.32 Long Colt?

"did Colt makt a 32 long and short?"

Yes.

"On the short, was the only difference between the Colt and the S & W short the type of slug length similarr to what you are talking about on the 32 Colt Long?"

No. The .32 Smith & Wesson (never officially called the .32 S&W Short, but it's a fairly common nickname because of the .32 S&W Long) has a larger case diameter and should not chamber in guns chambered for the .32 Short or Long Colt.
 
No. The .32 Smith & Wesson (never officially called the .32 S&W Short, but it's a fairly common nickname because of the .32 S&W Long) has a larger case diameter and should not chamber in guns chambered for the .32 Short or Long Colt.
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Correct; the lengthened version of the .32 S&W "Short" cartridge was the .32 S&W Long, which was rechristened .32 Colt New Police so Colt wouldn't have to put their rival's name on their guns. :rolleyes: None of these cartridges should chamber in a .32 Long Colt gun.
 
.32

This is a great thread. It is very nice to see the clear explanations of the differences in brass size, bullet size and type and cartridge name.....very often confusion reigns. You fellas did good.
Additional note - I didn't see this and hope that I didn't read over it: regarding the .32 Short Colt and the .32 Long Colt, CotW notes that the original bullet was "outside lubricated", a heeled bullet at .313" dia. At some point, Colt changed to an inside lubed bullet, dropping the diameter to .299 and the bullet weight from 90 to 80/82 grains. Colt's use of a heeled bullet is the basic reason for the difference in brass dimensions between the Colt and S&W rounds.
In addition, CotW lists a ".32 Colt" separately.....a cartridge using an inside lubed bullet. I am not sure if that is really a separate cartridge. I think not. Ken Howell makes no mention of it in his text on conversions.
Pete
 
winchester

i live in venezuela were there is a restriction to buy any kind of firearm and ammunition. But few years ago it wasnt like that. My father have an old smith and wesson model 10-5 in 38 special that he bought 30 years ago. 5 years ago a friend of him who dosent know very much about handguns and calibers bought to him two 50 rounds boxes of ammo as a present but he mistakenly bought 32 long colt instead of 38 spl so my father have them stored and dusted in his night table cause he cant use them and since there are only few revolvers wich uses 32 long colt he cannot sell them neither. The brand is winchester and the box is not old yellow colored. Is white with some red x on them i think. I can send you a picture of the bullet itself because he give me some for collection and next time i go to his house i will send you a picture of the box. My point is that if you can find that caliber here in Venezuela were is hard if not impossible to find ammunition you should find some in the U.S. Sorry for my poor english.
 
heber737 welcome to the forum. I still have not found a source for the .32LC cartridge...I have no idea what the cost, mechanics, and politics of shipping ammo internationally are, but I appreciate your response. My English isn't all that good and I was born, raised, and educated here.:D
 
Colt was still offering revolvers chambered in .32 S&W Long in 1940, though how common they were is another story. The Pocket Positive Model and the Police Positive and Police Positive Target Models were all offered in that caliber. I don't know how they were marked, however. They were also offered in .32 Colt Police Positive (New Police), so described in the catalog.

Cases themselves may not always be marked the way you think they should be or the same as the way they are on the box they came in. These are very likely to be marked ".32 Long" and the box is also likely to have the model of the revolver they were meant for.

Other makers also were still producing revolvers in that caliber. S&W Revolvers were merely described as ".32 S&W." H&R and Iver Johnson, the guns that more people actually bought, produced them in almost endless variations and Iver Johnson listed several models in ".32 Special," which to this day I have no idea it is.
 
All of the examples of .32 S&W and Colt ammo I have in my collection are market pretty specifically -- .32 S&W, .32 Colt, .32 Long Colt (or L.C.), .32 New Police (analog for the .32 S&W Long), .32 S&W Long, .32 Short Colt (or .32 S.C.) and the like.

The .32 Long Colt and .32 S&W Long are not interchangeable, and the .32 Long Colt has been largely obsolete for decades in the United States.

According to Wikipedia there is a Chilean-made revolver currently made in .32 Long Colt, so I would suspect that at least one company in Chile is manufacturing ammunition.
 
I have some cartridges marked ".38 LONG." No Colt, no S&W. Don't have the box they came in, so I don't know what the box says.

