Single Action Army – The ExhaustNotes Blog

The Autry Museum Colts

By Joe Berk

I haven’t been to the Autry Museum in Los Angeles since 2018 when I took the photos you see here. I’ll get out there in the next few months. It’s one of the great destinations in the Los Angeles area, and what makes the Autry even better for me is the extensive firearms display.

I found these photos when I was poking around a bit on an external hard drive. For this blog, I’m including only the Colts in the Autry Museum. I only photographed a few of firearms I saw there. The Autry had more Colts, as well as Winchesters and other firearms on display.

The photos were a challenge. Each of the guns you see here was behind glass, and the lighting was fairly dim in the firearms display area. I was using my D3300 Nikon with its standard 18-55mm lens, shooting at ISO settings of 800 to 3200. These are not conditions conducive to capturing good images. I did the best I could.

The sixgun you see in the photo above is an original Colt Walker, one of the one thousand guns Sam Colt manufactured for Sam Walker in 1847. The last original Walker I know of that sold went for a million bucks. We’ve mentioned the Colt Walker in an earlier ExNotes blog. I bought the Uberti reproduction; the reproduction Uberti Walkers sell for just over $500.

The Autry Museum firearms collection features several Colt black powder revolvers. In addition to the Walker up top, here are a two more I photographed. The first one is a .36 caliber 1851 Colt Navy that belonged to Wild Bill Hickok. The second is a .44 caliber 1860 Colt Army. It’s quite fancy and it probably belonged to somebody famous, but I don’t know who (and that gives me a good excuse to get back out to the Autry Museum).

As you might imagine in a museum dedicated to the American West (and one carrying the name of a famous cowboy star like Gene Autry), the Colt 1873 Single Action Army revolver is well represented in this collection.

One of the 1873 Single Action Army revolvers on display at the Autrey Museum belonged to Theodore Roosevelt. His initials are carved into the ivory grips.

There were also a few Colt double action revolvers:

In addition to the early Colt revolvers, there were three Colt Pythons:

This is a crop showing some of the engraving detail on the revolver above.

The Museum also displayed an engraved 1911 .45 Auto. This 1911 was manufactured by Colt and several other manufacturers (as is the case even today; Colt still makes the 1911 and so do many other companies). The 1911 shown here had the trigger guard cut away. The idea behind removing the trigger guard is that it allows getting off a shot more quickly. The modification is not something I’d want.

There was one more Colt I should mention: A Bulldog Gatling gun. Richard Jordan Gatling, the Gatling gun inventor, never operated his own factory. All U.S. Gatlings were manufactured by Colt in Hartford, Connecticut. They were also made under license in Russia military by the Orloff company.

Uberti replicas of the Colt Walker and the Colt 1873 Single Action Army.

We’ve done other blogs in the past on the Colt Walker and the Colt Single Action Army (including the two replica revolvers you see in the photo above), other Colt black powder revolvers, and variations of the Gatling gun. Those blogs are here. You might also want to pick up our book on the Gatling gun.

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A Colt Visit

The city of Hartford in Connecticut is Mecca if you are a Colt fan (as in Colt firearms), and I sure am a Colt fan. I grew up seeing Colt .45 sixguns in western movies when I was a kid and I got my first Colt (a .45 ACP 1911 Government Model) when I finished college (and I’ve never not owned at least one Colt since then). I have no tattoos, but if I were going to get one it would be the Colt logo.

My Colt 1911 has been sending lead downrange for 50 years.

I made a friend in the Colt company when reviving the MacManus award. I had to be in Hartford recently for a symposium and I told my Colt buddy I’d buy him a beer. He suggested a tour of the Colt factory. That was an opportunity I could not let pass.

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The original Colt plant (the one built by Sam Colt) is a National Historic Site. Time did not permit visiting it, but I could see the blue dome above the old plant from my hotel window.

The original Colt manufacturing facility on the banks of the Connecticut River. I didn’t get to it, but the next time I’m in Hartford I will.

