Hello:
Sorry to be off the main SPENCER theme.
A friend has made half-scale 22lr rimfire gatling guns for himself. I have seen, handled and fired them. I have pictures, but our faces are in most and he's "shy" for good reason, so I won't make him uncomfortable here. The guns work - well! The only ammunition that cycles and fires reliably is CCI standard velocity. Other brands are missfire prone. The only items purchased were rifled barrel blanks at a whopping $8, each. Every other part he made, almost entirely from scrap brass/bronze that a local scrap yard in Dayton, OH would save. They took over two years of part time machining, etc. He said that the internal mechanism to handle rimfire ignition is more complicated and that he had to devise and then cut and try different approaches to finally make them handle rimfire rounds. So..... he said there should have been no reason that would have prevented someone from doing the same thing way back when. He is a highly credentialed government medical type, and my life long friend. His scientific work for our government has directly and significantly helped every human in the U.S. He makes ingenious firearms related items only for himself and a few friends. I have won national championships with some of his stuff.
Next project is one in 9MM.
Anyway, he told me last evening that he did extensive research to try to learn how the rimfire issue had been resolved and never learned of an original rimfire model. He speculated that such a model would make historical sense as an in-between variant, probably experimental, by COLT.
So his years of research in the 1980's disclosed no documentation of a rimfire original.
Respectfully,
El Supremo/Kevin Tinny