Colt 2nd generation

Status
Not open for further replies.
There have been countless tales how Colt's dusted off the old tooling from the 1851 and began manufacturing new guns at Hartford, which would have been very interesting had the tooling not been destroyed when a fire razed most of the factory on Feb. 4, 1864. As for the tooling used to make the later percussion models produced through 1873, it was simply discarded over the years, so Colt's could never have brought back the 1851 Navy, or any other percussion era model had it not been for Forgett, Uberti and, ultimately, Lou Imperato.

Imperato, who founded Colt Blackpowder Arms Co. in 1993 (which produced the 3rd Generation Colt Blackpowder line through 2002), recalls that Forgett sold Colt's the components (rough castings) to build the first 2nd Generation 1851 Navy revolvers, which were completed at the Hartford factory from 1971 through 1973

Okay all the Colt bp tooling was either lost to fire or "discarded" So, how did the Italians ever get all the specs for these Colt pistols in order to reproduce the first replicas? Did they copy Colts old tooling or just have access to specs and build modern tooling from those? Or maybe they actually had old Colt pistols to use for reference and produced copies from them? And what ever prompted them to even consider producing bp replicas in the first place? That seems like a bizarre business venture for an Italian gun maker to take on.

I read different histories of the Colt repos and these fundamental questions are never addressed.
 
I thought the preceding two paragraphs answered that question:

The tale of the 2nd Generation Colt black-powder line actually began in the late 1950s with Val Forgett, founder of Navy Arms, and Italian gunmakers Vittorio Gregorelli and Aldo Uberti. They chose the Colt 1851 Navy as the first percussion revolver to be reproduced in Italy in 1958.

After a dozen years and thousands of Colt reproductions, the success of the Italian-made '51 Navy--which Aldo Uberti frequently supplied to filmmaker Sergio Lione and Clint Eastwood for early spaghetti westerns--had finally come to the attention of the company that invented it.

IIRC, specs for the pistols was obtained by reverse engineering a 2nd Model '51 Navy.
 
IIRC, specs for the pistols was obtained by reverse engineering a 2nd Model '51 Navy.

Okay that answers one of my big questions, the other is how did a small gun maker in Italy even see a market for reproducing obsolete firearms for sale in the US? It is a big investment starting up a business like that.

The tale of the 2nd Generation Colt black-powder line actually began in the late 1950s with Val Forgett, founder of Navy Arms, and Italian gunmakers Vittorio Gregorelli and Aldo Uberti. They chose the Colt 1851 Navy as the first percussion revolver to be reproduced in Italy in 1958.



I guess it was Val Forgett who actually saw the market and Uberti and Gregorelli were his business partners.
 
I read that the original gun they used to reverse engineer had a dent in it. They made the prototype so well, it even had the dent. Needless to say the dent was removed in the
 
Did they get their hands on originals of all the models they eventually copied? Did someone loan them a Walker for them to reverse engineer?
 
I have heard the modern Italian replicas, are good enough such the parts will actually fit and work with original guns. Since I don't have any orginals, I can't verify that, but I don't doubt it's true.

I've also read that the real driving force behind the Italian replica gun industry was the American movie business. It was too expensive for moviemakers to buy original antique weapons. Western movies were big in the 1950's and 1960's. Then when the Italian-made spaghetti Westerns came along in the 1960's and 1970's, there were no original guns to buy in Italy.

Uberti and others still supply most of the guns for modern movies such as the recent (great film) Appaloosa, in which all the revolvers were Uberti, as they did for most the Clint Eastwood westerns and Civil War movies.

My guess is that the public and BP enthusaists soon saw the opportunity to own these same guns and created the industry as we know it now.
 
There are some who claim that the Italians found a prototype of a DaVinci time machine buried in the Gardone Valey around 1956 and once they got it working, used it to travel to 2003 to collect examples of replicas they could reverse engineer. :D

Can't remember where I heard it; but......... it could happen :).
 
OldMontana-very interesting- same author I quoted in the "for sale" forum- now this quote from the article states the same info- it reads as if the barrels, cylinders, backstraps were Italian castings, finished in USA- but the frames, center pins, nipples, screws, springs were made in USA parts start to finish. It specifically states one set of parts was Italian cast/finished USA- but the others were made by Ivers Johnson- giving the impression the frames and arbors were not Italian at all.

In this case, the 2nd gen guns would be superior and the guns to buy

from the OP link, scoll down to the 10th paragraph- a deliberate, specific effort was made by Imperato, to avoid the Italian frames, and use made in USA frames by Ivers Johnson I've seen a few vintage Ivers Johnson BP CB guns at recent gun shows, one was a Rogers & Spencer, they appear to be a premium made gun:



http://www.gunsandammomag.com/cs/Satellite/IMO_GA/Story_C/Cap+%26+Ball+Resurrection

"Unlike their first arrangement, Imperato was now responsible for the entire production of Colt black-powder models. "They were all hand-fitted. There was no way to do mass production," explains Imperato. "We had the barrels, cylinders and backstraps cast in Italy (as Forgett had done), but we finished them off in-house. We made the frames, the center pins, nipples, all of the screws, springs, and built every F Series gun at Iver Johnson Arms. We even used the old style color-case hardening method with the charcoal and bone meal, and Colt's exclusive Colt Blue Finish. They turned out pretty good. In fact, I think our finishes were actually better than Colt's single actions being done in Hartford."
 
Last edited:
William B Edwards (with Val Forgett) was responsible for a lot of the early efforts at getting BP revolvers (Colts at first, then others) back into production. He sent guns out to Italy by various means for them to study. The story is told in a final chapter of his Guns Of The Civil War. At the time the collecting fraternity were very hostile about it, fearing that the appearance of brand-new guns would devalue the worth of their own collections. Such fears have proved groundless; the market was perfectly capable of distinguishing between the value of originals and of reproductions and pricing them accordingly. Forgery also proved to be largely a groundless fear, with several features, e.g. threadforms, to differentiate between old and new.
 
Today I contacted both Ivers Johnson and Imperato, to get more information on this 2nd Generation/Ivers Johnson parts issue. They're going to get my message later this week, and reply.

we're gonna peel this onion, once and for all
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top