The Remington magazine gun is a 19th-century repeating rifle that combines a rolling-block breech action with a tubular under-barrel magazine and a lifter mechanism to feed cartridges sequentially into the chamber. Unlike the single-shot Remington Rolling Block it grew out of, it stores 5 to 7 rounds and cycles them through hammer and breech-block rotation rather than requiring manual reloading between shots. The design gave skirmishers sustained fire without the breech-fragility of early lever guns, and Remington sold tens of thousands to navies and export armies between 1870 and 1888.
Remington Magazine Gun Interactive Calculator
Vary magazine capacity, shot-cycle time, and reload time to see sustained demonstration rate and feed-cycle timing.
Equation Used
The calculator uses the article equation for sustained aimed rounds per minute: each round consumes the normal shot-cycle time plus its share of the magazine reload time.
- Reload time is averaged across the full magazine capacity.
- Cycle time includes cock, aim, fire, and extraction.
- Historical mechanism-rate estimate only; it does not model ammunition, ballistics, or safety limits.
The Remington Magazine Gun in Action
The mechanism has two cooperating subsystems — the rolling block breech and the tubular feed. When you cock the hammer, a cam surface on the hammer pulls the breech block rearward and downward around its pivot pin, exposing the chamber. A spring-loaded lifter, sitting in the receiver well below the chamber line, rises with that motion and carries the next cartridge from the magazine tube up into line with the bore. Close the breech block by rotating it forward and up, and the round is shoved into the chamber. Drop the hammer — the breech block is now locked behind the cartridge by the hammer's own body wedging against its rear face. That hammer-as-locking-strut geometry is what makes the rolling block strong enough to handle black-powder centerfire pressures up to roughly 40,000 psi without a separate locking lug.
Timing between the lifter and the breech block is the failure point. If the lifter rises before the breech block has cleared, the cartridge nose hits the breech block face and jams — you'll feel a hard stop at about half-cock. If the lifter rises late, the breech block closes on an empty chamber and you've wasted a stroke. Joseph Rider's original patent geometry holds the lifter timing to within roughly 2° of hammer rotation, which is why worn cam surfaces on field-used examples often need re-cutting rather than just polishing. The cartridge feed itself relies on a coil spring inside the tubular magazine pushing rounds rearward against a cartridge stop; if that spring takes a set below about 6 lbs of preload, the last 2 rounds in the tube will fail to lift.
Common failure modes are predictable. Worn hammer cams cause out-of-time lifter rise. A cracked breech block — usually radiating from the firing pin hole — shows up as light primer strikes before it fails outright. And a magazine spring that has lost tension will feed the first 4 rounds reliably and choke on the last 2, which fooled more than one quartermaster into thinking the rifle was fine until a sustained-fire test exposed it.
Key Components
- Rolling Breech Block: Pivots on a transverse pin in the receiver, rotating roughly 90° between open and closed positions. The block must have a face hardness of around 50-55 HRC to resist primer cratering, with the firing pin hole bushed to 0.080 inches nominal — oversize bores cause primer flow and pierced primers.
- Hammer: Doubles as the breech-block lock. When down, the hammer body wedges directly behind the breech block, transferring chamber pressure into the receiver walls rather than the pivot pin. Hammer fall arc is typically 60-65° from full cock.
- Tubular Magazine: Sits beneath the barrel, holding 5-7 centerfire cartridges nose-to-primer. Spring preload sits between 6 and 9 lbs at full charge; below 6 lbs the last rounds stall. The tube ID must be 0.020 inches over the cartridge rim diameter — tighter and rounds bind, looser and they tumble.
- Cartridge Lifter: A pivoting carrier that scoops the next round out of the magazine and raises it into chamber alignment. Driven by a cam surface on the hammer, with timing held to within 2° of hammer rotation per Rider's original spec.
- Magazine Cut-Off: Optional lever on military variants that holds rounds in the tube while allowing single-shot loading directly into the chamber. Lets a soldier keep the magazine in reserve for volley fire — a doctrinal feature copied later by the Lee-Enfield.
- Extractor: A spring-loaded claw mounted in the breech block face that grips the cartridge rim during opening. Extractor lift force needs to be 15-25 lbs for reliable spent-case ejection of black-powder centerfire brass, which fouls heavily.
Where the Remington Magazine Gun Is Used
Remington's magazine rifles served as service arms, naval boarding weapons, and export military rifles through the late 19th century. The mechanism's robustness — particularly the hammer-as-lockup geometry — made it attractive to navies dealing with corrosive saltwater environments and to export buyers who needed a rifle that could survive rough field handling without armorer support. You'll still find these in collector circulation and in cowboy-action shooting, where the rolling block half of the lineage runs strong.
