OK, you asked.
The original Schofield revolvers were never chambered for the 45 Colt cartridge.
I hope my photos come through.
In this photo, two 45 Colt cartridges are on the left, two 45 Schofield cartridges are on the right. The cartridges on the outside of the photo are my modern reloads, the two in the center are original Benet Primed, Copper Cased cartridges.
Smith and Wesson was in the middle of producing something like 150,000 revolvers for the Russian, Turkish, and Japanese governments. These revolvers chambered the 44 Russian cartridge, which was a bit shorter than a modern 44 Special. S&W had arrived at a standard cylinder length for these revolvers of 1 7/16". The government had already been buying Colt's Single Action Army, chambered for the 45 Colt cartridge and S&W did not want to be left out of possible lucrative Army contracts. But S&W did not want to retool in the middle of their foreign contracts for a longer cylinder and frame that would accept the 45 Colt cartridge. The government was insisting on a 45 caliber cartridge, but a compromise was reached so the new revolvers could chamber the shorter 45 Schofield cartridge. At the end of the day, the government only bought about 8,000 Schofield revolvers from S&W.
This is an original First Model Schofield which left the factory in 1875.
Study these photos. At the front of the cylinder a collet or bushing has been pressed into the cylinder. The purpose of this collet was to shield the cylinder arbor from black powder fouling blasted out of the barrel/cylinder gap.
The collet can be seen in this photo, protruding from the front of a Schofield cylinder.
When Uberti decided to make a replica of the Schofield revolver, instead of chambering it for the 45 Schofield cartridge, they chambered it for the much more easily available 45 Colt cartridge. This meant the cylinder of the replicas had to be longer than the cylinders of the original. Rather than 'stretch' the frame to accommodate the longer cylinder, Uberti chose instead to shorten the length of the collet at the front of the cylinder. The shorter collet works fine with Smokeless ammunition, but not so well with ammunition loaded with Black Powder. The shorter collet on the replicas does not shield the cylinder arbor from powder fouling blasted out of the barrel/cylinder gap as well as the original length collet did.
The bottom line is, if you only intend to shoot modern Smokeless ammunition in a modern replica, every thing will be fine. However if you intend to shoot Black Powder ammunition out of a replica, they tend to bind up quickly because of fouling blasted out of the b/c gap building up on the cylinder arbor.
You asked.
