Disassembly of a Colt 1860

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Niner
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Disassembly of a Colt 1860

Post by Niner » Wed Aug 05, 2020 1:44 pm

Since I had nothing better to do today I thought I'd dust off some of my BP pistols. It occured to me that the gun designers back in the day were a lot like camera designers in that everybody thought they had a better idea. And the end result was they, lots of the time, also had some not so good ideas to counterbalance the good.

I'm going to show how the different Civil War popular firearms differed in take down. This might have been important in the field for officers and cavalry troops to clean their side arm now and again. You've seen the painted images. The officer has his sword in his right hand using it like a majorette or drum major in battle. If the officer used the pistol it would be in his off hand. The cavalry enlisted probably actually used their pistols in mounted conflict, although it was in a holster for off hand cross body draw ...while they waved their sabor around with their dominant hand. In any case a cleaning would be in order for whomever had one. In camp easy was better.

Colt had a less than satisfactory solution with how it locked it's barrel onto the frame to my mind. Of course the open no top frame over the cylinder made a really pretty weapon. Great pointability.

To take down the Colt you had to remove a spring locked wedge that locked the barrel onto the frame. This required a small slotted screwdriver for the release screw. As you turned the screw counter clockwise it pried the spring locked wedge out of it's holding position. If you stopped at the right moment the screw wouldn't come out of the barrel and you could shimmy the wedge left and right and pull and it would come out. Then after pulling the barrel from the frame you could remove the cylinder and do the necessary cleaning including to the bore. Reassembly required getting the wedge back in past the screw...or taking it out altogether and then replacing with the wedge back in. Not impossible, but if you lost the screw... easy to do... you would have to devise other means of removing the wedge again.

There were a couple of pins on the bottom of the barrel section that mated with the frame at the bottom to keep the locked barrel from moving.

I'm going to do posts on the Remington New Army and the Rogers and Spencer later in contrast.
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DuncaninFrance
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Re: Disassembly of a Colt 1860

Post by DuncaninFrance » Wed Aug 05, 2020 2:17 pm

I must say that I never had a notion to own a Colt as it always looked an awkward pistol to me.
I quite enjoyed my ownership of the Pietta Remington 1858 New Model Army but very quickly moved away from BP pistols when I discovered British Military Longarms.
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My only interest in handguns these days are in European Revolvers particularly Webleys. :GBR: :GBR:
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Duncan

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