The modern Colt factory is a few miles from downtown Hartford. It’s what you see in the big photo up top, and it’s where I had the plant tour described in this blog. The bad news is that photography is prohibited inside the plant (as a manufacturer of military rifles for the US and other countries, Colt can’t have photos of their production processes finding their way to the bad guys). The good news is that I entered the inner sanctum. I saw how the M4s, the M16s , the 1911s, the Single Action Armys, the Pythons, and all the other cool stuff are made. As a manufacturing guy and gun guy with a defense industry background, it was one of the best days of my life.

More good news is that I could take pictures inside the famed Colt Custom Shop. The Custom Shop is a small group of world class artists who assemble what are arguably the most desirable guns in the world. Think engraved, gold inlaid, extremely expensive works of the gunmaker’s art. Guns that are delivered to US presidents, wealthy collectors, and…well, you get the idea. There’s a two-year waiting list for a Custom Shop Colt firearm, and when delivered, the ticket can exceed the cost of a new car. On the secondary market, some have been known to exceed the cost of a new home.

Colt Custom Shop handguns, the stuff of dreams.

You can still purchase a brand new Colt 1903 through the Custom Shop. This one is exquisite. I owned one in the 1970s I bought it for $75 and sold for $200 a few months later, thinking I had done well. Ah, the mistakes we make.

A Custom Shop Anaconda with an inlaid gold bear and extensive engraving.

A closeup of the above Anaconda’s engraving and gold inlay. It’s all done by hand with small hammers and tiny chisels.

An exquisite Single Action Army. The grips are giraffe bone.

Colt’s Custom Shop is producing a series of Single Action Army revolvers for the legendary Texas Rangers. The Texas Rangers are the oldest law enforcement organization in America.

Colt has a process for making a new gun look aged. It’s been applied to this Custom Shop Single Action Army.

This was my second visit to Hartford. When I wrote The Gatling Gun nearly 30 years ago, I contacted Colt to ask if I could visit their archives (the original Gatling guns were built by Colt). Colt referred me to the Connecticut State Library and Museum. I went there and I was met by a Connecticut State Trooper who asked me a few questions, took my fingerprints, and ran a background check. Satisfied I wasn’t a terrorist or a KGB agent, he issued a laminated permit designating me an official Connecticut state historian. That gave me access to the archives in a secure area of the Museum. Poking around in there made for a fun day, and I used materials from those archives when I wrote The Gatling Gun.

My visit to the Colt archives three decades ago was impressive. I handled hand-written documents signed by Dr. Gatling and Samuel Colt. It was a great day and a lifelong memory. My recent visit to Colt factory and the Custom Shop (as described in this blog) made for an even better day. A Colt tattoo….maybe that’s not a bad idea.

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A Uberti 44 Special SAA

Good buddy Paul is the guy who got me interested in the Uberti Single Action Army and blackpowder Colt replicas, and it’s an interest that I am thoroughly enjoying. We visited recently and Paul showed me one I had seen before that he had recently added a set of custom grips to. This is a Uberti Single Action Army with the black powder frame chambered in .44 Special, and it is a stunning example of Uberti’s work.

Paul purchased a set of synthetic ivory grips that had a large decorative eagles molded into the grip material. The original grips with the eagles didn’t quite make it for Paul, and the fit of the grips to the grip frame was poor. Paul sanded the eagles into oblivion and very carefully recontoured the grips for what is now a perfect fit. There are no gaps and no overhangs anywhere. There’s something about the Colt SAA configuration that just feels right in the hand.

I like this gun. I’m a big fan of the .44 Special cartridge. Paul tells me he shoots a 215-grain bullet he casts himself and it is quite accurate. Like my .45 Colt Uberti, Paul’s gun shoots to point of aim at 50 feet, which is great for a fixed sight handgun.

Paul and I had a good conversation about our shared interest in these old western style sixguns. We’re both about the same age and we grew up in an era when cowboy TV series and western movies dominated the entertainment industry, and that undoubtedly influenced our taste in firearms. It was a good time to be a kid, I think.

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Youberty? You bet!

