Book Review – Home Gunsmithing, The Colt Single Frontier Revolver. By Loren W. Smith

This is very much a specialist book, a reprint of a 1955 publication. It is a soft back book, A5 size of about 117 pages with black and white photos.

It starts with a brief history of the Model “P” known to us as the Peacemaker and even has a list of serial numbers by year up to 1940 when Colt stopped production the first time around! The rest of the book concentrates on the mechanics and repair of pistols.

The level of detail contained in chapters 2 to 9 covers all aspects from setting up smooth actions to barrel replacement, setting sights and refinishing. If you do a lot of work on pistols it even gives information on how to make special tools including jigs to help set hammer and trigger alignment.

This book has far more information than 99% of us needs or wants! But maybe crucial for that 1% who has the workshop time to perfect Peacemaker gunsmithing skills.

ISBN 9781258165796

A Day In a Life of a Dealer – Birmingham Arms Fair

While I have a busy web-shop it is nice to sell at events, to meet existing customers and acquire some new ones! But these days can be quite busy and very long.

The “day” in fact started many weeks ago as the application for a space needed to be in a fair time in advance. That is when one of the important decisions is made, “How much space, how many table do I need?” The more space the more cost and that must be weighed against the amount of profit the event may produce. I would like to have 4 or 5 tables worth of space and to fill the Landy with stock but that would have a cost of about £500 and may not be appropriate for the event. So, for Birmingham I go for a modest single table and a car full of stock! Total cost for table and fuel about £130.

The next stage is the day before the “Day”. I need to decide what stock to take, what display stands are needed and to get the car packed. Then it is just a matter of making up a packed lunch and setting an early alarm for the next day!

The early alarm goes off at 3.30am, so I can be on the road for 4.30am. This gets me to the venue at about 6.30 so I can have a coffee before the fun starts at 7. This is when the doors open for traders to set up before the first of the public comes in at 8.30, (at a higher entry fee). I have 90 mins to get set up and have a quick look at what the other traders may have of interest. Once it all is correct on my stand and the doors are opened, it is a case of hurry up and wait. Wait for that first sale!

There is no rule of thumb as to when you sell your first item at an event, it may be to another dealer within 5 mins of being there, that is always nice. But it may be a couple of hours into an event, you just have to sit back and be patient. This is not so hard, as people are coming and going all the time.  I try to chat to customers as they take a look at my stock, find out what they are interested in, maybe suggest other items that they might like. Not only does it help pass the time, but it is nice to build a friendship with customers, we as traders need them and they need us. It is always nice when an old customer comes along for a chat.

People often have a look around all the traders at least once before they part with their money, so often the same person may come back a couple of times to look at an item before buying. Sods law says that one item will get the attention of at least two buyers and 30 seconds after it has sold the second buyer will come back for it. If you know you want it, buy it there and then!  By 10am I am often thinking about lunch, well, I did get up at 3.30 am! But that is when the main public come in, a bit of a rush and hopefully a few more sales.

The event closes at 3pm, but often by 1.30pm things are getting a bit quieter and lunch is well overdue, I have been up for 10 hours and some people longer so all of us traders are looking forward to home time. But it is never worth being in a rush to pack up, often you get a lot of sales at the end of an event. Customers are having a last look around, still with money in their pockets. Traders who have done well may be looking for new stock. It is also the time when I may have another quick look round if I am after new stock.

We are allowed to start packing up at 2.30 and if it is very quiet, I will start clearing away. My table is near the door and If I am organised I can be packed up and loaded in about 60mins so can be on my way by 3.30-4pm. With a couple of hours drive I am home at 6.30, 14 hours after I left home. My “day” has not yet finished and the following day I have a couple of hours unloading the car and resorting stock plus a little admin and banking to do -I hope! So, my event day with the prep and recovery time is about 18 hours. How much did I earn? After paying costs I was on an hourly rate not much more than minimum wage this time! But one never knows what website sales will result from it and it is a lot more fun than flipping burgers at McDonalds!

The International Antique and Vintage Arms Fair in Birmingham UK (birminghamarmsfair.com)

The Economics of a Cowboy.

The glamour of the Cowboy as portrayed by the likes of Tom Mix on the silver screen is not that realistic. The hard working life of a cowboy would have reduced his posh clothes to tatters very quickly. Plus, the wages where not that high. With a ranch hand only earning $10-15 a month, the posh clothes would have been out of the question to start off with. By the time he paid for food, liquor, and companionship he would not have a lot of money left over. These less-than-ideal economics would have influenced all of his professional equipment even the guns he carried.

