kickin’ it old-skool

Yesterday, I did something that anti-rights advocates throughout the country would make illegal – I engaged in open commerce between two consenting adults.
A few days back, I wrote about an Uberti replica of a 1871-72 Early Model Open Top .45 Colt revolver that an individual had listed for sale at my work’s classified ads. After an extended email conversation, he and I met outside one of the local gun shops and traded cash for firearm.
Originally, we had planned on meeting in the parking lot of Wal-Mart, simply due to its known and central location, but Better Half brought up a very salient, if saddening, point – in this day and age, a couple of guys examining firearms and exchanging money in the Wal-Mart parking lot are likely to have the police called on them, no matter how legal or above-board their activities may be. How pathetic is it that commercial activities cannot even take place, without interruption, in the parking lot of America’s temple to commercialism if those activities happen to include icky guns?
At any rate, we met, I looked over the revolver (never been fired, as advertised – hell, it even still had the “Important Safety Rules in Manual – READ FIRST” tag still attached), I handed him an envelope of $385 (not a bad price, given Impact Guns has them for $410 + shipping + FFL fees + TICS fees + tax), and he handed me the firearm… and that was it. No background check. No paperwork. No having to prove that I am, in fact, a law-abiding citizen. Nothing more than two grown, legal adults doing a little business with each other by selling/buying a finely-crafted tool.
“Obviously this could be exploited and must be banned!” … I can already hear the anti-rights advocates saying it. Well, I hate to break it to you, buckos, but it is illegal for felons to posses firearms, it is illegal for felons to buy firearms (even if the firearms come from a non-FFL private citizen), and it is illegal for anyone to sell firearms to felons. And yet felons just keep getting guns… So, please, explain to me how banning any private transfers of firearms will stop the problem? Oh, right, that will stop the problem just as well as banning the private transfer of alcohol back in the ’20s did, and just as well as banning the private transfer of illegal drugs does now… As usual, logic and a grasp of history are two things anti-rights bigots consistently lack, across the board.
However, this post is supposed to mostly be about the firearm, and not so much the politics. This particular firearm is, of course, a reproduction of a model that was originally built back at the date in its name – 1871-72 – during a time when firearms in general were making the technological leap from cap+blackpowder+ball to cartridge ammunition, and it is not an example of one of the many “conversion” models that were prevalent throughout the time (something I got confused on myself). In fact, the 1871-72 Open Top model was Colt’s first revolver that fired large-caliber bullets from cartridges, as documented by the Gun Digest Book of the .44:

Colt was not quite ready to make the leap to the Single Action Army. This would require one more bridge. We have gone from the Walker to the Dragoon to the 1860 Army all using powder, .44 ball, and cap; then throguh the Richards and Richards-Mason Cartridge Conversions chambered in .44 Colt. Now it was time for the last transitional sixgun, the 1871-72 Open-Top. The Cartridge Conversions were performed on existing 1860 Army revolvers in the field as well as being assembled from parts at the Colt factory; however, the 1871-72 Open-Top would be quite different.

Charles Richards, assistant factory superintendent at Colt, held the patents that allowed the Richards Conversion on 1860 Army Models; and the factory superintendent, William Mason, had provided the improvements leading to the Richards-Mason Cartridge Conversion and then designed the 1871-72 Open-Top. The Open-Top, so named because it did not have a top strap as found on later Colts, was not a conversion, but a brand-new revolver, in fact Colt’s first cartridge-firing big-bore sixgun. The parts in the Open-Top did not interchange with parts in the cartridge conversions.

Although the cartridge conversions used the .44 Colt, Mason reverted to the .44 Rimfire for use in the Open-Top. The reason for the Open-Top was to have a revolver to submit to the 1871-72 Army trials to select a new revolver. The Open-Top does look much like the cartridge conversions as it is built on an open-top main frame rather than a solid frame; however there is no provision for the loading lever found on cap and ball revolvers. The Open-Top was submitted to the Army along with other makers’ revolvers, but none of those submitted passed muster. Now comes one of those great moments in firearms history. Mason was sent back to the drawing board to re-design the Open-Top with a solid frame. The result was the legendary Colt Single Action Army.

