of
such form that the front end of the cartridge can rise through it, as indicated in
Fig. 1 ready to enter the breech of the riflo but the rear end or flange of the cartridge
cannot pass through the hinder part of the slot.
When the bolt E is advanced it pushes the cartridge forward to a wider part of
the slot through which the flange of the cartridge is free to rise while the cartridge
is being pushed into the bore." The platform D has in its middle a guide pin d
which projects through a long vertical slot d³ in the door B and near the front end
of the platform D it has another guide pin which projects through a long vertical
slot d in the back of the magazine.
Both the pins and d² have external heads, the head of d' overlapping the door
slot and the head of d² overlapping the back slot d'. From the middle of the
platform D an arm d³ projects downwards and terminates in a latch hook which can
enter a slot a' in the bottom of the magazine. When the door B is pulled down as
already described it moves a certain distance down without moving the platform D,
but when the end of the door slot d³ comes against the pin d¹ the farther descent of the
door B brings down the platform D with it until the latch of its arm d³ enters the slot 1'
and is caused by the spring d to catch under the edge of the slot. On now pushing
up the door B the pin d being free in the door slot the platform D remains down
until a slot 6' which is made with a sloping edge in the lower limb 6 of the door acts
on the latch of d disengaging it from the edge of the slot a' and thereupon the
platform D is free to be pressed up by the spring d delivering cartridge after
cartridge to the hollow in front of the bolt E.
The magazine may be permanently fixed to the rifle; I prefer, however to make it
removeable so that the rifleman having several charged magazines in his pouch can
readily remove an empty magazine and put a charged one in its place. For this
purpose I fix on the front end of the magazine a wedge piece F which can enter and
become tightened in the metal piece that holds the strap ring and on the rear end of
the magazine I make a latch projection G which engages with a spring trigger 9 the
tail g of which projects from the stock in front of the firing trigger. On pressing
up the tail g' the catch g is released and the magazino can be pulled out of its seating
in the stock.
Having now particularly described and ascertained the nature of this inven-
tion and in what manner the same is to be performed I declare that what I
claim is :-
In a magazine A to be placed under the stock behind the breech of a sliding bolt
fire arm in combination with the platform D its spring d, guide pins d' d² and latch
arind the sliding door B having the slot ³ the guide bar M, the spring
latch m, m' m² and the bottom limb with its releasing slot 6', substantially as and for
the purposes herein set forth.
Datad this 10th day of Tan 1000
ABEL & IMRAY,
Agents for the Applicant.