When did carrying 5 rounds in a Colt SAA become the norm?

[Kurusu]

I actually stuffed a $1 bill (I'm cheap) in the cylinder of a Colt SAA once, then fired a blackpowder load in the chamber next to it. All I can say is that anyone who carried money in the cylinder of a Colt 45 didn't carry it very long. That blackpowder load burned my $1 to a crisp. There were a few singed pieces of it left, but it was essentially ruined by a single shot.

As an aside, and I don't want to drift the thread here, that 1878 Ordnance Memorandum I mentioned above also specified the Colt 45 load as 28 grains of black powder and a 230 grain ball. I'm thinking that was loaded in the shorter 45 Schofield case as another manual notes the load was reduced to work in the Schofield. I knew they had reduced the powder charge to 28 grains but didn't know the bullet weight was also reduced. Sheesh! What a powderpuff! 40 grains of black in a Colt 45 case has some real power, but I'm going to have to load a few of these and see what the chronograph tells me. Bet it isn't much over 750 fps, if that.

The Jan. 12, 1876 edition of the Wichita Beacon had the following on an incident noted above involving Wyatt Earp:

“Last Sunday night, while policeman Earp was sitting with two or three others in the back room of the Custom House Saloon, his revolver slipped from its holster, and falling to the floor, the hammer which was resting on the cap, is supposed to have struck the chair, causing a discharge of one of the barrels (sic). The ball passed through his coat, struck the north wall then glanced off and passed out through the ceiling. It was a narrow escape and the occurrence got up a lively stampede from the room. One of the demoralized was under the impression that someone had fired through the window from the outside.”

I suppose Earp might have carried 5 after that, but he apparently wasn't aware of the potential problem in Jan., 1876. I'm still looking for something of the time that says one should carry only 5 rounds. Haven't found it yet.

That was not the .45 Schofield nor the .45 Colt. It was the .45 Government. The original 40 gr load was deemed too powerfull (recoil wise) to inexperienced mounted troops, I think there were a lot of cases of men falling from their horses after touching one round.

One thing I know. Having loaded the similar .44WCF with 35 gr FFFg(there was no room for 40 gr on a modern case without compressing), I found the recoil equivalent to a full house .44 Mag fired from a 6" model 29.

Edit. And it made an impressive 1100 fps out of a 5 1/5 barrel (Uberti Cattleman SAA replica BP frame).

 

[BE Mike]

After the first "cowboy" shot himself in the foot!

It was "Four Toes Jones"!

 

[max]

I am going to guess that at sometime the Army required the carrying of 5 rounds in the SAA. I make this statement based on the fact that in 1969, and earlier the Army mandated the carrying of 5 rounds in the magazine and the chamber empty in the 1911. This requirement had to be carried over from earlier days as there is no valid reason to load 5 rounds in a 7 round magazine.

 

[Kurusu]

And finally I think there was never a norm. Prudent and savvy folks would carry 5 on an empty chamber hammer down. I would bet some Yahoos would carry six at full cock.

 

[Stevie]

Many Italian Colt-clone percussion revolvers lack the safety pins between chambers.

First one I noticed with pins from the factory was a Uberti third model Dragoon(probably made in 2006). The Cimarron/Uberti Navy revolver I bought new a few years ago has pins...the little Cimarron/Uberti 'Baby' Dragoon I just got(five shooter) only has one safety pin.

Uberti SSA replicas some have a 'safety hammer' with a lever that blocks the hammer at 1/4 cock...the newest Uberti SSA I own though does NOT have any such safety hammer feature...just a plain/standard fixed firing-pin hammer. Ruger went to some lengths to make their SSA style revolvers safe to carry fully loaded. To the extent they modified a successful selling design..and recalled the old models..they will still do the recall work to this day for free..and I guess return the old/original parts!??

I recall a lawsuit from years ago where a guy got out of his truck and his fully loaded 'Dakota Arms' six-shooter fell out and landed on the hammer and fired..killed his kid!