After a fasion, the Open-Top was the direct father of the Colt SAA… granted, a failed father, but still a relatively fine firearm in its own right.
It is, of course, single-action, requiring you to pull back the hammer for each shot. Additionally, being an open-top design, the revolver cylinder does not slide out of the frame (short of dismantling the firearm) so reloading is accomplished by means of placing the firearm at half-cock, opening the loading gate on the right side, and loading one chamber at a time. Ejecting spent cartridges is done with the spring-loaded unloading rod housed in a tube on the lower-right side of the barrel. Suffice to say, loading the gun for the first time takes a moment, and loading it after already shooting through a cylinder takes a bit longer.
Sights are rudimentary, being little more than a large blade up front and a teeny-tiny notch on the back of the barrel, right before the forcing cone (lookit me, slinging technical jargon around).
Safeties are… well… your finger. The hammer does have a half-cock setting, from which using the trigger is supposedly impossible, but it would not surprise me if a good jolt were to unseat something and cause the hammer to come down. Leaving the hammer down on a cartridge does not solve the problem either, since there is no firing pin block to be seen (basically, if the hammer is down on round, and you whack said hammer firmly enough, gun is going “boom”). If one is to listen to those calling for more “safeties” on firearms (magazine disconnects, child “safety” systems, biometrics, etc.), it is almost a wonder any military/law-enforcement/cattle-driving man survived the late 1800s, given that all handguns were about as equally un-”safe”-able.
The center of gravity is pretty far forward of the handle, especially when loaded, but I would imagine that helps compensate for what is probably a substantial kick. Given that this is an “early model”, the grip is “Navy”-sized, as opposed to the larger “Army” size, so named for the previous revolvers of the same names (I guess the smaller grips made it easier for the firearms to be carried by individuals trying to navigate the tiny-arsed ships of the time). The gun’s material include “white”, case-hardened, non-stainless steel; charcoal-blue steel (apologies for linking to the stolen THR – it has the best explanation of charcoal-blue I could find); honest-to-God brass; and walnut for the handle… and all of these materials must be handled and cared for carefully, given they are much more prone to oxidization/wearing/tarnishing/aging than modern finishes.
So enough with the talking, right? On to the pictures!

You cannot really see it, but those are some navy ships tossed upon stormy seas on the cylinder:

You can just barely make out the “PAT. JULY. 25. 1871″ and “PAT. JULY. 2. 1872.” inscribed on the frame:

The aforementioned ejection rod:

Proof marks, though I will be buggered as to what they mean:

The manufacturer’s mark mentions both Uberti (the manufacturer) and Stoeger (the importer):


Six slugs of 255 grains of lead – otherwise known as “a world of hurt”:



The only annoying thing is that the loading/unloading point for the cylinder is between ratchet catches, so you have to be sure to hit it properly as it goes by:





Those little glints on either side of the front sight are the rear sight. You are not working with a whole lot:

On the left, what I carry. On the right, what the open-top carries. Ouch:



Just like that old Leica I have, old-tech firearms seem to look good in photographs, no matter how craptacular of a photographer I might be.
In closing, this beautiful tool actually amounted to a couple of “firsts” for me:
First wheelgun.
First firearm of any type that was designed before 1900 (or even 1951, if you want to get pedantic).
First caliber-beginning-with-”4″ firearm (’bout damned time, neh?).
First face-to-face/non-FFL/private/paperless purchase.
Unfortunately, a range report will have to wait until I have some .45 caliber bore brushes and a few more rounds than the 20 I picked up at the gun shop where we did the exchange… but, the good news with revolvers is that reloading does not involve chasing brass across the range… And no, despite the beautiful nature of the gun and the undeniably man-stopping bullets it slings, I have no intentions, whatsoever, of open carrying it – 5 immediate rounds + 30 minutes to reload just does not appeal to me for self-defense purposes.