Most unusual .45......

[Bob Wright]

Many years ago I was at the local shooting range when I noticed a shooter with an unusual single action. Seemed to be some Italian import copy of .......well, of something.

During a lull in shooting I quizzed him about it and he showed it to me, and offered to let me shoot s few rounds.

The gun was a Richards-Mason cartridge conversion of the 1860 Colt. The barrel had been cut to about 5" and the gun deeply polished and blued. It was so well done I thought is was a modern replica, but read the correct Colt rollmarks, now somewhat faint. The backstrap was old brass, beginning to show a little tarnish. I asked him about the gun, but he said it was left to him by his late father-in-law.

When he handed me the cartridges to load, they were .45 ACP!. Richards-Mason conversions are supposed to be .44 Colt, not .45 ACP! The rounds were handloads, loaded with, I assume, 185gr. cast SWC bullets. Well, I loaded and fired five rounds with no incident, barely hitting paper at twenty-five yards, over a foot low. I asked him about using .45 ACP in such an old gun, but he had taken the precaution to have it analyzed by a gunsmith and it had gotten a clean bill of health as long as +P stuff was avoided. He had taken the precaution to load with Pyrodex, however.

Neat gun.


Bob Wright

 

[moxie]

So how did those rimless cartridges headspace in that revolver? Moon clips?

 

[Bob Wright]

So how did those rimless cartridges headspace in that revolver? Moon clips?

The Richards-Mason Conversion is on the 1860 Colt Army revovler. The .45 ACP headspaces on the case mouth, and the cylinder is "stepped" to allow correct headspace. As for extraction, this is a rod ejector Single Action, not requiring a rim. Same as in Ruger Blackhawks with 9mm or .45 ACP cylinders.

Only multiple ejecting revovlers require half-moon or full moon clips for extraction.

Bob Wright

 

[RJay]

Colt did not go to a steel frame until, I believe the turn of the century, to shoot smokeless cartridges in an old Colt iron gun will result in a blown cylinder or a cracked frame. It is not the pressure, it is the power or pressure curve, Smokeless has a " sharper " curve than black powder.

 

[Bob Wright]

Wasn't my gun.

Incidentally, I've always heard the New Model Army vintage Colts were made with what was called "Cold Spring Steel", a new process at the time?


Bob Wright

 

[RJay]

Truth in advertising was unknown in those days. The manufactures could and did make outrageous claims. I have seen too many pictures of Colt single actions that had blown cylinders and /or crack frames from shooting smokeless ammo.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

The Richards-Mason Conversion is on the 1860 Colt Army revovler. The .45 ACP headspaces on the case mouth, and the cylinder is "stepped" to allow correct headspace. As for extraction, this is a rod ejector Single Action, not requiring a rim. Same as in Ruger Blackhawks with 9mm or .45 ACP cylinders.

I think your original guess was closer to the truth. The Richards-Mason conversions were offered long before the .45 ACP came into existance. According to Wikipedia, "There were approximately 2100 Richards-Mason M1860 Army conversions made from 1877 to 1878 in a serial-number range 5800 to 7900."

The .45 Automatic Colt Pistol (ACP) cartridge wasn't designed until 1904, more than 25 years after the Richards-Mason conversions were made. So it's not just unlikely, it's impossible that an original Richards-Mason conversion was chambered in .45 ACP. The revolver you inherited my indeed be a genuine Colt from post-Civil War days, but the conversion cannot be an original Richards-Mason.

 

[Bob Wright]

The .45 Automatic Colt Pistol (ACP) cartridge wasn't designed until 1904, more than 25 years after the Richards-Mason conversions were made. So it's not just unlikely, it's impossible that an original Richards-Mason conversion was chambered in .45 ACP. The revolver you inherited my indeed be a genuine Colt from post-Civil War days, but the conversion cannot be an original Richards-Mason.

As I said the original RM conversions were to .44 Colt, and this was probably one of such conversions, but there are many such guns chambered in other calibers later, some to .44-40 and some .45 S&W, that I have observed over the years.

I have never slugged the bore of any of these guns, but I'm not surprised to see them going to .45 cartridges.

Further, the RM conversions left the barrels the original 8" length, and as I said, this had been cut to 5", so this gun had been through somebody's gunshop, as well as having been recently blued. And this occurred prior to the Italian copies being readily available.

As a matter of fact, about that time period, I observed a Colt Walker copy being converted to .45 Colt, as the owner had an original Walker cartridge conversion, which he deemed too risky, and valuable to shoot. The owner had milled off the rear of the cylijder, but had yet to make the breech insert.

Bob Wright