Driftwood Johnson
New member
Howdy Again
100+ years? I don't think so.
This is the reason that rifles were never chambered for the 45 Colt cartridge until very recently. Every one of these rounds is a 45 Colt. The one on the far left is a modern 45 Colt, with the modern rim configuration. All the others are various old 45 Colt cartridges. Take a look at those rims. See how tiny they are? There is no way a rifle extractor could reliably grab hold of any of those rims. The 45 Colt cartridge was designed as a revolver cartridge for the Single Action Army. All the rim had to do was keep the round from sliding into the chamber, the empties were poked out from the inside by the ejector rod.
Standard rim diameter today for the 45 Colt round is .512. Some of those old rounds have rims as small as .505 in diameter. Just nothing for an extractor to grab.
That round all the way on the right is a little bit different. That round has an extra large rim because it was specifically designed for the double action Colt Model 1909 Army, which had a swing out cylinder and used a conventional extractor like most other double action revolvers. The extractor would skip over the rims of standard 45 Colt rounds, so that round has an extra large rim, .538 in diameter, for the extractor of the 1909 Colt to grab.
The very earliest 45 Colt cartridges were the old Benet primed, folded rim, copper cased rounds. Like these. Nothing for an extractor to grab there.
See the round second from the right? That is the old 44 Henry Rimfire round. First developed in 1860 for the Henry rifle (the REAL Henry rifle, wink, wink, nudge, nudge). The Henry rifle was the predecessor of all the later Winchester lever guns. See the nice big rim on it? Perfect for the extractor of a rifle. The rest of the rounds in this photo, left to right are a Benet primed 45 Colt, a Benet primed 45 Schofield, 44 Russian, 44 S&W American, 44 Henry, and 44-40.
Winchester cartridges were designed specifically with the extractor of a rifle in mind. Look at the nice big rims on these old 44-40 rounds. Notice there is no 'extractor groove', that had not been invented yet. But these rounds were designed specifically so that a rifle extractor would get a good purchase on them.
The other thing that folks often don't realize is the old Winchester cartridges were all tapered. The little Henry round was not tapered, but when the 44-40 came out in 1873, it was tapered to help it feed better into the chamber of a rifle. 45 Colt cartridges are straight. They are shoved onto the chambers by our fingers, which are better at feeding fat, straight rounds in than some of the early repeating rifles were. So the early Winchester cartridges; 44-40 (44 WCF), 38-40 (38 WCF), 32-20 (32 WCF) and later the 25-20 (25 WCF) were all tapered. Here are a couple of 38-40 rounds showing the amount of taper and the large rims.
Why were rifles not chambered for 45 Colt in the old days? Because there were much better rounds available for chambering in a rifle than 45 Colt.
Simple as that.
Yes, it was not until the rise in popularity of Cowboy Action Shooting in the 1980s that anybody got around to chambering a lever gun for 45 Colt. By that time, the rim was larger and there was a big 'extractor groove' to help the extractor get a grip on the rim.
