A common statement made by potential arms collectors is that “this is a rich man’s hobby”   or “only old men can afford to collect guns, swords, etc.” Of course, this is mistaken thinking, for it is indeed possible for any potential beginner, unencumbered by a surfeit of available funds, to enjoy building a decent collection.

For instance, a man of my acquaintance began collecting guns at a fairly late stage in his life. Married with grown-up children who had already long flown the nest, his interest was piqued when he picked up an old cap and ball pocket revolver. Not a Colt nor a Remington, but one of the lesser (for want of a better term) second-string gun makers from up north. Ultimately, this man built up a fine collection of similar firearms, a collection that won an award or two when displayed. 

The point of this quick preamble is that the collection was based on a core of relatively inexpensive antique pistols, both cap and ball and cartridge firing. With the guns came a need and a desire to research the maker of his firearms and others of similar weapons. Thus was born in that collector the essential activity of locating relevant books, or whatever other literature was out there, necessary to expand his knowledge. He also joined a couple of collector clubs and talked to as many knowledgeable people as possible, and found a fellowship that embraces all those with similar interests. 

So for not too many dollars, and as much time as he could spare in learning about old firearms, including those that interested him, he became a Gun Collector and in later years, something of a “knowledgeable person” himself. One who was happy to share his collecting experiences and to pass on what he had learned to others just entering the brotherhood. His philosophy became that to be a true collector, one must never stop learning, is morally obliged to share their collections with others, and to remind other collectors that they all had to start somewhere. 

And he finds it most acceptable to let the neophytes know that, like him, they can begin their collections from even the humblest of beginnings.

Back around the turn of the last century, owning a gun was pretty much considered a rite of passage if you were a rural young man. Most gun manufacturers turned out simple single-shot .22 and .32 caliber rifles that were inexpensive to acquire and easy to operate.

The better manufacturers like Winchester, Remington, Stevens, Hamilton, Hopkins and Allen, Savage, Quackenbush, and a few others produced guns of respectable quality. Other manufacturers like Meridan, Clive, Hoban, and Durand made guns that were barely functional and probably dangerous to use.

For many of us older collectors, our first introduction to guns was a handed-down piece from a grandfather, father, or uncle. Many were originally obtained as premiums for selling merchandise. A typical 1920 period ad reads:

Boy’s Hunting Rifle Free
“…we give it free for selling only 30 packages of Bluline at 10 cents per package. Send us your name and address. We trust you. Return our $3.00 after the sale of our Bluline and we’ll send the rifle at once.”
(Pictured was a Hamilton takedown model)

Any boy (or girl) who wanted a rifle could have one by simply putting in a little effort. The profusion and availability of these guns cannot be overstated.

Hamilton Rifle Company, for instance, made 700,000 boy’s rifles between 1900 and 1911. They made at least eight basic models. Today, assembling a complete collection of Hamilton’s would be a challenge, but not to the pocketbook.

These guns are frequently found at gun shows, gun shops, and pawnshops. Prices range from under $100 to $350 for better quality and condition pieces. Oddly, the low-quality guns are the hardest to find simply because they were not deemed worth saving.        

There are several books to guide the beginning collector: 

• Grant, James J., Boy’s Single Shot Rifles, original print 1967, Wolfe reprint 1991
• Perkins, Jim, American Boy’s Rifles 1890 – 1945, RTB Koppel, PA 1976
• Dunathon, Arni, The American BB Gun, A Collector’s Guide, R&R, Livonia, NY 1997

Although the Colt’s Thuer conversion for percussion revolvers was not a commercial success, there was one meaningful development which took place. The system presented one of the earliest uses of reloadable centerfire cartridges and perhaps the only occasion where the gun itself functioned as a reloading machine. 

If you’ve ever been curious about those simple tools seen in cased Thuer conversion sets, here’s how they worked. The gun itself only required one modification — the end of the rammer was drilled and tapped to enable the re-priming plunger to be installed; otherwise, the tools were completely separate.

Two for a Colt Walker? 

That’s about what four and a half pounds of scrap iron and brass is worth. So what makes them regularly bring six figures when they change hands? Answer: we do. It’s good to remind ourselves from time to time that these chunks of iron, wood, ivory, and brass only have value because there is a universe of like-minded people who see material culture value where none intrinsically exists. Well-established collectors, those who can afford the high prices of today’s arms, are typically older folks with disposable income. 

