Ordorica Covers Colts

What can one say about gunsmithing the Colt Single Action Army? Probably "Don’t do it!" would be appropriate these days. Early in the 20th century it was common for gunsmiths to mess with them, and a lot of them were messed with, not always to the benefit of the sixgun. Out of that era came the epitome of a customized Colt single action, Elmer Keith’s famous Number Five, a 5-1/2inch .44 Special.

It had a lowered hammer spur, altered back and top straps into something resembling— but not quite—a Bisley, a special positive-locking latch for the cylinder pin, custom sights, ivory stocks and full-coverage engraving. Lest anyone would suggest that Keith’s tampering with the gun destroyed its value, his Number Five sold recently at auction for $80,500.

Today, with the vast array of modern handguns available not everyone knows everything about the At the time, the cost of the Uberti-made gun was $200, but the price went up quickly after the author’s glowing review, despite its brass trigger guard and back strap. It is no longer offered by Cabela’s, but Uberti still makes it. It’s called the "Hombre" and is about $500. 45 of 2001 had the curved-bottom trigger guard of early Colts and the rounded-front bevels to the cylinder.

The author blacked the brass parts chemically after some light engraving. old Colt single actions. I recall seeing the statement in print not long ago by a supposed gun writer who had no idea what the spur on the hammer was for… you know, the firing pin?! Those wonderful Colt revolvers that sold at the beginning of the 20th century for around $15 apiece today bring at least 100 times that, and easily more than 200 times that if the gun in question is a decent one.

While genuine Colts are always costly, there have been many clones along the way, some good, some bad. Some decent ones are available today for only a few hundred dollars. They are more or less the same thing as real Colts, though many modern versions have opted for "safe" hammers with what a few of us used to call "flip-up hooky dookers" to effect firing. This is commonly a device that’s linked to the trigger, and interposes itself between the hammer and frame-mounted firing pin only when the trigger is pressed.

This permits the safe loading of all six chambers. Original Colts had a "safety notch" cut into the hammer that caught the sear and kept the firing pin off the primer of the chambered round. However, a solid blow to the back of the hammer could easily break that notch and fire the gun. Elmer Keith wrote of several instances of fully-loaded sixguns firing and shooting the gunny when the stirrup of the horse they were saddling fell off the pommel and struck the hammer of a holstered Colt single action.

This broke the safety notch and fired the gun. This failing of the design led users to keep an empty chamber under the hammer. Over the years, I’ve owned a few genuine Colts built to the original design. These were firstand second-generation examples in calibers from .38 Special to .45 LC. I had my first Colt SAA when I lived in Ann Arbor. It was a second-generation .45 with 5-1/2-inch barrel. Unfortunately I have no existing notes on it.

My recollection is that I didn’t shoot it much and sold it before I left Ann Arbor for Colorado in 1972. When I got to Colorado in the early 1970s I acquired a first-generation .45 LC Colt with 4-3/4" barrel made during the black powder era. It was a decent gun in solid shootable condition and, using some original fac-

The genuine one-piece grips (no in-between plate) were original to this Uberti-made sixgun. This one was too tight, hence the polishing of its surface. The barrel was tight at the threads. Some 200 fire-lapping rounds later the tightness was gone and group size had been cut in two, although a groove diameter of 0.451" and cylinder outlets of 0.455" are not conducive to best accuracy.

Research into the dimensions of any of your revolvers and especially old Colts can provide clues about what to expect on the target. tory-made black powder ammunition, I shot it on occasion. During my brief tenure in Denver as a gunsmith I manufactured a one-piece grip out of a solid block of fancy black walnut for that old bundook. The grip is solid walnut throughout, no spacer gluing two halves together. Inletting it was lots of work but well worth the effort.

I finished the grip with scores of coats of linseed oil put on hot over many years and kept it on my old Colt as long as I had the gun. A careful cut on the lathe brought it to the correct size. The only non-Colt safety item is a spring-loaded catch that prevents the hammer from being driven forward against a chambered round by an inadvertent blow, as by dropping the gun onto a rock. The catch is visible just under the firing pin.

With all that work into making the one-piece stock I took it off the gun before I sold it. Years later I put that grip on another 4-3/4" Colt, made in the early 1900s, and when I sold that Colt I again kept the grip, which I still have. Time passed, I moved around, and one fine day I bought a .38 Special first-generation Colt, made in 1927, 5-1/2" barrel, from Skeeter Skelton’s son Bart, who was a border-patrol agent back a few years. By then I was keeping track of each and every gun that passed through my hands.

My Red Notebook has each gun’s specs, often the dimensions, number and date of rounds fired, and info on how well it shot. That .38 Special Colt’s bore slugged 0.357" and the cylinder outlets were about 4 thousandths larger, enough to allow a small bit of misalignment of the notches. Its accuracy was outstanding. When I got done messing with its innards (long story there) it shot to correct elevation but about one inch left at 15 yards. I never touched the sights, those results being plenty good enough for me.

