Author Topic: Use of Cartridges in Colt Style Revolver (Read 1340 times)

BlackHat · « **on:** January 27, 2003, 03:43:08 PM »

OK, here's a dumb question. I was watching one of my favorite movies the other day -- The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. In the scene when Tuco (Eli Wallach) walks in from the desert, he begins to pick out a revolver in the local general store. He picks up a couple of cap & ball looking guns, removes the barrels and cylinders and mixes and matches from a couple until he finds a set that meets his approval. Then he grabs a box of cartridges, loads the gun and proves his uncanny marksmanship.
Now, here's the question. Was there a revolver that looked like the Colt or Navy cap & ball, but used cartridges? Or is this an example of bent history from the movie makers.
I know you can't expect Italian Westerns to be all that accurate, but it got me to thinking some.
Thanks for any info, and for your patience over kind of a dumb question.
BlackHat

sjc1 · « **Reply #1 on:** January 27, 2003, 04:18:20 PM »

Colt conversions. First one was Thuer, 1868. Then the Richards conversion, 1873. Then the Richards-Mason conversion, 1871. Getting into Colt conversions would take forever to go over but they were all an attempt by Colt to make their cap and ball revolvers cartridge revolvers.
These conversions can be found in the following Colt models: 1849 Pocket, 1851 Navy, 1860 Army, and 1862 Police.

Dan Chamberlain · « **Reply #2 on:** January 28, 2003, 03:05:26 AM »

Colt also produced a revolver now known as the "open top" and this was produced I believe in 1871/72 in limited numbers. Mainly a transitional piece to use up existing cap and ball components.

Dan C

Flint · « **Reply #3 on:** January 28, 2003, 06:47:27 AM »

Actually, the 1971/2 open top was an all new cartridge gun, using no percussion parts, it just failed the US Army testing, and Mason was already designing the 1873 Colt to replace it, which, obviously, did pass the ordinance tests. Modern reproductions of 1851, 1860, 1861 Mason and Mason-Richards coversions and 1872 open-tops can be had from Navy Arms and Cimarron in 38Special, 38 Colt, 44 Colt, and 44 Russian. Check the Cimarron website. The movie guns were made (years) before the conversions were marketed, because the movie-makers wanted to use cartridge blanks for the filming, and not have to load percussion blanks. You will notice, also in many of the spagetti westerns, that the revolvers seem to change from percussion to cartridge randomly through the movie, sometimes even in the same scene.....