The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

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GrammatonCleric

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Hi Guys, My Dad turns 50 in June, and is a fan of what is IMO Eastwoods' finest movie. My question is, what make and model of BP wheelgun did Clint carry in that movie? Was it a cap and ball, or cartridge piece? could you also point me in the right direction to purchase one? Thank you for any answers you might give me.
 
Clint's character Blondie was using a Colt 1851 Navy .36 revolver that had been converted to fire metallic cartridges. Technically, such a gun didn't exist (from a manufacturer, anyway) at the time the movie is set. So much for historical accuracy.

About the closest thing available today as a standard production item is a repro of the Richards-Mason conversion of the 1851 Colt. Cimarron Firearms sells a nice one in .38 special. It carries an MSRP of $529, I think, so street price is probably somewhere around $400-450. It looks like this:

1851-R-M-Nav-7.5.jpg


The main difference between the Richards-Mason and Blondie's gun are that the R-M has had the loading lever (rammer) removed and an ejector installed. Blondie's gun in the movie still has the loading lever and does not have an ejector. If you really want a recreation of Blondie's gun, probably the cheapest way to do it is to buy the Cimarron R-M and have a gunsmith remove the ejector and install a loading lever off an 1851 Colt cap and ball gun.
 
Take a really close look at the guns carried by the Eastwood, Van Cleef and the other guy. You'll find that they are ALL C & B revolvers, not Conversions that they are supposed to be, there are a couple close shots of the guns of all three and they are C & B without caps on the nipples, even though thoughout the movie there is talk of cartridges and one scene of buying cartridges. :what:

I do like the movie though, I just look way too close at the guns.
 
I`ve noticed that too , seen a lot of cap and ball revolvers with no caps on the nipples .. and cartrages on the belts . My favorite movie has to be PaleRider ... Eastwood looks like he`s doing an add for the remmington drop in conversion when he reloads in the street , nice touch .
 
Dragon i never thought , i`d shoot anything but the caps and balls out of my remmies .. but i did order a R&D drop in conversion yesterday , maybe i`m changeing with the times :what:
 
Old Dragoon said:
Take a really close look at the guns carried by the Eastwood, Van Cleef and the other guy. You'll find that they are ALL C & B revolvers, not Conversions that they are supposed to be, there are a couple close shots of the guns of all three and they are C & B without caps on the nipples, even though thoughout the movie there is talk of cartridges and one scene of buying cartridges. :what:
Click to expand...

Well then how do you explain this screen cap from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly?
blondie_01.jpg

It sure looks like he's loading cartridges in that there 1851 Navy, doesn't it?

The real answer is that the movie was inconsistent. In some scenes, you can see the back of the cylinder of Blondie's 1851, and nipples are visible. That would mean it is an unconverted front-stuffer. In scenes like the one above, however, he clearly loads cartridges in it.

There is another famous scene where Tuco is threatening to shoot a man with an unconverted1851 Navy and there are quite clearly no caps on the nipples! In other words, he was threatening a man with an unloaded gun.
 
Yes and Tuco was in the scene where he is buying or stealing cartridges.... Did Clint really shove a cartridge into the gun or did he just maneuver to appear too. It is easy to appear to load a cartridge by simply starting the pass above the and behind the Cylinder and covering the pass with the other hand on the cylinder.
Lee Van Cleef was no better his '58 Remington didn't have caps either.

But the bottom line it was good entertainment and after all it was a MOVIE!
This movie was before anyone really thought of time period Guns, or consistency
of story line/timeline and Clint had to take what he could get when he was making the Spagetti Westerns. Remember Hollywood wasn't "aware" of him yet.
All in all they are good movies if you don't look too deep, Just like the old Gunfight at OK Corral with Burt Lancaster as Doc Holliday and I forget who was Wyatt Earp. Buscadero rigs and Hollywood B all the way.
 
One thing for sure they made the spagetti westerns in the right country to get their hands on some nice reproductions shootin irons . I read somewhere Uberti was Eastwoods favorite .
 
guns in the movies

Cut 'em some slack. It's about the first western where every body wasn't packing a Colt SAA and an 1894 Winchester.
 
unspellable said:
Cut 'em some slack. It's about the first western where every body wasn't packing a Colt SAA and an 1894 Winchester.
Click to expand...

Well here goes - putting a spanner in the works perhaps ( or perhaps not ) Were the guns in the Audi Murphy film 'The Red Badge of Courage' correct as it felt like it was very accurate. Just asking.
Duncan
 
Father Knows Best said:
Clint's character Blondie was using a Colt 1851 Navy .36 revolver that had been converted to fire metallic cartridges. Technically, such a gun didn't exist (from a manufacturer, anyway) at the time the movie is set. So much for historical accuracy.

About the closest thing available today as a standard production item is a repro of the Richards-Mason conversion of the 1851 Colt. Cimarron Firearms sells a nice one in .38 special. It carries an MSRP of $529, I think, so street price is probably somewhere around $400-450. It looks like this:

1851-R-M-Nav-7.5.jpg


The main difference between the Richards-Mason and Blondie's gun are that the R-M has had the loading lever (rammer) removed and an ejector installed. Blondie's gun in the movie still has the loading lever and does not have an ejector. If you really want a recreation of Blondie's gun, probably the cheapest way to do it is to buy the Cimarron R-M and have a gunsmith remove the ejector and install a loading lever off an 1851 Colt cap and ball gun.
Click to expand...

