Colt Python Unreliable?

[bds32]

I have never owned a Python myself but I have always been intrigued by them believing them to be really cool. A friend of mine bought one from one of his buddies whose father passed away. The father bought it in 1980 and never fired a single round through it. It sat in the box in a drawer for 25 years. Really cool to hold and look at but it will not be shot the current owner says.

One my fellow LEO's, an ol' timer with 30 plus years in now said he had one back in the day and he could never keep his Python in time. I think Cunningham addressed this with his article. It may be just a matter of routine maintenance.

Tried shooting 6 of them in my freshly cleaned Python and couldn't eject all of the casings as they must have swollen just enough to make them stick.

In reference to the Supervel, back in 1979, we had an officer at my department who got into a gunfight with an escaped serial rapist and kidnapper. He was using the Supervel rounds and after the sixth shot, he could not dump the empties. Lucky for him, one of the first six rounds deflected off the side of the suspect's car, fragmented, with one fragment going directly into the suspect's heart, thereby stopping the suspect's actions forever. I think he was shooting a Smith so it might have been something about the Supervel more than the make of revolver.

 

[snakestrikeace]

I have owned and shot pythons for years, and in no way, shape, or form are they "unreliable." Like all mechanical things parts break its part of life, you replace them and move on. I recently replaced the firing pin on my moms python, but that is after years of carrying and shooting hundreds if not thousands of rounds through. The unfortunate thing is parts for these beautiful guns are fast becoming scarce. Some of the older pythons were not as perfect as the newer ones, but by the 80's all those problems were long gone.
The python is considered by many to be the best wheel gun of all time and is certainly quite dear to me. You are just over reacting to a small problem.

 

[slong115]

I am positive it was the SuperVel ammo that was the issue with my Python because it was 100% reliable with everything else I threw at it including some fairly hot hand loads (not using the SuperVel casings...I tossed those away after getting them out of my Python). I probably put 4000 rounds through it over the years that I owned it and it was still in great shape when I (stupidly) sold it.