About the same time, circa 1996, I bought a first-generation Colt SAA in .38 WCF, also known as the .38-40. This gun was made in 1901 and had a 4-3/4" barrel. The gun had a tight cylinder with outlets that measured 0.403". The barrel’s groove diameter slugged 0.408-0.409". I wondered if that was correct, so asked my friend Mike "Duke" Venturino about it. His succinct advice was, "Shoot it!" So I did. It shot about 3 inches low at 15 yards with my modest smokeless load, but spit badly. Windage was perfect.

Accuracy was acceptable. The forcing cone was cut at about 45 degrees and showed some pitting. I cut a decent 11-degree cone in it using a neat tool from Brownells called the Revolver Chamfering Tool Kit. This eliminated the spitting. Its original cylinder bushing was pitted and loose, so I replaced it with anew one from Eddie Janis’ "Peace-

The fix was a wood dowel and emery paper driven by an electric drill. This was not necessary for the chambers, just the central hole. The author has used it on at least 15 revolvers and it’s not even starting to get dull. Insert the rod into the bore and screw the tapered cutter to the rod. The Allen-locked handle goes onto the other end of the rod, which is kept centered by a tapered bushing (not shown). maker Specialists." That was one of the fine points about the early Colt sixguns.

They had the cylinder base pin which held the cylinder into the frame. That pin was surrounded by a collar or bushing within the cylinder that was replaceable in case things wore out. I got the replacement bushing and hand-fitted it with a file and diamond hone. Took a couple hours. When I was done there was zero endplay to the cylinder. I then shot the gun with black powder loads and to my joy it shot perfectly to its sights. To my sorrow the gun tied up, my zero-tolerance bushing not agreeing 45.

A little light oil on the cutter might be needed. A gentle pull and rotation by hand does the trick. Go slowly! It cuts very quickly, giving a gentle taper to the forcing cone. If desired, the final cut can be polished by wrapping the cutter with emery paper and more gentle pulling and rotating. with all that charcoal. Of course that was a simple fix. That was a fairly accurate handgun, all told. A factory letter documented it as having shipped in 1901.

I’ve owned two .44-40s, one with a short barrel which I didn’t much like. It had a nasty-looking barrel, though good dimensions between groove diameter and cylinder outlets. The groove diameter was 0.425" and the cylinder outlets 0.427". However, there was a tight spot in the barrel at the threads that I was unable to fire-lap out.

The gun never shot as well as I’d liked, neither with My first 7.5-inch Colt was my second .44-40, nickel plated, which left the factory along with 14 others, shipped to Winchester in 1897. I bought it 101 years later. It had replacement parts in the form of the ejector rod, its housing, and the cylinder gate. It came with a period slim-Jim holster decorated with chain and flower stamping. Best of all, it had the interesting name "Throssel" inside on the grips and the date 1904.

Richard Throssel was a Creek Indian who was adopted by the Crows and became a photographer who documented much of Indian life. I found a cache of his photos and other info along with a reproduction of his signature online, so I was able to verify that it was indeed his signature inside the grip. He went on to become a member of the Montana legislature. The gun was tight and shot quite well.

Like my 1901 .38- 40, the cylinder outlets were tighter than the groove diameter, being 0.427" for the cylinders and 0.430" for the groove diameter. One day I put four rounds into a group of 1.3 inches at 25 yards. Unfortunately the group was nine inches high and three inches left. Part of the available information on Throssel was not entirely to his light smokeless loads nor with the much more powerful black powder loads. The barrel had a bit of pitting and that didn’t help.

That gun was from 1900. credit, depending of course on one’s interpretation of the info. His Indian name was "Kills Inside of Camp," which we all know one should never do. Many hunters today, and I expect all old Indians, consider that action to be close to sacrilege. To Throssel’s credit,

The trigger-driven rising plate has been removed and a hardened pin is inserted into the hammer (arrow). The inserted pin strikes the frame-mounted, spring-loaded firing pin. Yes, this defeats the original safety device, but the author didn’t want that stuff on his highly-custom, fully engraved firearm.

The staked-in device below it is a spring-loaded plunger that pressed outward on the sliding, interposing safety plate to prevent it from hanging up on the bottom edge of the firing pin as it was driven into position by the pulling of the trigger. he apparently was good at getting close to whatever he was going to shoot because his pistol wouldn’t hit whatever he was aiming at, at much over 25 yards. Maybe he used a Winchester.

A couple decades ago I acquired a 1904 Colt Single Action .45 LC with a 5-1/2-inch barrel. It had cylinder outlets matched to the groove diameter, both at 0.452". Lo! It shot like a house-afire, five shots touching from offhand at ten yards. Unfortunately the group was 3.5 inches high at that range. The bullet strike was correct for windage, though.

