Have no pistols in 45 Colt, but I do have four rifles for it. I can hit the swinging targets with it and instead of the back and forth like most rifle hits, 45 Colt makes them spin. At 200 yards I can hit the gong there at will with a splint second delay between the boom and the gong. Fun rifles all of them.
Howdy Again
I should mention at this point, that up until the late 20th Century, there were never any rifles chambered for 45 Colt. The first lever guns chambered for 45 Colt appeared in the 1980s.
And of course everybody is going to ask why.
Here is why. This photo shows a bunch of old 45 Colt cartridges. What do almost all of them have in common? Tiny rims.
The 45 Colt on the far left is one of the original 45 Colt cartridges as produced by the Frankfort Armory. This is the cartridge that was supplied to the Army for the Army's tests of the Colt Single Action Army in 1872 I think, working from memory without consulting my library. The case is copper, not brass. This is the 'folded copper case' Dave T refers to. It was internally primed, the cannelure at the bottom of the case holds the interior Anvil Plate in place. The priming mixture was sandwiched between the rear of the case and the Anvil Plate. The soft copper case was easily dented by the firing pin so the internal priming could be ignited, with the resultant flame passing through two holes in the Anvil Plate to ignite the main powder charge, which yes, was originally 40 grains of powder. But the kicker is, look how tiny that rim is. Only about .504 in diameter. The sole purpose of the rim of the early 45 Colt cartridges was to keep them from being shoved into the chamber when the firing pin struck the cartridge. Ejection was always done by an ejector rod that poked out the empties from the inside, so there was no need for a larger diameter rim. Just look at that rim. There is no way a rifle extractor could get a grip on such a tiny rim. OK, notice that all the other old rounds have no 'extractor groove' for a rifle extractor claw to use to get a good grip. They are all around .506 or .507 in diameter. The round all the way on the right is one of my reloads in modern brass. The current SAMMI spec for rim diameter of the 45 Colt is .512. That one is actually a couple of thou less, but still with the extractor groove, plenty for a rifle extractor to grab.
OK, what's with that one 2nd from the right? That is the round developed by the Frankfort Arsenal for the Double Action Colt. The rim diameter on that one is .537, plenty for the extractor of the double action Colt to grab.
The blast, the flame, the smoke, and the recoil is nothing like what the CAS people know as a 45 Colt. It's a step back in history and an eye opener as well as a lot of fun.
I am a CAS person. I have already shown what the flame, smoke and recoil is like from my BP 45 Colt loads. By the way, most of the stuff commercially marketed under the name Cowboy Loads in 45 Colt is not such a pipsqueak load as many folks think. I have bought a few boxes of it over the years. The pipsqueak, mouse fart loads that so many associate with CAS loads are pretty much confined to hand loads, not commercially produced stuff.
The reason for this is simple. It is The Mystique and Legend of the 45 Colt cartridge. I can't tell you how many CAS shooters just had to have 45s for their first pistols in CAS. Then they discovered how much recoil there is in a standard load. So they go on the endless quest of trying to come up with a 45 that will buck and roar about the same as a light 38 Special. That is where the reputation for light CAS loads of the 45 Colt has come from. Most of those guys eventually discover that the huge 45 Colt case does not behave very well when loaded with 2 flakes of Whiz Bang. There is just too much empty space. Many of them eventually trade in their 45s for 357 Magnums and shoot light 38 Specials in them.
