The Palmer model 1865 carbine is a

single-shot Single-shot firearms are firearms that hold only a single round of ammunition, and must be reloaded manually after every shot. The history of firearms began with single-shot designs, then multi-barreled designs appeared, and eventually many cent ...

bolt-action Bolt-action is a type of manual firearm action that is operated by ''directly'' manipulating the bolt via a bolt handle, which is most commonly placed on the right-hand side of the weapon (as most users are right-handed). Most bolt-action ...

rifle patented in 1863 by E. G. Lamson and Company of

Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts Shelburne Falls is a historic village in the towns of Shelburne and Buckland in Franklin County, Massachusetts, United States. The village is a census-designated place (CDP) with a population of 1,731 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Spr ...

. 1000 Palmer carbines were delivered to Union forces in the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...

one month after the war ended. All rifles (designed to be carbines for cavalry soldiers) were subsequently sold to civilians after the war. The rifle was the first bolt-action rifle to be accepted for use by the US Army Ordnance Department. Unlike traditional bolt actions, which contain the firing pin centered in the bolt, the Palmer's bolt was machined from a solid block of tubular metal, which had screw type lands and grooves to lock the bolt in place via a short, stubby handle. The hammer of the weapon (located on the right side of the receiver like all other percussion fired rifles of the time period) holds the firing pin at the tip. A tooled, milled slot is visible on the head of the bolt canted toward the right side allows a slight opening for the firing pin atop the hammer to strike the rim-fired cartridge, usually the 56-50 rim fire. The bolt was designed for single-shot action; the cartridges were loaded one at a time. The design was quite revolutionary, and was seen at the time as a simple breech modification to weapons of the time period to accept metallic cartridges instead of the traditional powder, ball, wad, ram rod and percussion cap, which consumed time during loading procedures. The designer understood that gunsmiths could hopefully modify current percussion rifles from the breech of the gun in the same way flintlocks were modified to percussion using a relatively simple process. The downfall of the rifle was the positioning of the hammer where the firing pin hits the rim of the cartridge, and the small space on the bolt where the two parts meet with the bullet rim when the trigger is pulled. Ultimately the actions of rifles like the

Spencer rifle The Spencer repeating rifles and carbines were 19th-century American lever-action firearms invented by Christopher Spencer. The Spencer was the world's first military metallic-cartridge repeating rifle, and over 200,000 examples were manufacture ...

and the

Sharps rifle Sharps rifles are a series of large-bore, single-shot, falling-block, breech-loading rifles, beginning with a design by Christian Sharps in 1848 and ceasing production in 1881. They were renowned for long-range accuracy. By 1874 the rifle wa ...

were preferred over the Palmer. Its unique significant design is a predecessor of all modern bolt-action-type rifles.

References

Single-shot bolt-action rifles Carbines Bolt-action rifles of the United States American Civil War rifles {{Rifle-stub