Iver Johnson Prototype .25ACP Blow Forward Pocket Pistol

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:03]Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on forgottenweapons.com.

[00:00:06]I'm Ian McCullum and today we are taking a look at a prototype blowforward 25 ACP pistol from approximately 1916. This is a gun that I actually have on loan for filming from Joe Salter. Very cool.

[00:00:20]Thank you, Joe. Uh, and it's a one-of-a-kind gun. So, this was made as a tool room sample or a demonstration model or something along those lines for the Ivor Johnson Company. Now, we know there's very little detail on this, but we know that this patent was uh applied for by a guy named William O. Barnes of Massachusetts in 1912, and the patent was granted to him in 1916, and it was assigned to the Ivor Johnson Company.

[00:00:47]Now, Ivor Johnson made predominantly small revolvers. Well, also large revolvers, but predominantly inexpensive revolvers. They would eventually have some semi-automatic handguns, but that would come many, many decades later.

[00:01:00]This appears to have been a project that they considered. They bought this patent from a guy named Barnes, did one gun, and then someone decided that this wasn't really going to be a good thing or for whatever reason, it never went into production. So, this thing's tiny.

[00:01:16]Let's go ahead and take a closer look and let me show you how it works and take it apart.

[00:01:20]So, this whole thing is still in the white. It's not finished in the surface treatment sense. It's also maybe not entirely finished in the manufacturing sense. Like, it's built far enough along to actually theoretically work, but this is just like a sort of proof of concept model. While blowforward pistols were not unheard of, here for example is avata blow forward which did actually make it all the way to production. Um although was never hugely successful. Blow forward is not really a very good method. It seems like it has some benefits in particular for safety.

[00:02:02]There's no way that the slide can blow back into the shooter's face if well if the whole back end of the gun is just solid metal. If anything goes like catastrophically wrong on a blow forward gun, well, everything's going to go forward and that's theoretically safer.

[00:02:16]Um, however, this does have the effect of amplifying recoil because when you shoot, the fact that the slide is moving forward creates an equal and opposite reaction going backward. And the recoil from a blow forward pistol is in fact substantially sharper than that of a blowback pistol. All else being equal.

[00:02:36]All right. So the concept here is we have sort of moving parts. We have a moving barrel assembly in the frame of the gun. This is the brereech block which stays locked in the rear. I'll show you how that works in just a moment. Uh in theory to chamber it, you pull the slide forward. We then have a magazine in here. This holds eight rounds of 25 ACP. Uh just going to leave this out for the time being because the follower tends to jam into the slide here. But uh when you fire, of course, round detonates, the breach block can't go backwards. So friction of the bullet dragging, you know, being pushed into the lands is going to pull the slide assembly forward. It's interesting that in his patent, Barnes actually specifies that the bore will taper just slightly from the back end out to the muzzle so that uh like the you you always have a solid gas seal to ensure that the slide is pushed all the way forward. I'm not sure that's actually necessary, but he did write that into his patent. So anyway, once you fire this, this is going to come all the way forward. We have an ejector right there that comes sliding through the brereech face. That's going to kick the empty shell out. Then the next round is going to slide up in the magazine. And as the barrel comes back, it just slides over that round and pops it up and out of the magazine into the chamber, ready to fire again.

[00:04:10]So disassembly for this is actually kind of clever, kind of slick. uh you pull the slide or the barrel forward about 3/16 of an inch and then the whole assembly, the barrel and brereech block together can rotate uh counterclockwise and be removed from the gun. Now, it's a little finicky because that's the end of the recoil spring in there, which has to slide out as well.

[00:04:40]So, I'm just going to pop that out.

[00:04:42]There we go. With that out, there's no longer any spring tension. And there is our barrel and brereech block assembly.

[00:04:51]And I can now slide the brereech block off the back. You've got a rail right there and a groove for it right here on the brereech block. So that's going to slide like so. When this is in the gun, this groove locks behind this little tiny lug right there, which ensures that the brereech block can't go forward. But when you rotate the whole assembly, it disconnects from that. The trigger in here is this piece. So, you can see there's a second spring inside. Uh that's that rearward spring, the the back spring is the trigger spring. So, it's stretching out when I pull the trigger there. Now, unfortunately, this gun is broken. There was some sort of striker here. We can see I don't know if you can see it on camera, but there is in fact a firing pin down inside there, but the piece that connected it uh to the outside that allowed it to be retracted and then released to fire is unfortunately broken. And I don't know exactly what it did. We do still have the extractor right there. I can pull the extractor back. The extractor comes down here and is this component right there. So, there was some piece of striker access right in there.

[00:06:16]And when you pull the trigger, this slides up, which presumably releases the striker to fire up. Now, there is this little tab on the back of the trigger here which looks like a magazine safety. It protrudes out into the magazine well area when you pull the trigger.

[00:06:34]And there is a matching little groove right here on the magazine. So, I believe what this actually is doing is ensuring that while you're holding the trigger, so in the process of firing, the magazine cannot be pulled out.

[00:06:49]There we go. can't be pulled out of the gun, which ensures that it doesn't fall out slightly and interrupt the feed cycle and malfunction. That's kind of an interesting little feature detail there.

[00:07:02]Of course, I think this is pretty cool.

[00:07:04]This sort of ball bearing end to the recoil spring that locks into this round cut on the back of the frame. That's kind of slick. Uh it's easy to get in and out, but it retains the spring pretty well. Obviously, the problem here would be that eventually that will probably break. Uh once you know when you shoot it too much, the repeated strain on the spring where it connects to that ball bearing will break and then you're going to have to replace the main spring. But uh it's kind of a neat element. Something I haven't seen elsewhere before.

[00:07:34]And then that right there is our ejector. And there's not really a whole lot else to show you on here. the barrel.

[00:07:43]This cutout is there to allow the whole barrel assembly to rotate and come out of the gun.

[00:07:50]There you go. There is Ivor Johnson's 1912 or 1916 uh prototype semi-automatic pistol that well never went into production. It's a shame we don't know more about where this came from or what happened to it at Ivor Johnson, although I suspect we can guess pretty well. um it probably proved mechanically unreliable, difficult to manufacture, and the company ended up deciding that why would we want to risk something on this when we can just keep making revolvers that are known good products that sell well that that you know that's what our company is based on. And so ultimately only this one example survives. So I'd like to give a big thanks to Joe Salter for loaning it to me uh so that I can share it with you guys. Hopefully you enjoyed the video.

[00:08:36]Thanks for watching.