While a film cowboy rides into shot fully equipped with a pistol, rifle and a fine horse, a real-life cowboy in the 1880s may have only owned the clothes he was standing in, his saddle and a bed roll with a few extra possessions. He may well have owned a gun, but the cost of a new Colt Peacemaker at $20 would have been beyond his budget, a small, cheap ($1-5) pocket pistol would have been affordable defense. Or a larger calibre army surplus percussion pistol may have filled his holster. He may have even considered a percussion revolver a better bet than a cartridge pistol. Powder and lead where easier and cheaper to get hold of than modern cartridges. Even a famous gun fighter like Wild Bill Hickok still carried his percussion Colt Navy revolvers when he was killed in 1876, 3 years after the Colt Peacemaker was introduced and longer still since Smith and Wesson introduced cartridge handguns.

A Cowboy would have been dependent on the ranch he worked at to supply a horse and any other tools he required, including guns. Some large operation owned as many as 300 firearms, costing around $8,000, that was a small fortune at the time. They would have ranged from shotguns to revolvers and rifles and would have been considered a good investment by any ranch owner who needed to protect his cattle, both at home and during cattle drives. Cattles drives and the like may have added some well needed bonus money to the pay of the cowboys involved, but they were also just as likely to be laid off when they were not required.

The stories and films of the Wild West paint an image of the Cowboy that is often just not true, the truth is far less romantic and economically attractive!

The Showman Cowboy - Tom Mix

Tom Mix was an altogether different type of screen cowboy to Hart, he was vey much a showman rather than a cowboy. He went on to  invent  the “cowboy uniform” which many who have come after him copied.

His film characters were not the “bad men made good” as were Hart’s, his hero didn’t drink, smoke, or swear. Very much a good man righting wrong! He had tailor made silk shirts, silver studded chaps, boots inlaid with silver and guns that were either stocked in ivory or mother of pearl. If this was not enough for a humble cowboy, his spurs and belts buckle may also be studded in diamonds. The fact that a real cowboy would only earn about $30 a month and could afford none of this was not an issue, he was not a person to let authenticity get in the way of a scene or a good story.

This extended to his guns as well, with a pair of pistols normally holstered in a beautifully tooled Buscadero rig. Often one gun was a single action army to be fired by his right-hand and a near identical double action pistol to be used by his less dexterous left hand. His allowed him to keep up a fast blaze of shots alternating between firing one pistol then the other.

Horses also played an important part in his films, with his first movie horse “Old Blue” trained to perform several tricks. Old Blue could rear up, fall down and even play dead! Tom’s next “film star horse” was called Tony and Tom insisted that Tony was given a billing as well. They were soon known as a team “Tom Mix and Tony”.

Mix appeared in 270 films, writing and directing many of them and was the acknowledged "King of Cowboys" when Ronald Reagan and John Wayne were young, and the influence of his screen persona can be seen in their approach to portraying cowboys. When an injury caused football player Marion Morrison (later known as John Wayne) to drop out of the University of Southern California, Mix helped him find work moving props in the back lot of Fox Studios. That was the beginning of Wayne's Hollywood career and another story!

Tom Mix filmography - Wikipedia

One of Tom Mix’s last projects was a series of films under the “Miracle Rider” title.

Miracle Rider (1935 ) | Complete Serial - All 15 Chapters | Tom Mix - YouTube

The Authentic Cowboy - William S. Hart

After the success of the first western “The great train Robbery” the popularity of the genre would only grow and with it we would see many actors who make their fame playing heroes or villains. One of the earliest was William S Hart who between 1914 and 1925 was the epitome of the western hero.

Before starting a career on the stage, we grow up around the Sioux Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. It was there that the young Hart became familiar with Sioux language and culture and developed his love of the west. It was this knowledge that he took to his western films striving to make them as authentic as possible.

Hart started in the film Industry in 1914 and was soon making westerns. His first film of that genre was “On the Night Stage” made in 1915. Almost overnight he became the favourite cowboy of the silver screen, pushing Bronco Billy Anderson (who stared in the “Great Train Robbery) off the number one spot.

