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Actually the Martini action is what I had in mind (blush, family ties: as it happens, my wife's first husband - she was a widow when we married - was Franz von Martini, his son George is my shooting and generally all round pardner: the direct descendents of Friedrich Martini, an 1869 picture of the gent at Wimbledon during the trials for the British Army hangs over my desk) glad you concur that it might be the ideal action for such a rifle… I'd still go for the 45-70. Now, how about a barrel: Badgers? (am kind of far away to say!).
R.L. Wilson in "Colt an American Legend" has revolving shotguns among the side-hammers of 1855: though 18.300 long guns were built, only 1300 were shotguns in 20 and 10 (!!) gauge. The problem with these revolving long guns seems to have been the flash from the cylinder-breech gap. Amos T. Colt (an employee at Sam's) records that after trials in South Calinky that: "…It took me all the evening to pick the powder and pieces of lead out of my face, No use telling a person to hold their head back, might as well tell them to hold it under the arm". An adjustable gasket could be tightened in the gap, but then the gun would jam from fouling (I guess a condition for this project would be black powder - right?). This seems to be fixed in the mechanism fal308 describes, as I get it the chamber is in the barrel.
Considering the cost of a Cruise, 5 G sounds reasonable for a piece of artillery - fancy a 10 ga. Gatling would sure get some attention, though I daresay I'd have a hard time convincing the wife that it'd be an indispensable part of the garden landscape… Im sure SASS could accomodate an extra 'open' class
Schofields and LeMats are made by Uberti and Fratelli Pieta - Navy Arms again? Wouldn't be original to build these, as desirable as they are.
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