Actually I do have the box they came in, which was mostly full of .38 S&W. I was surprised to find the odd cartridges.
 
Then Colt "invented" the .32 Colt New Police and .38 Colt New Police, the former identical to the .32 S&W Long except for the bullet shape, and the latter identical to the .38 S&W. Even then Colt fudged the markings, and some guns just say ".32 Police." Any swing cylinder Colt made after c. 1910 is probably for the S&W cartridges.
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I got a kick out of this, "Colt "invented" the 32 and 38 new police..."

Hahaha :D
 
"I have some cartridges marked ".38 LONG." No Colt, no S&W. Don't have the box they came in, so I don't know what the box says."

That's because there was only one .38 Long produced in the United States -- the .38 Long Colt.

Smith & Wesson never had a round similar to the .38 Long.

With both S&W and Colt manufacturing cartridges known as .32 Longs, you had to be more specific.
 
.32 Special used to be fairly close to .30-30 in popularity with deer hunters when I was a kid in Maine; very different, as Mike Irwin noted.
 
"So what's a .32 Special?"

A Winchester rifle cartridge for the Model 1894.
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Correct- it's essentially a .30-30 necked up to 0.321" caliber.

Also, the full given name of this cartridge is the .32 Winchester Special, which can create another point of confusion. Some older revolvers chambered in .32-20 Winchester are marked ".32 WIN." or ".32 WINCHESTER", prompting an occasional tale of woe and confusion when some unknowing person purchases a box of ".32 Winchester" ammo for his/her revolver, only to receive very large and obviously incompatible rifle cartridges. :(
 
brain doesn't work like it should some days, but unless I solde them last year, I have an almost full box of 32 Long Colt cases & an original box, if someone were interested in loading
 
Yes, I'm sure about that. The information isn't from what's written on the barrel of a revolver. It's from the 1940 edition of the Stoeger catalog. It probably means nothing more than marketing hyperbole but that is the way some models are listed. I believe only Iver Johnson had any such listings. I only bring it up because it's a curiosity.

I thought the original name of the .32-20 was .32 W.C.F. and older firearms are marked as such. Remember, there was no central authority that said a cartridge had to be called such and such. That's why Colt had their own names for cartridges, although they usually changed the bullet a little just to be different. Our grandfathers would probably laugh at our modern insistence on proper and precise names and designations. In fact, I find it kind of funny right now.
 
OK, I think I know what's going on here...

Yet another case of one manufacturer not wanting to put another maker's name on their guns...

My guess is that the ".32 Special" was actually the .32 S&W Long, only Iver Johnson refused to call it that.

It looks like only the third model Safety Automatic Hammerless was so designated.

I just found a post by Bill Goforth (he wrote a book on Iver Johnson: http://www.gunshowbooks.com/cgi-bin/webc.exe/st_prod.html?p_prodid=GS37205&sid=9X4vr2zN) that indicates that the gun, while called a .32 Special, was chambered for .32 S&W Long.


"I thought the original name of the .32-20 was .32 W.C.F."

It was.


Oddly enough, your Grandfather may well have known about one instance in which quite a few people were bitten by inconsistent cartridge naming conventions that cause a lot of embarassment and confusion... And that might well have caused him to consider that having at least relatively consistent cartidge names is a good thing...

When Remington brought out their Model 8 semi-auto in the early 1900s, they introduced three new VERY similar rimless cartridges designed to compete with Winchester's rimmed rounds.

Remington wanted people to know that their cartridges were as good as Winchester's, but they took it one step too far...

Early Model 8s were stamped ".30-30 Remington"

That's right, even as early as 1908 the .30 WCF was well known as the .30-30.

Imagine all the confused people who walked into a gun store and said "Gimmie a box of .30-30 Remington" and found that the ammo wouldn't fit their rifle because they had actually purchased a box of .30 WCF manufactured by Remington.

I'm not sure, but this may also have been the case with early .25 Remington autos, as well.

Remington was forced to change the cartridge designation on the rifle around 1911.

A few weeks ago I was in my gunshop picking up my new Colt .32-20 Police Positive Special when one of those Remington Model 8s came in. It was the first one I had ever seen chambered in .30-30 Remington (.30 Remington rimless).

Even better, the guy working the counter thought it was chambered for .30-30 Winchester because of the marking.
 
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