- Naval Small Arms: The Remington-Rider Magazine Pistol of 1871 and the related magazine rifles equipped boarding parties on US Navy and several South American navies through the 1870s.
- Export Military: The Egyptian, Spanish, and Danish armies adopted Remington rolling block variants in large numbers — Spain alone purchased over 130,000 Model 1871 rifles.
- Frontier Hunting: Civilian magazine rolling blocks chambered in .44-77 and .50-70 served buffalo hunters on the American plains in the 1870s, prized for their ability to handle heavy black-powder loads.
- Competitive Shooting: Long-range Creedmoor matches at the Creedmoor range on Long Island during the 1870s featured Remington rolling block target rifles, several setting national records at 1,000 yards.
- Cowboy Action Shooting: Modern reproductions by Pedersoli and Uberti compete in SASS single-shot side matches, with the rolling-block mechanism remaining mechanically identical to the originals.
- Museum Conservation: The Springfield Armory National Historic Site holds working examples used for live-fire demonstrations, requiring periodic regulation of the lifter timing per Rider's original gauges.
The Formula Behind the Remington Magazine Gun
The practical question with any tubular magazine is sustained rate of fire — how many aimed rounds per minute can a trained shooter put downrange before the magazine is empty and reloading starts. The formula below ties magazine capacity, cycle time per shot, and reload time into a single rounds-per-minute figure. At the low end of typical operation — a green recruit firing aimed shots at 12 seconds per cycle — the rifle delivers maybe 5 RPM. At the high end — a trained skirmisher with the magazine cut-off open and fast hand work — you can hit 17-18 RPM in short bursts. The sweet spot for sustained accurate fire on a service rifle sits around 10-12 RPM, which is where 19th-century military doctrine pegged the rolling block.
Variables
| Symbol | Meaning | Unit (SI) | Unit (Imperial) |
|---|---|---|---|
| RPMsustained | Sustained aimed rounds per minute including reload time | rounds/min | rounds/min |
| tcycle | Time per shot cycle: cock, aim, fire, extract | s | s |
| treload | Time to refill the empty magazine tube | s | s |
| Nmag | Cartridge capacity of the tubular magazine | rounds | rounds |
Worked Example: Remington Magazine Gun in a museum live-fire demonstration
A historical-arms curator at a regimental museum in Halifax is preparing a live-fire demonstration of an original 1871-pattern Remington magazine rifle for a public event. The rifle holds 6 rounds of .43 Spanish in the tubular magazine. The curator, an experienced rolling-block shooter, wants to publish a realistic sustained rate of fire for the program notes — covering what a green conscript, a trained line soldier, and a fast skirmisher would each achieve.
Given
- Nmag = 6 rounds
- tcycle,nominal = 5 s
- treload = 30 s
Solution
Step 1 — at the nominal trained-soldier pace of 5 seconds per cycle, compute the time penalty per shot for reloading a 6-round magazine:
Step 2 — sum the per-shot cycle and reload share, then convert to rounds per minute:
Step 3 — at the low end, a green conscript firing aimed shots at 12 seconds per cycle:
That's effectively the same rate as the single-shot Springfield Trapdoor the rifle was meant to outpace — meaning a poorly trained user gets none of the magazine's benefit. Step 4 — at the high end, a trained skirmisher running the action at 3 seconds per cycle with the magazine cut-off feeding loose rounds:
And if the cut-off is engaged so the 6-round magazine is held in reserve and the soldier feeds singles, treload per round drops to near zero during the burst, pushing instantaneous fire above 17 RPM for the duration of the magazine — which is the doctrinal reason the cut-off existed.
Result
Nominal sustained fire works out to 6. 0 rounds per minute — roughly one aimed shot every 10 seconds when reloading is averaged in. Felt at the firing line, that's a steady, deliberate rhythm: cock, aim, breathe, fire, extract, repeat — not a fusillade. The low-end conscript figure of 3.5 RPM tells you the rifle is wasted on untrained troops, while the skirmisher's 7.5 RPM (or 17+ RPM in cut-off bursts) is where the magazine geometry actually pays off. If your measured rate falls below predicted, three failure modes dominate: (1) a weak magazine spring that stalls the last 2 rounds and forces the shooter to slap the tube, adding 2-3 seconds per cycle; (2) a worn extractor claw that fails to grip fouled black-powder brass, requiring a cleaning rod tap to clear — easily 5 seconds lost per occurrence; and (3) hammer cam wear that causes the lifter to rise out of time, producing intermittent feed stops on every third or fourth round.
