DA in 45 Colt

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Lot's of great pictures, thanks. I sure like the looks of the model 25. I'd probably go for something with a barrel 5" long or longer. The search begins...
 
gunboat57 said:
If I want to get a revolver in 45 Colt, DA, used, what makes and models should I be on the lookout for? I know about the 1909 Colt, and the Colt New Service. Did Smith and Wesson make 45 Colt revolvers prior to WWII? I'm not looking for a collectible, but something functional. Suggestions?
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Functional as in "carry able"?

Taurus use to make a Model 450 in 45 Colt. Little snubbie guy, ported, ultralite. It's my current pocket carry. They are not -real- common, but you do come across them once in a while.
 
Now you guys have gone and done it!!!............I have to have a mod 25 now..........you're gonna get me in trouble with the misses again
 
Either a Ruger Redhawk or a S&W Model 25.

There are probably others available, but those would be my choices.
 
I just a couple of months ago bought an older, used S&W 25-5 with an 8 3/8" barrel. Turned out to be a wonderful shooter. The guru's here (some of who have already responded to you) told me that a good, hard cast SWC at 900-1000 fps would make a real deer killer.

I prove it about a month ago by killing a nice doe at right at 50 yds with it and that load-my first with the .45 Colt and first with iron sights on a handgun.

If you can find a 25-5, DO NOT pass it up! Nothing wrong with the Ruger, but the 25-5 is the 'bees knees'!

Good luck in your quest.
 
I know it's been a while but I ended up buying a new Model 25-15 in 45 Colt. I really like how this gun fits my hand and the sights are great, just the thing for my aging eyes. But I'm wondering if S&W is having some QC problems?

There were razor sharp burrs sticking up in a couple places. One sideplate screw had a messed up slot like the driver had slipped out. And the ratchet teeth on the cylinder had gouges cut in them. See the pics:

SW25-15PLATESCREW.jpg
25-15RATCHET1redu.jpg
25-15RATCHET2redu.jpg

I've emailed S&W's customer service to see what they can do. I'd like to get the screw replaced and the ratchet if it's something I can do myself.

Anybody else had these problems?
 
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451, I was really going for simultaneous ejection. But if I ever found one of those beauties at a reasonable price, it would come home with me!

Vern, I was looking for a New Service as my first choice but I'd have too much trouble with the sights unless I found a target model. New Services in good shape seem to be getting rare, and pricey! You're fortunate to have one.
 
Vern, I was looking for a New Service as my first choice but I'd have too much trouble with the sights unless I found a target model. New Services in good shape seem to be getting rare, and pricey! You're fortunate to have one.
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You don't know the half of it.:D

I got a great bargain on my Colt New Service revolver. Made in 1906, this gun appeared new – the bore and chambers were pristine, the timing perfect, the lockup tight. If it had been fired at all, it hadn’t been fired much. There was only one problem; it had been reblued. It wasn’t a bad job of rebluing at all, but the buffing job left the markings quite faint. Still, it was enough to diminish the collector’s value.

No matter to me – what I wanted was a shooter, and at the price, it was a bargain. Then I found the bad news. At 25 yards, this gun shot eighteen inches high and about a foot to the left.

Gun magazines occasionally publish articles about how to zero a fixed-sight revolver. Most of the advice in these articles is to turn the barrel a smidgen to correct windage, file the front sight to bring the point of impact UP, or try different loads. Most of that didn’t apply to me – I didn’t have the facilities to turn the barrel, I wanted the point of impact to go DOWN, not up, and the magnitude of the error was too much to reasonably expect I could find a magic load that would solve all the problems.

After much cogitation, I realized I would have to build the front sight up. But how? Resorting to gun magazines again, I found advice about things like TIG welding. Well, I certainly don’t have the equipment or skills to do that.

I looked at the web pages for gunsmiths, and found they would want more than the gun had cost to get it to shoot to point of impact.

Now as an amateur knife maker, I had a few simple tools. I also had a lot of small pieces of steel lying around – bits and pieces left over when roughing out a new knife with a hacksaw blade. Some of these pieces looked remarkably like a front sight.

In short, I decided to solder on a new front sight. Now the original front sight was about as thick as a razor blade, with a rear sight to match. That would never do, but it gave me an idea. I selected a 1/8 thick piece of steel and calculated the necessary height.

