Before Valmore Forgett, Jr. founded Navy Arms Co. to make percussion replicas, he was "Ma Hunter", dealing in both live and DEWAT automatic weapons, mostly acquired through Interarmco (as it was then). Here is something that might be of interest.
http://www.machinegunboards.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6137
"Ma Hunter" opened in late 1956, but earlier in the year, with the approach of the Civil War Centennial, Val, Bill Edwards, and Sam Cummings discussed having the 1851 Navy Colt copied, thinking it would be a neat novelty and with the Centennial hype, they might sell a few. Colt was not interested (another example of the short-sightedness of that company's management). Sam Cummings had raised the idea with Ermawerke in Germany, but their cost estimates were too high to allow a good profit, so Bill Edwards and Val took the idea to Italy, where they interested Vittorio Gregorelli, a gun parts contractor, in the project. Edwards contributed a Navy Colt he had assembled from brand new "new old stock" parts as a pattern gun.
Gregorelli made some prototypes, but was not set up for series production, so Uberti came into the picture. Uberti had been a contractor for Beretta, and the early Colt replicas were noted for their rather shallow automatic pistol rifling, instead of the deep rifling needed to stabilize lead bullets. But the replica market was off and running, with a much larger than anticipated boost from the CW Centennial. And it is still very much alive, with Navy Arms (having survived some financial problems) a major player in the reproduction gun market.
Jim