Episode 6: Evolution of The Colt Revolver

Today We Will Give some background Info on Colt Revolvers and their Evolution over the years! Covering the .44 Walker Texas Ranger, The 1851 Navy Colt, and The Modern .357 Colt Magnum Python. Also we included A Behind the Scenes of Some Gun Range Action! Please Enjoy! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to another edition of The One Percentile. This segment is going to be about Samuel Colt's evolution of the uh revolver. When uh Texas uh became a uh a territory, uh there was a uh uh a marshal uh that was named by uh Walker, and he uh set up what are known as the Texas Rangers because they were having some Indian problems. So he needed a pistol to uh uh be able to carry along as a sidearm. And so uh Colt went and this is one of his first uh pistols that he made, and it's called the uh uh the walker. And it's a heavy pistol, and it fired a 44 caliber uh bullet, and it had a lot of kick to it, and in fact, it was very difficult to uh put into a holster or anything else like that. So the Texas Rangers had to make a special holster that they could hang on the the uh the horn of the saddle, and that would hold the pistol. And when they fired it, it had such a powerful uh kick that it was really tough on the wrist. So uh he uh he sold enough for all of the all of the Texas Rangers to uh be equipped, and then he went back to the drawing board, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

So the next pistol that he created is called the 1861 naval, and here it is.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

And it didn't have much of a kick, and it was small enough to put into holsters that you could put on uh on your hip. Now you talk about success. Oh boy, was this successful! It was the perfect size, the perfect everything. They sold Colts sold hundreds of thousands of these, everybody bought them. In fact, it was used by both sides of the Civil War. It sold so many that it made Colt a multi-millionaire. Now, remember I mentioned about the evolution? So this is the ultimate uh Colt uh Revolver, it's known as the 357 Magnum Python.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

And to show you that there's no bullets in it. There they are.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

But there's something that makes this pistol even more special, and that is it has sites that have little green dots in the rear sight, and the front sight has a front. And what it is is that there's a company that makes these special sites and they use radioactive material, you know, uh from power plants and stuff like that. They put them in here and they glow. So you can shoot this thing in the dark. So if anybody's coming down a hallway or anything else, all you have to do is just line up these two dots with that other dot, and you just pull the trigger. So this sh this gun is uh uh gonna be uh uh very protective of you when it's dark.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

And that's the evolution of the uh the colt.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Now people think that uh Ford invented the uh uh the uh mass production uh in automobiles. He did not, and it wasn't, it was Samuel Colt because when he started making pistols, he made all of the parts interchangeable. Consequently, before that time, pistols and rifers are all handmade, and Colt just produced them, as I said, by the thousands, and so if a part breaks, all you have to do is just go to uh buy another one and put it in and they'll be substituted, and that's why uh whenever you bought a uh a colt, where'd it go?

SPEAKER_01 5:16

So whenever you buy a colt, oh here it is, okay. So whenever you buy a colt, you get a screwdriver, and that's all you need because it's held together by screws, and you just make the substitution. And there's the screws right there. More screws.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

