[Por_sha911]

Smith & Wesson K-Frame, the Medusa is a rather simplistic-looking but well-made revolver at first glance; however, there are some notable differences and other points of note that make the revolver much more different and rather interesting.

The revolver's cylinder is made of mil-spec 4330 vanadium steel, the same type of alloy used in the barrels of the M61 Vulcan used by F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jets. The Medusa's frame is made of 8620 steel hardened to 28 Rockwell; this allows it to withstand the various pressures of the rounds it fires. The barrel itself is made of 4150 chromemoly steel and is available in lengths from 2.5 to 6 inches (6.4 to 15.2 centimeters) and is also fluted; however, the fluting appears to only be for aesthetic purposes since the effects of the barrel heating up appear to not be that significant in a gun of this size.[2]

The weapon's cylinder is what makes the weapon rather interesting; the cylinder has a special extractor with six small flexible fingers on the rod of the extractor star. These fingers allow the weapon to headspace both rimless and rimmed cartridges; these fingers hold the rounds in place so that the firing pin can actually hit the cartridge and fire it. It is said quite a bit of design work went into designing this. The revolver also has a double-tapered forcing cone which is supposed to work with the wide variety of cartridges the Medusa is supposed to chamber; this forcing cone forces the rounds into the same orientation every time so they can chamber.[1]

https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/M47_Medusa

It didn't work well

As mentioned above, the multiple caliber revolver was a sound concept, but rather flawed in practice; a notable flaw about the weapon is that the flexible fingers on the extractor star are noted to be rather brittle. If somehow those fingers break off, the weapon will not work as it should.

Another notable flaw is the weapon's execution of the multiple caliber system; as the weapon was designed to chamber all aforementioned calibers and more, the weapon wasn't exactly optimized for any one caliber. Due to this, the weapon has a tendency to misfire.

Yet another flaw was the weapon's questionable accuracy; due to this strange multiple caliber system, when the weapon was fired, there was about an inch of freebore before the bullet hit the rifling in the barrel. This usually results in bullets keyholing.[1]

That said, in an Anti-2A world where even a bad weapon is better than no weapon at all, it could be desirable if the SHTF.