44 Man - I'm glad I have the chance to respond to your question. To be blunt, I understand the Colt Cowboy is junque, or krap, or whatever you wanna call it. It is not the Single Action Army. There is a large CASS population in Upstate and the couple of times I have visited their shoots I have seen very few Colt Cowboys and hear little if anything good about them. Most of the CASS followers here go for the Cimarron Arms, the Uberti's or the EMFs for that sport, and those pieces see a lot of shooting. You can get either of those three brands set up for extensive CASS shooting with tighter fitting cylinder pins and better action jobs if you are going to shoot them a lot. And some of those pieces are absolutely gorgeous. I drooled over a Cimarron Arms SAA in the original (antiqued) finish - the thing was one a half months old and looked like it was an original 1873 - fabulous.
Most CASS loads are on the light side and those pieces will shoot that stuff for a loooong time but, if you are going to consider one for a field piece with some slightly stiffer loads, and that is quite alright in my book, all you need to remember is that the SAA clones are no stronger than the original design was. Actually, that's not quite correct - they are stronger and better than the originals - the metals are stronger and the technology used to make those guns is much better but yet, they are a SAA design which is not designed to hold up to heavy load battering.
I'm sure you probably already know this, but I understand that in developing heavy loads for his 44s and 45 Colts, Elmer Keith, ummmm, 'dismantled' a number of single action Colts - he either broke them, shot them too loose to function properly, or blew them up. But, from my perspective, a 44 Spl, 44-40 or 45 Colt, at modest speeds of up to 850+ with a square shouldered bullet would make an excellent field carry piece. And, of course, in yesteryear when a fella went out and carried one of those guns, he was considered 'well heeled'.
Man, I know I'm gonna take hits for this one but I wanted to throw my 2 centavos in here. HTH. Mikey.