Now, what all of this is about is uh what I'm leading up to is there was a a movie called The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. And uh in that uh final scene called The Ecstasy of Gold, they have three pistols uh that the good, the bad, and the ugly uh held. Two of them were this particular navy, and the third one was a Remington, and I'll go into that. Here is the the scene that leads, it's it's called it's one of the final scenes of the movie, and it's called the ecstasy of gold. And the and the and the reason that it is so beloved as a movie is because of the Mexican standoff that they had, the tension that built, and on top of that, the music. A goodly number of years ago, a new genre of rosters were created, uh Italian movie stars. They were called Sagetti Rusters. The first one was called uh A Fistful of Dollars, and the uh character was Clint Eastwood. That movie came in on time, on budget. Then they did a sequel called for a fit for a few dollars more. Again, Clint Eastwood, the man with no name. It came in on time and on budget. So, with that record, they decided to do a full-blown uh movie, which was called The Good, the Bad and the Ungly, again featuring Clint Eastwood, but this time he had a name called Blondie. The second character uh was uh called Angel Eyes, and he was the bad, and it was played by Lee Van Cleef. The third character was the ugly, and it was played by Eli Wallach, who played Tuco. Having said that, we will now get into the three guns, in fact, pistols, that were featured in that third movie. And what I'm going to emphasize is that there are three characters at the end of this movie. Uh, there are three pistols uh that are shown, and the first one is going to be this one right here. It's a 1851 uh Navy Colt Captain Ball pistol, and that is, it does not have bullets, it has to be loaded, and I'm gonna show how this pistol is loaded. This is the paraphernalia that goes with it. First, you have a powder flask, which is full of black powder, and they have a little device here that uh will give you a proper amount of powder that's gonna go each of the cylinders. What you do is back there, and you start to rotate these cylinders. Put it in here, you load that first one, bring the next one around, you load it around, and you do this six times. Then you take one of these balls, these lead balls, and you put that lead ball right here, right in front right in front of it. You do it six times. Six times then you have this liver and you ram that lead ball down into the cylinder. Now, the reason you you you ram it down is that when you're ready to fire the gun, and if you point it down and it hasn't been rammed in, that ball will just run down the end of that barrel and just drop out, which is gonna be very embarrassing if you're pointing it at somebody. And uh, of course, they're uh gonna be a little irritated because you're about to shoot them, and then they'll have a sigh of relief when you pull the hammer and nothing happens. Now, this is one of the greatest spaghetti western directors ever. But I I I I take a certain uh pride in being able to catch him in an error. Because what you're looking at, remember I told you there's three pistols, two of them are being carried uh by the uh cult navy, but the third one is being caught carried by a uh Remington. And this particular Remington uh fires bullets. And if you look at the uh the the the the cartridge built that uh is in the picture, you see the bullets. Now, this movie is supposed to take place during the Civil War, and at the time of the Civil War, Samuel Colt had not invented the Colt 45. In fact, it's called the the Peacemaker, the gun that won the West, uh and and it had bullets. And so he made a mistake at showing a bullet-carrying pistol in this movie. Now moving on. Now we finally get to the uh conclusion of the evolution of the Colt revolver. First we have the walker, which is used for the Texas Rangers, which was big and heavy and cumbersome and had a hell of a kick. Then uh Colt went and redesigned uh the pistol for the uh 1851 Navy, which was smaller, uh able to be put into a holster and didn't have that much of a kick. And then finally we get to the modern Colt re-roll. And here it is. Is known as the Colt 357 Magnum and it uses you it's interchangeable. You can use 357 magnum chills or 38 special. And uh and remember I showed you how difficult it was to load one of these. Here, all you do is just swing out the barrel. Take, for instance, this one, which is a 38 special, you put it in there, and I'm gonna take this out because we're doing this uh live here, and then you close it like this, and you're ready to go. My chief engineer, uh, who I depend on for uh all of these uh podcasts, uh Gregory, uh has uh a love of revolvers. And when he saw this revolver that I had, which I've never fired, this uh Colt uh Python 357 Magnum, but it also takes uh 38 specials, uh really wanted to go up to a uh a gun range and try it out. So um a couple of days ago, uh he and I we hopped into my uh uh Camaro Bumblebee, and we drove up to um the range in the these mountains that are behind us, and um uh checked in, filled out all the forms. In fact, I I I filled out more forms than when I joined the Air Force to uh be able to shoot at that gun range, turned it all in, paid our fees, and then he took this gun and uh uh got uh into the pistol range and got some targets and blasted away at him. And you're gonna see uh part of the trip, uh a little bit of the uh bumblebee in case you've you've seen uh the the 2015 uh transformers and kind of get an idea of what what what the inside of the car would it look like. You're gonna see it. You're gonna see me shifting my six speed uh transmission.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

And uh he got it out of his system, and you get to see it.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

You're gonna see a happy engineer.