I carried a standard 1917 Colt as a police duty gun for a while. The DA was smooth, but heavy. I have smallish hands, but actually shot it quite well. For a while, the Alabama state qualification was a 60 round course of fire that was required yearly. I shot a 59/60 with that old Colt once. This revolver was issued to me by my department and I tried to buy it when I retired, but no go. I was told that it would probably be crushed or torched, since most officers wanted semiautos, not big old clunky wheelguns
One modification that I do to Colt revolvers is to place a small rod in between the leaves of the mainspring and then cock it. This puts a small arch in the spring and relieves the stacking that the old Colt action has. The largest rod that I use is a 1/4", for the New Service. Use smaller rods for the smaller framed Colts. If you reinstall the mainspring and have failure to fires, you can flatten the spring in a vise.