ON THE NIGHT STAGE- (1915) William S. Hart, Robert Edeson, Rhea Mitchell - YouTube

His authentic westerns ruled the film industry for nearly 10 years. The stories were almost all based around the plot line of a good badman who redeems himself, maybe with the help of a good woman! But by the mid-1920s Hart was being push off his no.1 spot by the likes of Tom Mix a cowboy of a very different type.

Harts last film, “Tumbleweeds” (1925) made for United Artists was a flop at first was rereleased in the late 1930’s and became a minor classic.

TUMBLEWEEDS (1925) William S Hart - Barbara Bedford - Lucien Littlefield - YouTube

The Great Train Robbery

“The Great Train Robbery,” a short film made in 1903, is not only one of the first films made but is often considered to be first ever western made.

The film made by Edwin Porter took the archetypal American Western story, already familiar to audiences from dime novels and stage melodrama, and made it an entirely new visual experience. The one-reel film, with a running time of twelve minutes, was assembled in twenty separate shots, along with a startling close-up of a bandit firing at the camera. It used as many as ten different indoor and outdoor locations and was ground-breaking in its use of "cross-cutting" in film editing to show simultaneous action in different places. No earlier film had created such swift movement or variety of scene. The Great Train Robbery was enormously popular. For several years it toured throughout the United States, and in 1905 it was the premier attraction at the first nickelodeon. Its success firmly established motion pictures as commercial entertainment in the United States.

Porter produced (i.e. supervised; the job title "film director" had not yet been developed) and photographed the film in New York and New Jersey in November 1903; the Edison studio began selling it to vaudeville houses and other venues in the following month. The cast included Justus D. Barnes and G. M. Anderson, who may have also helped with planning and staging. Porter's storytelling approach, though not particularly innovative or unusual for 1903, allowed him to include many popular techniques of the time, including scenes staged in wide shots, a matte effect, and an attempt to indicate simultaneous action across multiple scenes. Camera pans, location shooting, and moments of violent action helped give the film a sense of rough-edged immediacy. A special close-up shot, which was unconnected to the story and could either begin or end the film depending on the projectionist's whim, showed Barnes, as the outlaw leader, emptying his gun directly into the camera.

Watch the film here - "The Great Train Robbery" (1903) - 1080p HD - YouTube

But while it is an important film, it is not the first Western Film ever made. Recently a 1899 film “Kidnapped by Indians” has been found. This 1 minute film was filmed in Blackburn in the UK. For the full story - World's first Western movie 'filmed in Blackburn' - BBC News

(For more information The Great Train Robbery (1903 film) - Wikipedia, Edwin S. Porter - Wikipedia )

Book Review - The Colt Model 1860 Army Revolver by Charles W. Pate

Book Review - The Colt Model 1860 Army Revolver by Charles W. Pate

In last week’s blog I talked of specialist reference books that a serous collector should have on his bookshelf, this is one of them!

If you are interested in buying original 1860 Army pistols, this 400 page A4 size book is the one to have. It will set you back £60 plus, but it is mine of knowledge. It covers the development, changes to and issue of the 1860 pistol along with its service during the Civil War. It is well illustrated but only with black and white photos and drawings, but don’t let this put you off it is book that will keep you coming back for more information.

It puts the pistol in its historical context with much for the historian to be interested in as well as the collector. The many of the figures involved in the pistols development and introduction into service have been researched along with related documents to give an understanding of the politics involved. This in-depth research also allows the author to identify specific pistols and to put them in the hands of their original users giving us a glimpse of the battles and service they have seen.

This is not a book for everyone and certainly not one of the first books to buy, but if you want a very in-depth knowledge of the Colt 1860 Army this is one to have.

What should I collect?

What should I collect! I’m often asked what antique firearms people should collect; they want to start a collection but don’t know how to start! There is not a simple answer, but I can give a few pointers.

1.        You should collect what you are interested in! Don’t be influence totally by what other people say you should collect. Listen to what they suggest and consider their reasons, but don’t be afraid to disregard them, just understand what you are doing. As you start collecting and you learn more, you may find that your interest shifts slightly or becomes more concentrated on one area.

2.       Your main ally and friend in starting to collect is information. You can never have too much info about your area of interest. This can be classed in three main areas, historical, reference, and current market.

Read about the historical period your collection is based on, background history - political, military, and social. This will put the items you are collecting into context and may explain their development. Arms are not developed in isolation. There maybe specific reference books or websites on your subject area. Specialist books may be rare and expensive, but they are normally worth the investment and this information may stop you making mistakes in purchasing and will increase your interest in your collection.