Choosing the Remington Magazine Gun: Pros and Cons
The Remington magazine rifle competed against three contemporaries — the single-shot Springfield Trapdoor, the lever-action Winchester 1873, and the bolt-action Mauser 1871. Each made different tradeoffs on rate of fire, mechanical strength, and manufacturing cost. The rolling-block-with-tube design hit a specific niche: stronger than a Winchester, faster than a Trapdoor, simpler than a Mauser.
| Property | Remington Magazine Rifle | Springfield Trapdoor (single-shot) | Winchester 1873 lever-action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sustained rate of fire (trained shooter) | 6-8 RPM | 8-10 RPM | 12-15 RPM |
| Action strength (peak chamber pressure tolerance) | ~40,000 psi | ~25,000 psi | ~20,000 psi |
| Magazine capacity | 5-7 rounds | 1 round | 12-15 rounds |
| Parts count in action | ~12 parts | ~8 parts | ~24 parts |
| Service life before major rebuild | 20,000+ rounds | 15,000 rounds | 8,000 rounds |
| Unit production cost (1875 USD) | $16-18 | $13-14 | $25-28 |
| Best application fit | Naval/export military, heavy black-powder loads | Standard infantry | Cavalry, frontier civilian |
Frequently Asked Questions About Remington Magazine Gun
Mushy full-cock almost always means the sear notch on the hammer has rounded over from decades of dry-firing or hard let-offs. The original notch geometry is a sharp 90° corner cut to about 0.025 inches deep. Once it rounds to a 0.005 inch radius or larger, the sear engages on a sloped surface instead of a square shoulder, and you feel the trigger creep instead of a clean break.
Check it under 10× magnification before assuming the trigger spring is the cause. Re-cutting the sear notch is a gunsmith job — replacing the spring will not fix it.
This is almost certainly hammer-to-breech-block timing drift, not a firing pin problem. The breech block must be fully rotated up and locked before the hammer falls, otherwise the hammer's energy goes partly into rotating the block the last few degrees instead of into the firing pin.
Diagnose by closing the action slowly and checking that the breech block face sits flush with the chamber mouth before the hammer is allowed to drop. If it doesn't, the cam surface on the rear of the breech block has worn — common on heavily used originals — and needs to be welded up and re-cut to spec.
Pick the 5-round. The 7-round tube extends further under the barrel, adds about 4-5 ounces forward of the receiver, and shifts the rifle's balance point forward by roughly 0.5 inches — which you'll feel on every offhand shot in a stage with multiple targets.
The longer tube also has a longer spring, which loses preload faster than a short spring at the same duty cycle. For a competition rifle that sees thousands of cycles a year, the 5-round magazine is the better mechanical choice even before you consider balance.
Reproduction rolling blocks — particularly some Pedersoli and Uberti runs — have looser breech-block-to-receiver fit than the originals, often around 0.004-0.006 inches of clearance versus the 0.001-0.002 inches Remington held. Under firing pressure the block rotates back microscopically, dragging the case head against the breech face as the brass tries to flow.
You'll see this as circular smearing on the head stamp area. It's not dangerous at black-powder pressures but it shortens brass life from 15-20 reloads down to 4-5. The fix is selective fitting of an oversize breech block, which is a gunsmith job.
Quote the manual figure of 8-10 RPM for the doctrinal context, then footnote the field reality of 5-6 RPM. The manuals were written assuming a clean rifle, dry conditions, and an experienced soldier — none of which held in Egyptian or Cuban service where most of these rifles actually saw combat.
Black-powder fouling alone cuts cycle rates by about 30% after the first 20 rounds because extractor drag goes up and the breech block stiffens in rotation. That's the gap between the parade-ground number and the battlefield number.
The cut-off existed for tactical doctrine, not mechanical reasons. 19th-century officers wanted the magazine held in reserve for repelling a charge or covering a withdrawal — the rifle would be used as a single-shot during normal volley fire to conserve the 6-round magazine for an emergency.
Civilian hunters and target shooters had no such use case, so the part was deleted to save manufacturing cost. The same doctrinal logic drove the cut-off on the British Lee-Metford and early Lee-Enfield rifles for the next 30 years.
References & Further Reading
- Wikipedia contributors. Rolling block. Wikipedia
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