I’ve found that the significantly hotter black-powder loads tend to overcome the failing to shoot to the correct elevation, but—sorry—I never tried that gun with black powder. The last one I’ll mention is a 7- 1/2" .45 LC Colt made in 1900 in which I shot black powder loads. These grouped well, but 4 inches high at 12 yards. However, with factory Remington loads the gun was on the money at 50 yards. Its groove and outlet diameters were both 0.453". I shot cast bullets of 0.454" diameter.

In shooting these Colts and several clones the biggest problem with them was not where they shot for windage. The worst I’ve encountered, the Throssel gun, was three inches left at 25. The elevation strike was largely a matter of luck, and finding the right load usually gave decent or at least usable elevation. The big problem in the older Colts seemed to have been a lack of matching the cylinder outlets to the groove diameter. I learned long ago that correct dimensions mean a lot to revolver accuracy.

As most of you probably know, Smith & Wesson had, for many years, mismatched these two vital dimensions on their lovely .45 caliber revolvers, in both the 1917 and the Model 25, which was a target revolver. The groove diameter of the S&W guns, chambered for .45 ACP or .45 Auto Rim, were commonly 0.451" and the lands were not very high, or deep as you might say. But the cylinder outlets were commonly as big as 0.458".

There might be some excuse for this discrepancy in the early S&W 1917 guns, designed to shoot fully jacketed hardball rounds and have enough tolerance to operate under rough conditions of war, but there are no excuses for continuing the poorly matched dimensions into the Model 25 revolvers. Up in Alaska I finally got anew S&W Model 625 .45 ACP revolver with properly-matched cylinder outlet and bore size. I was not surprised it turned out to be the most accurate .45 revolver I’ve ever owned.

I shot the dickens out of it up there at Red Cabin, even recycling my cast lead once-fired bullets dug out of snow banks. Smith & Wesson finally got all the dimensions just right and it paid off in giltedged accuracy. To make a revolver shoot well with relatively hard lead bullets, the cylinder has to lock up (with trigger held back and hammer down) solidly and truly. The hole in the cylinder has to align with the bore nearly perfectly.

The size of the outlet hole in the cylinder should be just slightly larger than the groove diameter in the barrel. Never smaller, because that makes the bullet undersize before it enters the barrel. Now, if the grooves are deep and the lands wide, as on the early Colts, the lands might get a decent grip on an undersize bullet and give decent accuracy. That was the case with a few of my early Colts with cylinder outlets nominally too small.

In other words, a lead slug, even hard cast, once sized down by the cylinder outlet might slug up when it hits the rifling to fill the barrel, with resultant acceptable accuracy. Or it might not, with lots of leading and lousy accuracy being the outcome. If the cylinder outlet is too big, a softer bullet can slug up before it ever leaves the cylinder, largely from the force of the explosion behind it, maybe even to some extent before it leaves the brass case.

The cylinder outlet will ensure the bullet is the correct size by swaging it before, or as, it enters the barrel. The lands will

Above and Ray got this gun in the white on request to the CEO of the original company back in 1995, engraved it in Nimschke’s style—though Nimschke didn’t generally engrave the hammer—and had the charcoal bluing and case coloring put on by Dan Cullity. The grips are genuine elephant ivory. The back strap and bottom of the trigger guard have the precise curvatures of early Colts. cause the bullet to expand slightly after it quits skidding and get a grip on the bullet, and the bullet will then seal the bore.

The bore ought to be uniform in diameter throughout its length. If the barrel has been forced into the threads at the frame there will commonly be a tight spot there, and this was extremely common in older Colts, certainly in all I’ve owned and checked. Slugging the barrel will tell the story. The lead slug will slip easily through most of the bore but stop at the threaded portion. The tightness there can usually be removed by firelapping.

In my experience, this firelapping generally results in significantly improved accuracy and always results in a barrel that’s a whole lot easier to clean. I thank my old friend Ross Seyfried for putting that bug in my ear. As to making a Colt SA with fixed sights shoot to the point of aim, if the gun is old and valuable I suggest leaving it strictly alone. If it’s not a jewel, and assuming there are no significant problems with the gun, there are a few things you can do.

If These were marketed from the same building where original Colts were made. it shoots low you can carefully file the top of the front sight, maintaining the original contour. If it shoots high, you can add metal to the front sight by extremely careful welding, being sure to protect the bore, and then file the new addition to the original contour. This procedure generally destroys the finish for miles around the weld area—unless you know some tricks that I don’t—so refinishing will be in order.

Clearly one ought not to do that to any old Colt with any value whatsoever, and today that includes any and all firstgeneration Colts. That ‘patina’ was hard won, and must be left alone. If your Colt shoots right or left, and you’re desperate and the gun is not a high-value collector’s piece (i.e., rusty 2nd Generation or later) you can do what my friend Mike Venturino once did out of desperate frustration: Grab the front sight with a pair of pliers and bend it. Duke sez it worked just dandy. AG