First of all, I carefully shot the gun to be sure of the true point of impact. I made the new sight 1 3/16 high, just a bit over the calculated height and went back to the bench. I fount that by holding the top of the new sight dead level with the top of the frame, I could get repeatable elevation, but windage was all over the place, since I couldn't center the new, wider front sight in the tiny rear sight notch.

The next trick was to open up the rear notch to fit the front sight -- and correct the windage at the same time. The amount of correction was calculated first.

Now, I wanted the rear sight notch about the same width as the front sight, or about 0.125 . I had to open it up to that width and at the same time move the center of the notch to the right. I loaded up a hundred rounds and went out with the New Service and my set of needle files. It took about 50 rounds, working first on the right side of the notch, then a touch on the left, then back to the right, but I finally wound up with a very useable set of sights, dead on the money.

I guess the moral of this story is if you think about it hard enough, you can solve any problem.
 
I have a 625 Mountain Gun, and it is one of my favorites. Extremely accurate right out of the box, and even with the MIM parts and lock, has a fantastic trigger pull.
 
I will be the second to recommend a Taurus, see if you can find one of the old 445 Taurus Trackers. They are the size of a S&W K frame and carry very well. It is too bad Taurus canceled this gun to make the crappy Judge.
 
451, isn't the upper Colt in your pic an "Alaskan"? It has the extra large trigger guard and long trigger for use with gloves, or was it so you could use two fingers on the trigger 'cause the pull was so stiff? Yeah, that would be nice to have if you can find them. They're a little outside my budget these days!
 
Huckelberry75 said:
You could go Old School and find a Colt Alaskan. Double Action .45 LC. Similar to their lightning models of DA revo's.
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I have yet to meet a Colt Alaskan/Philippine model that wasn't in dire need of a gunsmith's attention. Colt made those guns to fill a critical need for big bore revolvers in fighting the Moro insurgents. All of them saw extensive, hard, military use. Those that didn't found their way up to the Yukon, where they saw extensive, hard, frontier use.

For a functional 19th century double-action, one is better served looking for the original Model 1878 that the Army Model 1902 was based on; as there were over 50,000 made, and they're pretty easy to repair and keep in time. Internally, they have zero similarity to the Model 1877 "Lightning" and "Thunderer" revolvers (a Lightning packs a lot of tiny, fragile, parts in a tiny frame. The 1878 has surprisingly few parts inside a cavernous frame.)

The 1878 below is one I shoot whenever I have the urge to shoot black powder (it's got a modern refinish, which kinda spoils the collector's value.)
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gunboat57 said:
It has the extra large trigger guard and long trigger for use with gloves, or was it so you could use two fingers on the trigger 'cause the pull was so stiff?
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You shot the 'Alaskan' with one finger, like usual. The extra-large trigger guard and long trigger were adaptations made to allow the gun to have a stiffer mainspring (giving the shooter the extra leverage needed to shoot it,) since it had to be 100% reliable with the thick, insensitive military primers of the day (an 1878 will clobber the heck out of the modern thin, sensitive, primers to the point where I've seen them occasionally pierced.)
 
EnsignJimmy, refinish or not that is one nice looking 1878.
I take it you've been inside yours and are pretty familiar with how they work. Can you tell me how the cylinder was locked with a chamber in line with the barrel when firing? It didn't have any notches on the outside of the cylinder, or in back like the 1877. How did it work?

I can't help it, I'm an engineer, I just gotta know these things.
 
gunboat57 said:
EnsignJimmy, refinish or not that is one nice looking 1878.
I take it you've been inside yours and are pretty familiar with how they work. Can you tell me how the cylinder was locked with a chamber in line with the barrel when firing? It didn't have any notches on the outside of the cylinder, or in back like the 1877. How did it work?

I can't help it, I'm an engineer, I just gotta know these things.
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In the 1878, the work of advancing the cylinder and locking it up was done by the hand. When you drew the hammer back, the top edge of the hand would advance the cylinder, per normal. However, the 1878 had another tooth in its hand which would engage the ratchet with the hammer all the way back. You can see the structure of the hand in the attached picture (this is of a different 1878 that I own, which I'm using to illustrate because it's shinier.)

The hand had some help in keeping the cylinder indexed. If you look at the loading gate, you'll see a round knob which rode the cylinder's ratchet star.

