Originally Posted by
ccdjg
Brilliant, Matt, you have nailed it!
Yes, it is probably the most reliable safety device you could have on an air pistol.
Other safety systems on airguns mechanically intercept the trigger or the sear in some way, and if the sear were to slip or shear the gun would still fire the pellet whether the safety was on or not. In this case however the gun is incapable of discharging the pellet (or dart) under any circumstances until the plunger is pushed in.
When I realised that this was what Frank Clarke intended, I couldnt wait to check it out on my Briton. I cocked the gun, inserted the pellet with the pin and screwed it home. Sure enough, the gun would not fire the pellet. You could cock and fire it until you were blue in the face and the pellet would not budge. Not surprising really when you think about it! However, one push on the retractable knob and the gun fired the pellet with no problem.
As a safety it is great, as you can activate the gun at the last possible moment while it is on target, just with the thumb of your shooting hand. It also means that you could carry the pistol around ready cocked and with a pellet in the breech with perfect safety - very useful when hunting large game I should imagine.
Frank Clarke obviously had a thing about unusual safety devices as he invented a very simple safety system for his later Titan pistols. On these the safety is released just before firing by squeezing the grip.
I wonder why he never patented his retractable pin idea? It would have been universally applicable to any push barrel pistol, or any pistol loaded by a breech pin, such as the Anson Star. All it would have needed was minor modification of the plunger length and the thread. To put a traditional safety catch on an existing push barrel pistol would have required major reconstruction work and new tooling (as Harrington took on with his later Gats).
Does anyone have any thoughts as to why Frank Clarke never capitalised on his invention, given the great number of push barrel pistols around at the time that could have benefited from it?
[P.S. I liked Rich's suggestion that the pin could have been used to allow two pellets to be fired in succession. Unfortunately it didn't work when I tried it out. It seems that as the two pellets are pushed up tightly aganst each other in the breech, the air can't get between them to push the first pellet out.]