120 years of fun.

[EnsignJimmy]

That describes this Colt 1878 double-action revolver (S/N 233XX, made in 1889.) I've had it for about a year and half now. Bought it for $855 as a shooter (since some previous owner had thoughtfully elected to have it entirely refinished. A nice job, to be sure, but one that about killed the gun's collector's value.)

Cylinder and barrel were dirty with fouling when I got it. The kind of fouling that can only come from small charges of smokeless powder wandering around cavernous .45 Colt cases. Yet, lockup was tight with a bit of cylinder end-shake (with a bit of throw-by, where the gun locked up a little past the 12-o-clock position.) The base pin turned out to be a slightly undersize Uberti pin (which turned out to have a tendency to jump under the recoil of proper black powder rounds.)

Loading proper black powder cartridges indicated the gun was remarkably accurate in spite of this (not to mention a lot of fun. A 255 grain conical headed downrange at nearly 940 ft/sec with a big cloud of smoke behind it gets attention.) I felt I could do better, so the cylinder pin was replaced with a well-fitted one from Belt Mountain and the cylinder bushing (once I paid a local shop $25 to get the old one out for me,) was replaced with a cut-down single-action cylinder bushing, fitted to eliminate the end-shake. Gun fired fine with those two simple fixes, but still had the throw-by. Examination of the hand revealed the problem. The top of the hand was worn just enough that it had to go just a little further to attain full lockup.

A hundred bucks got me a new hand which required lots of fitting (and an almost complete disassembly of the gun to get the old one out.) I've got much respect for the gun makers of old, who did this with tiny files and lots of patience. But now, I've got a Colt 1878 which locks up tight when it's supposed to. Now to go load up some more black powder rounds.

 

[Harve Curry]

Sounds like the right guy got that old COLT. I always wanted one of those. But have stuck to the SAA's. There is something special about using and shooting the originals that were 'there'. Here's to you; have many years of fun with your COLT.

 

[C-grunt]

Thats a really cool beautiful old Colt you got there.

 

[woad_yurt]

That is a sweet, sweet piece. Great gun.

I like finding shooter-grade oldies with finish condition issues (blemished or re-done.) I can shoot them without much scratch-paranoia.

 

[rmfnla]

I love shooting old guns!

Those old Colt DAs are really beautiful but, as I'm sure you know, they suffer from some very delicate lockwork so they require a bit more TLC than their SA stablemates.

Have fun with it!

 

[EnsignJimmy]

"Very delicate" describes the Colt 1877 "Lightning" and "Thunderer" double-action revolver (which is well-deserving of its reputation of being the worst double-action mechanism ever conceived.) The Colt 1878 is a different animal entirely. It's an action strong enough to withstand smokeless loads with good steel (about the last 5000 of them were proofed for smokeless by Colt. My shooter apparently survived an unknown number of smokeless loads before I got my hands on it.)

The 1878, however, is very sensitive to its components being fitted correctly. The hand does all the work in the 1878 action, with cylinder stabilization being provided by the loading gate. It is, however, very easy to keep in-time (easy to completely disassemble, repair, and reassemble . . . not something I'd be willing to attempt on the one 1877 I own,) and has a mere five springs in the action (except the earliest ones which have six.) Four of which have new-manufacture replacements (the fifth being the loading-gate spring, and that one isn't under tremendous tension, nor does it flex very far.)

 

[Dr.Rob]

Great old gun, great story.

 

[Nicodemus38]

offshoot question, what is the proper designation for the 1878 double action colt in 45 colt? whenever i search online, all i can get is information and photos of lightning and thunderers made in 1878.

 

[EnsignJimmy]

offshoot question, what is the proper designation for the 1878 double action colt in 45 colt? whenever i search online, all i can get is information and photos of lightning and thunderers made in 1878.

Colt's Double Action Model of 1878. That's the proper designation of the revolver, just like Colt's Double Action Model of 1877 is the proper designation for the "Lightning" and "Thunderer" revolvers. Those names were given to the small double-action by a Colt distributor named Ben Kittredge. He coined the term "Omnipotent" for the Colt 1878, which didn't really catch on. Confusingly, some collectors have also named this revolver the "Frontier" and the "Double Action Army." The simplest thing to call it is a "Colt 1878" or a "Model 1878" . . . at which point you will have to filter out the Colt side-by-side shotgun that is also called the "Colt 1878."

Just in case you weren't confused enough, there is a run of 5000 double-action revolvers designated the US Model 1902 Double Action revolver, otherwise known to collectors as the "Colt Alaskan" or "Colt Philippine" model. This is a Model 1878 with a stiffer mainspring, and an oversized trigger-guard and trigger to exert the leverage needed for this stiffer mainspring. All of these saw action in the Philippines after the Spanish-American War.