Some 20 years ago the wife and I stopped at a cafe in Kerrville, Tx. Apparently the owner was a BIG time collector of fighting pistols, the likes of which I have never seen before. All of these pistols had a knife blade protruding from the frame just under the cylinder. Some had barrels and a good number of them had no barrels at all. Just a 4 or 6 shot cylinder. What are these type pistols called? Does anybody know of the history of these? I'll bet he had close to 500 of these pistols all over the walls. I've been back to Kerrville several times but I can't find the place again. Hell he might have died by now.

I guess I should have posted that these pistols must have been mid to later 1800s vintage and had quite an array of knife blade lengths from 4" to 12" or 14", all built into the frame of the "weapon". Maybe a Mississippi river boat weapon?

Rae,
I have a Jackson Arm's catalog's printed in the mid 1960's. They have several Knife pistol's illustrated and described. Most are muzzle loading. The catalog was from Dallas,Tx. Don't know if this the Jackson Armory in business today. Some have spring knive's and others with blade's. I should have bought some in '65!!!
Also, if you Google in Knife Pistol's you will pull up many link's that describe's these weapon's.

Thanks for the info, Stockdoc.

4 or 6 shot cylinder w/o a barrel is a "pepperbox."

Handguns with blades attached were often called "Boarding Pistols," popular in the days of sailing ships.

I still have not seen anything on the web that resembles the pistols that I saw in the resteraunt. The pistols there were all with cylinders and had, as I recall, fixed knife blades protruding/extending from the trigger guard area. Again, some had barrels and some only had cylinders with no barrels. I do not remember if they were percussion or if they fired primed cartridges. Anyone have any other info.

Thanks

Revolvers with that did not have barrels, had a folding blade, usually a folding trigger and a knuckle type folding grips were made in France if I remember right and called "Apaches". These are very collectible Russ

Hillman, thanks for the reply.

The pistols that I saw were of a wide variety. But I can not remember seeing a single pistol with a folding blade. Please remember this was a long time ago, but to the absolute best of my memory, they all had a fixed blade, say at least 1" in depth and a western (really french) style grip/handle. Again some had barrels and some did not. The longest barrel I can remember was probably around 3 to 4 inches and then down to nothing. These obviously had a longer knife blade and these were deffinantly "assault" style pistols. I saw nothing that I can remember in flintlock or folding andything. That is not to say they were not on the wall - there.

Jackson Arms is still open in Dallas. New Guy on this forum kinda headquarters there.
Butch