I read somewhere that it was not all that rare for some poor joker to be saddling his horse and drop the stirrup on his revolver hammer and shoot himself.

I am not endorsing loading five or six chambers...I am saying that accidental discharges can and do happen 'accidently'

 

[Kurusu]

Many Italian Colt-clone percussion revolvers lack the safety pins between chambers.

First one I noticed with pins from the factory was a Uberti third model Dragoon(probably made in 2006). The Cimarron/Uberti Navy revolver I bought new a few years ago has pins...the little Cimarron/Uberti 'Baby' Dragoon I just got(five shooter) only has one safety pin.

Uberti SSA replicas some have a 'safety hammer' with a lever that blocks the hammer at 1/4 cock...the newest Uberti SSA I own though does NOT have any such safety hammer feature...just a plain/standard fixed firing-pin hammer. Ruger went to some lengths to make their SSA style revolvers safe to carry fully loaded. To the extent they modified a successful selling design..and recalled the old models..they will still do the recall work to this day for free..and I guess return the old/original parts!??

I recall a lawsuit from years ago where a guy got out of his truck and his fully loaded 'Dakota Arms' six-shooter fell out and landed on the hammer and fired..killed his kid!

I read somewhere that it was not all that rare for some poor joker to be saddling his horse and drop the stirrup on his revolver hammer and shoot himself.

I am not endorsing loading five or six chambers...I am saying that accidental discharges can and do happen 'accidently'

All my Uberti Colt replicas have the safety pins.

Ie:

Dragoon 2nd model
1852 Navy
1860 Army
1861 Navy
1862 Pocket Navy
1862 pocket Police

 

[rednichols]

OP said:

"So - what is the earliest CONTEMPORARY reference to carrying your new hogleg with only five rounds? When the Army got them was there a manual or written directive as to how they should be carried? I bet they carried them with six. Any guidance from Colt? Contemporary magazine articles? Anything?"

The word the OP was searching for, was not 'contemporary' but 'contemporaneous'; that is, 'of the time'. The Earp newspaper article is contemporaneous, and the author is very clear by saying 'cap' and 'ball' that his was not a cartridge gun. I do a lot of research and greatly value contemporaneous newspaper articles; they are very close to a voice recording (well, they were then; nowadays it's like reading a gossip magazine there is so much spin in them) made in real time.

Some of y'all are trying to apply 21st century thinking to 19th century folk, and using hindsight to say, 'of course'. Even Colt hadn't worked out it was dangerous to carry hammer down on a loaded chamber, nor the Army (see other posts in the thread) and like Ruger after it, expected it would be carried on 1/4 cock (aka the safety notch) anyway, not knowing that we've learnt since then that that notch can shear off anyway. My oldest brother's Ruger Blackhawk, the earliest of the flattops, was kept loaded that way in the 1960s; they sure didn't 'know better' in the eighteen sixties .

And the cowboys of old were uneducated farm hands. And the Colt was a hammer to them. And we all know people in the 21st century who have hurt themselves with hand and power tools present day including nail guns! I live next to a construction site and those blokes have no idea the risks they are taking around their earth moving machines; so there would have been NO one who could outsmart a Colt in 1873.

Here is the Ruger ad of the '70s.

 

[ISCS Yoda]

I am going to guess that at sometime the Army required the carrying of 5 rounds in the SAA. I make this statement based on the fact that in 1969, and earlier the Army mandated the carrying of 5 rounds in the magazine and the chamber empty in the 1911. This requirement had to be carried over from earlier days as there is no valid reason to load 5 rounds in a 7 round magazine.

I love that. It sort of proves the point that the Army never advocated carrying a 1911 cocked and locked. Which happens to be a fact, BTW. But that's for another thread; I don't want to hijack this one.

 

[Walkingwolf]

I love that. It sort of proves the point that the Army never advocated carrying a 1911 cocked and locked. Which happens to be a fact, BTW. But that's for another thread; I don't want to hijack this one.