Newer, younger collectors are often hard pressed to fork over big bucks for collectible arms. In order for the latter demographic to grow and provide a base for sustained value, there has to be an entry point. Stuart Mowbray’s Man-at-Arms magazine has recognized and effectively addressed this point by regularly featuring articles on inexpensive military and European weapons. 

We are hoping that this e-magazine approach will also reach and stimulate interest among younger potential collectors by providing a pathway to improve their knowledge. Starting with the next issue and recurring periodically, we will add a feature titled “ENTRY POINT” where we explore areas of arms collecting suitable for new enthusiasts to “get their feet wet” and discover the satisfaction of collecting without excessive expenditures. It is also well to remember the folks who mentored us along the way. 

Too often at gun club meetings, we’ve observed the closed cronyism that shuts out the newcomer. This often intimidates and drives away those we should be encouraging. The old adage that says, “the only dumb question is the one that wasn’t asked,” is the attitude of patience and friendliness we should all adopt when dealing with the new collector. We are fortunate to be involved in a category of high-quality collectables, along with fine art, coins, stamps, etc., where interest can be initiated at many age levels. Quality collectables have not only held their value during tough times but have served as a haven for capital preservation. On the other hand, many collectable categories can be designated “nostalgia collectables”. These, we believe, will ultimately lose value as their enthusiasts pass along.

Before we get into this story, we have to warn the reader that there is more than a little conjecture involved. The year was 1872. Rollin White’s patent, as assigned to Smith and Wesson, had just expired, and dozens of companies were waiting in the wings to capitalize on the opening of the previously restricted market.

Colt had just come out with their first true cartridge revolver, the Model 1872 Open-Top. That the gun was patterned on previous percussion designs was no accident. Lots of leftover parts remained, and they saw an opportunity to unload frames, backstraps, trigger guards, hammers, and internal parts on their warmed-over offering. It was clear the much-improved Model 1873 Single Action Army was well into pre-production when they put the open-tops on the market.

There was also a lot of unsold inventory of percussion pistols. The market had about dried up for percussion guns—what to do? Convert them to cartridge of course! The standard Richards and Richard-Mason conversions are well-known answers to that dilemma.

Less well-known are some of the tool room experiments that may have preceded those standard conversions.

It’s not hard to imagine that management handed a few percussion pistols to the tool room mechanics and told them to see what they could come up with. Three such guns have surfaced. Each exhibits features that later found their way into production guns, none have been noted in other than the specimens shown.

The first was obviously created from a series of random parts. There are no serial numbers on any part—only the letter “M” for “Model” on the frame. The frame also bears the two line marking “PAT. JULY 21, 1871 and PAT. JULY 2, 1872”, thereby placing the date of experimentation after that latter date. This gun was purchased from the Colt factory by Val Forgett of Navy Arms as a potential model for reproduction, but the project was abandoned.

The rammer aperture has been plugged, and the barrel bolster re-machined. The cylinder has been shortened, and chambers machined for cartridge rims. A spacer plate has been added. Inside the spacer plate is a rebounding firing pin for centerfire cartridges. A loading channel has been machined on the right recoil shield. The brass backstrap and trigger guard base have been drilled and tapped, perhaps for some sort of shoulder stock. All in all, it’s a pretty basic series of modifications.

The next piece seems to be a refinement of the previous conversion. This one was based on a surplus gun—serial number 99967. It is also a refugee from the Colt Co. archives. The rammer aperture has been plugged, and the barrel bolster re-machined with a slightly different contour than the previous gun. The cylinder has been shortened and chambers machined for cartridge rims. The spacer plate in this case is more elaborate with a rear sight reminiscent of the rear barrel sight on the model 1872 open-top. Again, a rebounding firing pin for centerfire cartridges. The loading groove is more neatly executed. (This gun and Colt’s Tool Room are further discussed in Bruce McDowell’s book under Further Reading)

The final example is based upon a near mint surplus gun—serial number 36820. It is the simplest of all. The cylinder was shortened and chambers machined for cartridge rims. A spacer plate with a hinged gate was installed. The hammer was modified with a firing pin extension for centerfire cartridges. If I were to guess, I’d guess this experment may have preceeded the above versions.

It would be extremely interesting to learn whether more examples of this transitory period in Colt’s history exist. If you have one, let us know.

