Wow. Thanks for that link arcticap. I've surfed the Pedersoli web site in the past but don't recall seeing that pistol. It's neat.

I did a little on-line research on the Carleton underhammer. It uses the trigger guard as a spring to drive the action like the H&R and several others, and was patented in the 1850's. Just goes to show that there's little that's completely new in this old world.

I found a good article on the Carleton that has great pictures and some with the barrel/action out of the stock. Unfortunately, you can't see how the trigger mechanism works. The article is linked below. The action pictures are on the fifth page.

http://mp510sd.weebly.com/uploads/4/...i_carleton.pdf