The army changed there policy on the 1911 a few times.

 

[rednichols]

I agree with you on that one. I'm thinking that is where they stashed the emergency doobie

I worked with a Texas P.D. on behalf of Bianchi for a duty holster for them, and a captain advised me that during inspections it was not uncommon to find condoms in both at least one chamber of their revolvers, and in their cartridge drop boxes, 'so their wives would never look there for them'. Point being, that pistols are mostly carried and rarely fired; and 'back in the day' cowboys were carrying coins inside their scout belts/money belts and not notes suitable for inserting into a chamber, anyway .

 

[ShivasIrons]

^^^^ Can't get much safer than that!^^^^

 

[okiegtrider]

January 9th 1876 Wyatt learned a painless lesson when his Colt SAA fell out of his holster , landed hammer down and discharged.
Wichita, Kansas while he was serving as a City Police Officer.

Baxter County, Arkansas Sheriff E. W. Mooney was not so lucky. While returning a prisoner from Indian Territory on 5 October 1907 his revolver fell out and resulted in a fatal wound to the Sheriff. It occurred as the passenger train pulled into the depot at Holdenville , I.T.

Found a sad, but interesting tale about Sheriff Mooney here: History of the Sheriff's Office - Baxter County Sheriff's Office

 

[rwsmith]

Are people less or more stupid.....

Just like people today get their gun education from TV and movies and that makes them experts, there were probably a LOT of people that didn't know that. I can only imagine the number of negligent discharges they had and there's no telling how many people got shot or killed.

 

[ditto1958]

Um... 1873?

 

[sigp220.45]

Um... 1873?

Why would you think that?

 

[CajunBass]

I have no idea when the practice started, but when I went to work for Burns Security in the early 70's, I was issued a Colt Official Police 38, and a book called "You and your revolver." There were instructions to always leave an empty chamber under the hammer, and that was with a double action revolver.

Oddly enough, Burns also issued me six rounds of RNL ammo.

 

[keith44spl]

I know that my father and grand-father also loaded
DA revolvers with five, while doing ranch work.

Safety starts with the handler.

Then & Now.

.

 

[gwpercle]

Don't forget....old flat top and three screw Ruger Blackhawks , if they have not been factory converted, should be carried with 5 rounds, hammer down on an empty chamber.

 

[texmex]

The really fun part of this thread is that there are pretty guns involved.

These two can be carried all day, every day, loaded with six. Now known as "old style" Vaqueros they are two of the most fun guns I have ever fired. Accurate, comfortable, and just fun to look at. Cowboy action rules, however, always required that we load five, not six. Load one, skip on, load four, hammer down on the empty chamber. It jus' beez dat weigh....

The eagle scrimshaws came that way when I bought those grips for those Vaqueros after I chipped my original "Pearlite" grips. The star scrimshaws were done by Twyla Taylor, the wife of well known "shootist" Jim Taylor. She scrimmed a number of items for me back some years ago. They were supposed to match but Twyla is religious and had religious music playing as she did the work; thus the result.

Here's some more of her work:

Scrimshaw By Twyla

(c) Leverguns.com

Mazeltov. Very nice indeed.

 

[DWalt]

"As an aside, and I don't want to drift the thread here, that 1878 Ordnance Memorandum I mentioned above also specified the Colt 45 load as 28 grains of black powder and a 230 grain ball. I'm thinking that was loaded in the shorter 45 Schofield case as another manual notes the load was reduced to work in the Schofield."

The U. S. Army adopted the shorter cased (1.10") .45 S&W/Schofield cartridge in 1874, the reason being so a single cartridge could be used interchangeably in both the Colt and S&W Schofield revolvers. The Army called it the ".45 Revolver, Ball." It used a 230 grain lead bullet, and until 1879, an inside primed copper case. Copper was changed to brass in 1890. The (black) powder charge was 28 grains. There were several minor changes made to that cartridge until 1896, and the last production run of it at Frankford Arsenal was in late 1908.