When the trigger is pulled, two things happen. First is that it trips the sear and allows the hammer to fall. The second is that it forces the hand up and forward, pressing it into the cylinder ratchet (meaning that the Model 1878 does not tolerate any cylinder end-shake. Fortunately, 1878 cylinder bushings can be replaced with trimmed 1873 cylinder bushings.) The end result is that the hand and trigger lock the cylinder up. This is a feature that carried forward into all Colt double-action revolvers going forward (they don't fully lock up until the trigger is pulled all the way to the rear. This gives double-action Colts that famed "bank vault" lockup. It's also part of the reason Colt double-actions required so much hand-fitting.)

When the trigger is released, the knob in the loading gate serves to keep the cylinder from rotating backward when the hand retracts into the frame. It also help to keep the cylinder from rotating with the hand retracted.
 

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Thanks for the excellent explanation. The hand positions the cylinder rotationally and the projection on the loading gate keeps the cylinder from rotating backwards when the trigger is released after firing. (So the loading gate moves open and closed slightly as the cylinder rotates?)

Theoretically, if you were to pull the trigger (DA) really hard, the cylinder could rotate too far?

I'm guessing the 1889 Colt worked the same way: no notches and a robust ratchet hand. Of course, they went back to having a locking bolt after that.

Do you know anywhere I could find a diagram showing all the internals in place on the 1878? I've looked at patent 247374 but I don't know if it really shows what production 1878s looked like.

247374.jpg
 
gunboat57 said:
Thanks for the excellent explanation. The hand positions the cylinder rotationally and the projection on the loading gate keeps the cylinder from rotating backwards when the trigger is released after firing. (So the loading gate moves open and closed slightly as the cylinder rotates?)
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Yep. That's exactly what it does. And this was the improved method of preventing unwanted cylinder rotation. The first 1878s had a spring-loaded pawl mounted in the back of the frame that did the same job as the pawl milled into the later loading gates. But Colt found that the tiny springs were prone to breakage, so they changed the design to the one you usually see in 1878 revolvers.

Theoretically, if you were to pull the trigger (DA) really hard, the cylinder could rotate too far?
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If you pulled the trigger hard enough for long enough, what you'd do is batter the hand and the trigger saddle that connects the trigger to the hand and hammer. The action pushes the hand up and forward. With that being said, it is possible for the 1878 to develop throw-by. It locks the cylinder with the hand on the back, and by friction between the cylinder bushing and frame at the front. As a result, you'll find that quite a few 1878s have worn cylinder bushings (or, at least, a little end-shake.)

Too much wear, and the hand has to move further to lock the cylinder, so the revolver develops throw-by and the extra slop allows the cylinder to wobble back and forth and batter the hand. It doesn't help that the frames were made with softer steel than the action parts (the better for the tools of the day to machine all those curves into the frame,) so the frame stretches a little with time and use.

I'm guessing the 1889 Colt worked the same way: no notches and a robust ratchet hand. Of course, they went back to having a locking bolt after that.
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Yes, the 1889 also did everything with the hand. However, since it was a swing-out frame, it couldn't use the same cylinder stabilization system that the 1878 did. So it was possible to rotate the cylinder forward with the hammer down. They then introduced the 1892 which had two bolts. The first one just kept the cylinder from rotating with the hammer down. The second one would rise up as the action was cycled and provide something for the hand to lock the cylinder against. It wouldn't be until 1898 that Colt worked out how to get one bolt to do both jobs on a double-action gun.

Do you know anywhere I could find a diagram showing all the internals in place on the 1878? I've looked at patent 247374 but I don't know if it really shows what production 1878s looked like.

247374.jpg
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That's actually the way 1878 revolvers look on the inside. The only things you don't see on the drawing is the trigger return spring, the hand spring which keeps the top of the hand engaged against the ratchet with the hammer down, and the stirrup that connects the trigger saddle to the hammer.

Otherwise, it's all there. The trigger connects to the trigger saddle, which connects to the hand and hammer stirrup. In single-action, you cock the hammer, and that lets the single-action sear slip into notches on the hammer. Pull the trigger, and that trips the sear, allowing the hammer to fall. In double-action, when you pull the trigger, the stirrup pushes the hammer back until the trigger reaches the point where the stirrup slips off its ledge and rides up that big notch you see in front part of the hammer.
 
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