It was common to have gunsmiths do conversions during the 1860s, actually. Smith and Wesson held a patent on a drilled-through cylinder, so Colt, Remington, Starr, et al. couldn't make cartridge revolvers until, you guessed it, 1871, when the R-M conversions started coming from the Colt factory. Apparently the patent wasn't enforced against some individual gunsmith somewhere out west.

Some conversions had ejectors, but not all. Depends on how rich the cowboy was -- usually not very.

So, it's quite plausible for civilians to have carried cartridge conversions while soldiers had to load with levers.

However, many BP revolvers would also have been used as originally designed, and Van Cleef's cartridge belt made no sense with what is obviously a BP Remington at the end of the movie -- you can see the copper percussion caps.

And wasn't The Outlaw Josey Wales his best movie? :)
 
JOSEY'S WALKERS

The GB&U was my favorite too, but Josey Wales runs a close second, I'd love to ask Mr Eastwood how he managed the Curly Bill spin with two Walkers!That's over 9lbs of iron!Another scene I liked was in a move called "The Kentuckian", where Burt Lancaster runs across a swamp in time to smack a lad who is loading a flint kentucky to shoot him with.Nice timing!
 
JOSEY'S WALKERS

The GB&U was my favorite too, but Josey Wales runs a close second, I'd love to ask Mr Eastwood how he managed the Curly Bill spin with two Walkers!That's over 9lbs of iron!Another scene I liked was in a move called "The Kentuckian", where Burt Lancaster runs across a swamp in time to smack a lad who is loading a flint kentucky to shoot him with.Nice timing!
 
The gun he is using is most likely a cartridge conversion of an 1851 Navy Colt.

Kirst Konverters can make an 1851 into a cartrige gun with no problem.

10077025.jpg

And here is Kirst Konversion cylinder.
http://www.kirstkonverter.com/colt.html


51ColtNavyComplete.jpg

ColtKonverter.jpg


1. Go to Cabela's online website, and buy a .36 caliber Colt 1851 Navy revolver. Do NOT buy a .44 caliber Navy (nobody makes conversion cylinders for those). You can buy these without paperwork and through the mail in most US states.

2. Then go to Kirst Konverters website and buy the conversion cylinder for an '51 Navy. You will probably need to phone that order in.

3. And last but not least buy a dremmel tool with some small sanding drum drill bits. The '51 navy requires you to grind out the righthand side of the rear part of the gun, so you can load the bullets through that area.
 
Weird Guy-

What kind of cartridges do you use in the conversion? The bore is a hair too big for .38 Special, isn't it? And is the KCC a 6-shot for the Navy?

That's why I've contemplated a .44 Remmie instead: they take .45 Colt, which is pretty easy to get either in whole or in part. But 5 shots seems sort of wrong somehow. :)

And I've always wanted to do a '51 Navy.
 
ArmedBear said:
What kind of cartridges do you use in the conversion? The bore is a hair too big for .38 Special, isn't it? And is the KCC a 6-shot for the Navy?
Click to expand...

The converters for the .36 caliber .51 Navy (which are actually .375 caliber, as I recall) generally are designed to use .38 Colt ammo. Standard .38 colt ammo uses a .36 caliber bullet, which of course will be undersized for the bore. It will work, but accuracy will be poor. You should still be able to consistently hit steel plates at up-close-and-personal distances, such as the CAS standard of 7-10 yards.

A better alternative is to use .38 Colt with either hollow base (good) or heeled (better) bullets. There are various sources available for these, such as River Junction Trading Company.
 
They use .38 special bullets.

The hollow base ammo is recomended like FKB said. The whole "minie' ball" ammunition family works like that for improved accuracy (pronounced min-eee-ay, being a Frenchman who invented that bullet). How does that work? There is a hollowed out back end to the pointed bullet instead of a completely flat rear. The gunpowder gets inside the back end cavity and makes the thin lead rim of the bullet's rear end expand outwards and that engages the rifling better.

A heeled bullet has a larger than normal bullet with a smaller diameter ring of lead as the back end base. It is to that smaller base that the brass cassing of the powder charge is crimped onto. This way both the bullet and the cassing are the same diameter, .38 caliber in this case.

I don't own a colt .36 navy conversion. I have a Ruger Old Army that has a different conversion cylinder from R&D, now sold by Taylor firearms. I have to remove the whole cylinder and then the cylinder comes apart into two pieces (the small rear with six firing pins, and the larger chamber cylinder). Mine has six shots. The Kirsts appear to only make five shots, and a "dead" space where the sixth chamber should be so you can rest the hammer on the firing pin and not set it off by bumping the hammer.

Again, with the Kirst Konverter you have to take a dremel tool to the right side of the pistol to make a channel for the bullets to load through. I don't need to do that with my Ruger (or a Remington if I had one of those). To reload my conversion I take the whole cylinder out of the pistol frame, and pull the rear plate off the cylinder to get the shells in and out.
 
Last edited:
My Kirst Conversion in my Pietta '58 Rem. is a 44 Remingtom 6 shot, the reason I chose it, and the fact that the 44 Rem was an authentic load for Remington and Colt Conversions.
I wanted to be the one that chose which chamber to leave empty...or not depending on the situation.

www.riverjunction.com has all the Kirst info you need. Jim and Paul are great guys and knowledgeable about the conversions too.
 
Man, this whole conversation is making it real tempting for me to take my own advice and get a .36 navy and convert it.

I already have a converted Ruger. What is wrong with me? I haven't even bought that Queen Ann flintlock from Pedersoli yet too!
 
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