That would be my tuned Taylor Uberti in .45 Colt, the Italian Stallion Single Action Army revolver that has graced these pages in a few earlier blogs. It was a good day…a couple of my good buddies stopped by with brass they didn’t want (including the ultra-tough-to-get-these-days .45 Colt), and I was hard at it on the reloading bench shortly thereafter. My go to fun load in .45 Colt is 6.4 grains of Trail Boss, a 200-grain cast bullet (in this case the truncated roundnose thrown by the Lee mold, although just about any 200-grain semi-wadcutter works equally as well), and a crimp for an overall cartridge length of 1.595 inches. It was 5 shots at 50 feet, and I was putting them pretty much into one ragged hole just about exactly at my point of aim. You just gotta love a good Single Action Army revolver…I sure do!

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About the only thing I don’t like about Trail Boss powder is that it doesn’t obturate well, although you wouldn’t know it from the accuracy this load delivers. Trail Boss soils the cases and they take longer to come clean in the tumbler, but it’s a small price to pay for this kind of accuracy.

The nice thing about the Trail Boss load mentioned here is that it shoots just about to point of aim for me at 50 feet. Another nice thing is there’s almost no recoil…this load in a Single Action Army is a real powder puff. Yeah, I could go hotter, but what would be the point?

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Colonel Colt and Captain Walker

Men of a Certain Age

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Colonel Colt and Captain Walker are in the building…

Two beautiful handguns, the ones you see above are. The one on top is a Colt Walker, the one on the bottom the timeless Single Action Army. But neither are actually Colts. They are both Uberti guns, and both are magnificent.

The story is one for the ages, and it goes like this: Samuel Colt invented the revolver, but he and his factory in Paterson, New Jersey couldn’t make a go of it. Colt left the gunmaking business and went on to other ventures, but in the meantime, there were already a few Colt revolvers writing history in the American West. Captain Sam Walker and his Texas Rangers used the early Colts with great success in battles on the Texas frontier. Walker mentioned this to Colt, Colt asked for an endorsement, Walker said yes, and then he helped Colt design a new revolver to better meet frontier combat needs. Walker drove the design requirements as he took a new commission in the US Army, and the Army ordered a cool thousand of the new 1847 Colt Walkers. Colt was back in business, courtesy of Sam Walker, the Texas Rangers, and the US Army.

Thus was born the Colt Walker, one of the largest handguns ever made. Until the advent of the .357 Magnum in the 1930s, the Walker was the world’s most powerful handgun. It was designed so that if it missed the bad guy but got the horse he was riding, it would kill the horse. I can’t help but think of an old New Jersey expression (common when I was growing up and one I still use on occasion) that ends with “….and the horse you rode in on, too!”

The last of the original Colt Walkers that changed hands went for over a million bucks not long ago, so I knew that until the ExNotes blog goes more viral (than it already has, that is), I wouldn’t be getting an original Walker anytime soon. But there’s something even better from a shootability perspective, and that’s the modern reproduction Walkers offered by Uberti.

I always wanted a Walker, and a few months ago I acted on that urge. I had to wait several months because the Uberti factory in Italy was shut down by the Covid 19 pandemic. Uberti is back in operation again and my Walker recently arrived. It’s a good deal. Unlike a cartridge revolver, here in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia black powder guns can be shipped direct to your door.

I knew Uberti makes a quality handgun, as I had great experiences with my “tuned” Taylor 1873 Single Action Army in .45 Colt. That’s one of the two revolvers you see in the photo at the top of this blog. It’s a cool photo because it shows the relative size of the two guns (the Single Action Army is no pipsqueak, but it’s dwarfed by the Walker). And, I’m showing off a bit with the photo’s background (it’s the pig hide from my Arizona wild boar expedition with good buddy Paul, who ordered himself a Walker not too long ago).

Robert Duvall as Gus MacCrae in Lonesome Dove, the greatest story ever told (in my opinion). Gus carried a Colt Walker.

I’ve mentioned the Walker Colt before, most notably in the book review we posted on Revolver, the book about Samuel Colt. The Colt Walker also figured prominently in Lonesome Dove, and I thought I’d show one of the many great scenes from that movie here again.

Everybody wants to be Gus MacCrae, I guess, and I’m no exception. I suspect Paul feels the same way. So consider this a fair warning: If Paul and I walk into your establishment and order a whiskey, be quick about it. We don’t like surly bartenders, and we carry Walkers, you know.

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