Some weeks back we asked about identifying the Dutchman’s Key (or sometimes the Dutchman’s Tooth) on a S&W revolver. We received a few thoughts, the closest coming from Matthew B. For those of you unfamiliar with the multi-century long history of the English (notably with their wars with the Dutch) practice of disparaging a thing as small, not correct, cheap, or failed, etc., (Going Dutch, Doing the Dutch) you might want to Google a few pages from New Netherland Institute under Dissing the Dutch. All that is the long way around answering the question: What is the Dutchman’s Key on a S&W revolver. Â
Well, on the star ejector on the older S&W revolvers, there is a grove line that mates with a very small “tooth” on the inside of the cylinder. This single “tooth” was referred to by some S&W armors as the Dutchman’s Key or the Dutchman’s Tooth.
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Thank you to everyone who gave a stab at the answer. If you have an equally obscure piece of revolver nomenclature and/or history, e-mail it to me at Michael@SnubNoir.com and we’ll add it to a future Snub Noir blog post.
