Smith & Wesson Model No. 2 Army Smith & Wesson Model No. 2 Army The Smith & Wesson Model No. 2 Army a.k.a. "Model No. 2 Old Model Smith & Wesson Revolver" was Smith & Wesson's first .32 caliber revolver, intended to combine the small size and convenience of the Smith & Wesson Model 1 .22 rimfire with a larger caliber. Chambered in the .32 rimfire long caliber, its cylinder held 6 shots. It was manufactured 1861 - 1874, with a total production of 77,020. Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson founded the Smith & Wesson Company in Norwich, Connecticut, to develop Volcanic Firearms, in 1855 the
Smith & Wesson Model 3 gunsmiths to reverse-engineer the Smith & Wesson design, and then began to produce copies of the revolver—both in their own arsenal at Tula and by contracting other manufacturers in Germany and elsewhere in Europe to manufacture copies of the revolver (a common practice at the time—Webley & Scott's British Bulldog revolver was widely copied, too, by European and American gunsmiths). The Russian and European copies of the S&W Model 3 revolver were generally of very high quality, but considerably cheaper than the S&W produced revolvers. This led to the Imperial government cancelling the order for significant quantities of Smith &