When using the web for information, always take care and make sure your source is creditable and trustworthy. Always cross reference with another source. Current market prices and conditions can be researched by attending gun and militaria fairs and auctions. You will learn so much from these events. Never be afraid to ask questions about an item that a trader has for sale. A good trader will always be happy to talk to you and share some info about his stock. If an item is priced higher or lower than you expect, ask why. It maybe one item is a rare example and the another has a fault; a good trader will be happy to share his knowledge.

3.       Set your spending budget! Decide what you can afford and stick to it. It is easy to get carried away, particularly at auctions online or in person. Items are rarely so hard to find that you must have that one, wait and another one will turn up. This is where your research will help you decide what is a good price and how rare an item is. If you don’t know these facts maybe you should wait before buying.

4.       Buy the best you can afford. With most items condition is everything to collectors and a good condition item can be resold more easily than a tatty version. When I first start as a dealer, I was often tempted to stock cheaper tatty examples of antique firearms but found that for most collectors the cheap price wasn’t a draw, they were happy to pay more for a better example. It is better to save up more to buy a good example tomorrow than spend less money on a tatty one today. But buy what you like, I personally like guns that have been modified, that show their battle scars, so I buy them because they interest me, but I do understand I’m breaking my own rules!

5.       Be prepared to come home from an event empty handed. When you have money burning a hole in your pocket it is frustrating to go to a Militaria fair and not find an item to buy. The temptation is then to buy something even if it is not quite right. I know this frustration, but I keep my money in my pocket, maybe spend a few quid on a book, (information is always worth having) and wait for another event. One event I regularly sell at hadn’t given me much to buy for the four previous visits but on the last visit I found four great items to buy, it was lucky that I saved my money and could afford all four!

In a nutshell – know what you like, research it well, buy the best you can afford and be patient!

So, what do I collect? To be honest I’m not a great collector! But I do have collections of items I can use for Vietnam and Wild West airsoft and reenacting. My emphasize is on things I can use at these events, uniforms that fit me, practical day to day items I can use. This means that I sometimes need reproduction items rather originals. I have developed my criteria that not everyone else will agree with, but I do try to obey my own rules.

Dance Brothers Revolver

During the American Civil War the Confederacy was always in desperate need for more arms. Being a more agricultural society with less industry than the North they were always at a disadvantage. But this did not stop a number of people setting up manufacturing plants to produce rifles and pistols. While they did better with single shot rifles revolvers proved more of a challenge!

The lack of quality materials, metallurgy skills and the experience of previous pistol production all worked against them. When the Dance brothers set up production in 1862 they hoped to produce 50 revolvers a week, but by the end of the war they had only produced about 350 in total. This was the experience of most other budding pistol manufacturers.

Like most of the Confederate made pistols the design was based on the Colt 1851 Navy pattern, but the Dance pistol is distinctive in one variation. The recoil shield behind the cylinder was left out leaving the rear of the frame very flat looking. This lack of recoil shield supposedly gave more room for fragments of fired percussion caps to be expelled harmlessly rather than jamming the pistol or setting of another caps. I think it may have been more to do with saving valuable material, or just making the casting easier to make!

While not many Dance pistols were made, photographic evidence shows one in the hand of the famous India Geronimo.

That 1873 Revolver - What do we call it?

When the US army rejected the 1871-72 open frame .44 rimfire cartridge revolver they asked Colt to come up with a stronger design. In 1873 William Mason designed the solid framed Colt still in .44, a pistol that we know and love. But there can be confusion as to what it is called as it goes by a numbers of different names.

This classic cowboy gun is often referred to by US Army name of Single Action Army, often just shortened to SAA. Colt called the first civilian issue pistols the Model P. That P got expanded to Peacemaker, but it was never referred to as that by Colt. Colt did use the name Frontier for the .44-40 caliber version of the pistol. Target revolvers with a slightly modified grip are known as Bisley models. The long barrel versions, over 10” are called Buntline Specials.

To add to the fun different barrel lengths are also given different names. The original 7 1/2” model SAA is the Cavalry, the 5 1/2” the Artillery and the 4 3/4” the Civilian.

So if you have ever been confused as to what the 1873 should be called I’m not surprised, we have a whole heap of names for the same pistol. A number of other manufacturers make copies of the Peacemaker and they also have there own names for the design. Uberti call it the cattleman.

I tend to use the term SAA, short and to the point!