Beagle, that is a beautiful revolver, I'd love a '61, like Sam Colt, I think it's the most beautiful Colt.
In beginning of the movie, them rascally Redlegs attack his family and burned his house.
Here's the deal, Josey Wales is so awesome, that housefire didn't burn up, melt or harm his 1860. It sent it into the future and it came back an Open Top. He was pretty powerful you know. Never mind what a backwoods dirt farmer is doing with an 1860 to begin with, that would ruin it.
I read within the last few years, that Clint had some problems with percussion revolvers during the 1960's and was concerned about their usage here and didn't want to use them. Just like Hollywood, he was relying on the fact that 99 & 44/100ths of people wouldn't catch the fact they were not firing percussion but conversions.
I'm too lazy to look it up, but I read just about everything I can find about OJW movie. I saw the movie during my Freshman year of college and it kinda' stuck with me. Just one of those crazy things.
Even watching that movie dozens of time, until I got into black powder revolver shooting, I didn't even know how anachronistic most of the firearm were in the movie. Even owning firearms and collecting C&R weapons, I just never paid much attention to how percussion revolvers actually worked. Just ignorance on my part.
Heck, OJW's hip carried Walkers didn't even have sights on them, that's how good OJW is.
In the famous poster, OJW's Walkers are percussion.