45 Colt in that SAA have been summarized in these pages and two books previously, so I won’t go through all the details, but in time, with a properly designed bullet cast from the correct alloy and sized accordingly, the. 45 Colt with a new cylinder and 7.5-inch barrel from Numrich Arms. It turned up in a pawn shop in 1970 for the princely sum of $125.00, and I converted it to. 41 Colt in 1908, and sometime later was converted it to.
44 Specials, and the next few years were consumed by a first generation Colt SAA that was shipped to El Paso, Texas, as a. So with some measure of reluctance, I sold my prized S&W Second Model. 45 Colt that the former could do which couldn’t be done with the latter. If those problems could be resolved, there was little in my experience over 30+ years with both the. From my perspective, the transition from black to smokeless powder and the resultant variations in barrel and cylinder throat diameters, along with the hodgepodge of critical dimensions in reloading dies, were instrumental in the near demise of the. 45 Colt, at least in part, because Keith gave up on it. 38 S&W Special so-called 200-grain Police loads.Ironically, I chose to stick withthe. 41 Long Colt with a 200-grain inside- or outside-lubricated, blunt-nose lead bullet, respectively, over the. Many police departments, along with folks of dubious character, preferred the. 41 Colt was quite popular and chambered in a variety of handguns, including Colt single- and doubleaction revolvers and pocket pistols and derringers from several manufacturers. 38 S&W and S&W Specials with the somewhat popular 200-grain Police loads.ĭuring the transition from black to smokeless powder, the. 45 Colt –mostly, it would appear, because he deemed factory. In later years, however, Keith lamented that if limited to factory loads in any sixgun cartridge, he would choose the.
44 S&W Special, until the latter was generally perfected with his Lyman 429421 semiwadcutter seated over a healthy dose of the then-new Hercules 2400.
45 Colt when a load using a case full of black powder under a 300-grain. 45 Colt slug backed with 40 grains of black powder.Įventually, Keith swore off the. There was also Keith’s rodeo – hanging from the stirrup of a runaway bronc that would have killed him had it not been for a bullet to the horse’s head from a Colt SAA loaded with a 250-grain flatnose, conical lead. Several of those events were chronicled in Elmer Keith’s Sixguns, where some would-be tough guy decided to challenge a lawman armed with a.
By that I mean, he is an avid researcher who has summarized a number of references that document the use of the. My choice of sixgun and cartridge was almost the opposite of why Hanna came to the same conclusion. 45 would be lurking in the door pocket of an otherwise modern police cruiser? I almost had to laugh, since it was pretty much a duplicate of the sixgun that has ridden with Roberta and me for upwards of 25 years over thousands of highway miles across the lower 48. Who would have guessed an almost ancient Colt SAA. Mulling over our visit at the Hanna household during the two day drive home from Kansas, I found Hanna’s choice of handguns interesting, mostly because he could have chosen almost any handgun as a backup to whatever the state of Kansas might have foisted on him.