First revolver
My first handgun ever was an original 1849 pocket Colt .31 C&B with a 5 1/2" barrel that I bought from Hi-Hunter's Great Western Arms shop in Burbank, CA in 1955. I was 15 years old and you have to sell a lot of newspapers to come up with $47.00. It was in ragged shape and it took the rest of the year to come up with gunsmith fees but I finally got it to old Fred Croll, The Burbank Gunsmith for another month or two of paper route money. About thirty dollars later I had a genuine, serviceable Colt cap and ball revolver. A machinist buddy of mine donated a single-cavity mold and my dad came up with a can of caps and my first pound of fff. The joy of the first five rounds out of that little gun can be found on the pages of the first Playboy. In the eleventh grade, I got my hands on a Ruger Single-Six and the little Colt and all it's idiosyncracies fell away. Over the years, I would run into it in my stuff and just have to take it out and shoot-up whatever stuff I had for it. In those little "by the way" episodes, I would always get a feeling that I was missing something, but I could never put my finger on it.