Further Reading:

Adler, Dennis, Metallic Colt Conversions, Krause, 2002

McDowell, R. Bruce, A Study Of Colt Conversions And Other Percussion Pistols, Krause, 1997

by Robert Pershing

Collecting “Colt Firearms” is not the only thing we rabid collectors do. There are great and wonderful collections of paper to include: antique photos, letters, ledgers, bills of sale, antique Colt stock certificates, posters, illustrations, broadsides, advertisements — and the list goes on.

Others collect accoutrements, leather, costumes, anything western that may compliment Colt’s firearms, even to parts of the original Colt Paterson factory (bricks, etc.).

There remains another facet of Colt collecting that is very limited and the articles quite rare. These are original parts of machinery from the early production days. And so we come to the explanation of this article.

At the Las Vegas Gun Show of January 17, 2003 I was able to trade an interesting Colt Model 1862 Police Revolver that was the personal weapon of Hank Monk for a once-in-a-lifetime bit of Colt history. (Monk was the famous stagecoach driver who carried Horace Greeley on a record breaking ride of 112 miles in 12 hours, over the mountain trails of the Sierra Nevada in 1859. The ride was made famous in a book, Roughing It by Mark Twain. John Gangel had these wonderful items and I hesitated not at all to trade the gun for them.)

They were, in fact, Colt Paterson cylinder roll dies for the Pocket and Belt Model revolvers. Very few tools of manufacture from the original production line at the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company (Colt’s Paterson factory) remain. R.L. Wilson rates them among the rarest of all Colt 

Memorabilia, dates them 1837, and identifies the engraving work on the dies as that of Waterman Lilly Ormsby, master engraver of portraits, bank notes, and the incredible cylinder scenes on Colt percussion pistols.

Colt met Ormsby in New York while showing off his prototype Paterson pistol to potential investors prior to the start-up of the Patent Arms Manufacturing Co. Colt needed some $200,000 to get the factory going. Colt chose the gun store of Samuel Hall as a stage for his presentation. Orison Blunt was present as was Ormsby, whose engraving shop was only a few doors away. Blunt was soon to become a partner in a large importing and sporting goods firm of Blunt and Syms, destined to become one of Colt’s most important dealers.

Colt was always thinking ahead and realized that an important part of producing his firearms was protecting them from copies and infringements on his patents. Ormsby was, at the time, engraving bank notes that defied counterfeiting, and suggested to Colt that an engraved cylinder scene might solve his problems as well.

Colt and Ormsby became friends and business associates that lasted throughout Colt’s life time and even after to 1872 with all the cylinder rolled scenes on Colt percussion revolvers, conversions and concluding with the Model 1872 Open Top Single Action Revolver.

On a recent research venture to the Colt factory in Hartford, CT, I brought the two die rollers to show the engravers at the Colt Custom Gun Shop. George Spring, the master engraver was fascinated with them. Then he said, “Wait a minute,” and took his “jeweler’s eye” for a closer examination. “This is not a flat plate roll but the actual engraving!!”

I had assumed that the rolls were made in the same manner as the later cylinder rollers. That is to say that the first engraving was done on a flat plate of soft steel which was then tempered (steel made harder and stronger by heat treatment) and a soft steel roll applied with adequate pressure to transfer the image to the roll.

The first roll was a negative (reverse) image. This roll was then tempered and a second roll taken from the first. This then would be a positive image. The negative image roll would be used to roll engrave the cylinder to achieve a positive image.

Mr. Spring’s examination of the positive roll noted that the engraving had been done on the roll itself, not taken from a flat plate. I would have never guessed that, and was elated to find that I had a piece of original master engraving done by W.L. Ormsby.

This set of roll dies was responsible for the centaur cylinder scene, roll engraved, as standard on the Number 2 and Number 3 Belt Models of the Colt Paterson Pistols. The same pattern was used on the Number 1 Pocket Model and the Improved Number 1 Pocket, except that the first centaur was emerging from the four horse headed cartouche.

So one would surmise that the positive roll of this pair, was the pattern used to create the negative image for the smaller cylinder.

I learned a neat trick from the great men at the Colt Custom Gun Shop — that was how to “lift” a cylinder scene. George took a lighted candle, and used the flame to coat the cylinder with soot. Then, taking a piece of scotch tape, he lifted a perfect reverse scene from the cylinder.

It takes a while to learn how much soot to coat the scene with to get the optimum scene resolution, but then what else do you have to do today? Don’t forget to clean and oil the cylinder after doing this, you might be inviting unwanted corrosion otherwise.