When I was about in 5th grade, a girl brought one in for "show and tell". It was a cased 1849, complete with all tools, exactly as shown. I still remember her name. i ought to try and look her up. Maybe she wants to get it out of the house for a couple of bucks. This was about 60 years ago.
@J H When I was in junior high- around 1962- a kid brought in a 1917 Colt for show and tell. Another brought his grandfather's switchblade. Big, solid thing- kind of like a Buck 110. I never saw another like it.
@RadBaeron I carried a utility knife "Boy Scout Knife" from kindergarten through graduation of high school. Always using it- fixing the typewriter, loose screws on somebody's desk, etc.
@@JohnSmith-hd2tl Don't you mean the days of legally bringing a gun to school are over? The more felonious little miscreants still manage to smuggle them in all the time these days.
@Matt now you're just being full of shit. Philando Castile was high on illegal drugs, driving under the influence of illegal drugs, in possession of illegal drugs, carrying his gun half hanging out of his pocket and not concealed as is required to meet the legality of a concealed carry permit. Which by the way, no proof of him actually being a legal Minnesota CCW permit holder was ever offered, just some vague excuses about his permit being issued in a different "location", (as in a non-reciprocity to MN State) and now he somehow wasn't appearing on the list of valid Minnesota carry permit holders. All of these conditions rendered his carry permit moot under the law. Additionally, he was pulled over because he matched the somewhat unique description of an armed robbery suspect from the night before in that local area. His social media postings showed him involved in street gang activity as well. The NRA and actual law abiding gun owners and lawful concealed carry permit holders are under no obligation to profess support for someone who was engaged in misdemeanor criminal activity at best and quite possibly felony violent crime as well. Philando Castile made several bad decisions that lead to his unfortunate death that day and none of them involved his racial identity. That many of us waited for answers that never came to questions about his behavior and activities before offering support also had nothing to do with his race. His dubious CCW legal status, possible criminal activity, actual criminal activity, and the all too common reckless claims of racial bias offered in lieu of what should have been easily answered questions left many people unwilling to blindly support Castile.
The Truth is in1850, it was made illegal to for horses to own fire arms after the Great Horse war of 1849. The US almost lost the war but once we cut off the salt supply lines to the Horse horde it forced them to surrender.
I've carried a 1862 pocket police, copy, for twenty years, on our land with snake shot, because it's been cheap and effective, living on a creek with substantial venomous snakes. They really fit a pocket nicely, and fit the hand very well. Mine's an Uberti, from the 70's. It's in 36, with five shots. Semper Fi, John McClain
+History and coffee I lived in Phoenix AZ for 20 years (1980's to early 2000's). Loved to prospect the AZ deserts! I had a carry permit and several revolvers and autos in 9mm/38/357 and 45 ACP to carry. However, when roaming the AZ deserts prospecting for a week or so, I carried a Uberti replica of the Remington Army .44 cap&ball revolver in a flap holster. Loaded with 220 grain concials over Swiss FFFg black, powder the .44 Army actually hit harder and penetrated deeper than my 45 ACP autos! Never felt the least bit vulnerable with that big Remington hanging on the side, and was totally confident the gun would do anything I needed. Some of my favorite times! Thinking about waking up just before sunrise to those unique smells of the desert gives me the wanderlust to head back out West again!
I go panning for gold wearing nothing but my overalls and a old ratty straw hat but, in my front pocket I keep a Bulgarian Makarov... some things gotta change
@Drakilicious Definitely need to reform the criminal justice system as it is unfair to penalize a person for life when they have proved they have moved beyond a life mistake. Be discrete and check your local laws carefully and discretely to avoid trouble. Here are my thoughts, so it is my opinion only that should be adapted to your situation. The 5 1/2 " barrel versions of the Remington Army 44 put out by both Uberti and PIetta are very good and quite concealable. I'm partial to Uberti because the faster twist rifling (Uberti 1 in 19 twist vs Pietta 1 in 30 inch twist) shoots round ball and conical weights 200 gr to 300 gr very accurately. Advise changing the stock nipples out first thing for quality replacements that have very tiny flash holes that minimize back blast that fouls the action and causes cap jams. With good nipples, the .44 Army is very reliable. accurate and powerful. I prefer Swiss black powder over GOEX as Swiss is faster burning and works better in revolvers. Not fond of the substitutes like Hodgdon 777 and Pyrodex as both have very acidic fouling that can pit a barrel, and Pyrodex is the worst. However if you have to use a substitute, Pyrodex is better as its performance does not degrade soon after opening as does 777. If you have to use Pyrodex, after a days shooting, ALWAYS immediately clean the gun with water, especially the bore to prevent pitting. Also use Ballistol oil as lube and protectant as Ballistol is an alkaline oil that neutralizes the acids of Pyrodex fouling. Ballsitol is excellent for use with black powder & substitutes as it dissolves the fouling very effectively. I make a home made lube of 3 parts beeswax to 1 part coconut oil to hot dip lube 0.457 round balls or the Lee 200 gr conicals cast from the 2 cavity Lee 450-200-2R mold. (Lard or beef tallow works as well as the coconut oil BTW.) When hot dip lubing, allow the ball/conical to get to the heat of the melted lube before pulling out of the melted lube. I use a small screen basket to dip about 60-80 at a time. The Lee conical has 2 grease grooves that hold plenty of lube so the Lee conical can be loaded directly on the charge and fired without any other wads etc. Lubed round balls can be fired with light charges as is, but with max charges under the round ball, it is best to brush extra tallow/lard into the chamber mouths for extra lube because the round ball has no grooves to hold lube as does the conical. Much faster simplified loading is why I prefer shooting conicals most of the time. A very wicked, close range self-defense load in the .44 Army is the 200gr Lee conical loaded backwards, base-forward for full wadcutter effect over a full chamber (about 35 grs of Swiss FFFg). Extremely destructive with damage effect that puts many modern self defense jacketed hollow points to shame, as the full wadcutter will rip out a large diameter tunnel making a long straight wound tunnel that goes completely thru even a big feral hog!
Thank you, Ian. I have a pocket pistol handed down from my great-grandfather, who must have purchased it when he was sheriff of a frontier county. It was manufactured in 1862 and has ivory handles.
re Pointed Bullet: I would have ordered a tool which kept the bullet in position when loading. A lever which had a small tube at the end, formed inverse to the pointed bullet, to put it into the chamber. Did no one had this idea?
If your watching this and your thinking "i wonder if those would be fun to shoot", the answer is a definetley yes. I have the 1863 pocket police model and its a smooth little gun that points almost by itself. Having had shot other models of mine i really love the little pockets as they really do shoot well and i think modern gun designers might be able to learn some ergo design from them. Just mentioning this if anyone was thinking of buying even a reporduction to shoot as there are so many choices available.
I never realised they made pistols like this, kind of like a muzzle loader technique but in the barrel. Must of been a pain once your six shots were up.
Oh, it was definitely a pain if you got into trouble that just drawing the pistol couldn't stop. But wearing multiple guns was an old tradition by then.
Not sure how true it is but I seem to remember reading somewhere a while back that although his revolvers were wildly popular there, colt became unwelcome in britain when he was found to be supplying revolvers to the Russians during the Crimean war- hence the hostility from the authorities that led to the ultimate closure of the london factory .
They were made for black powder. Smokeless powder was a military secret until the 1890's, which is when you begin to see cartridges shrink in size as they began to be designed exclusively for smokeless powder (smokeless is three times as powerful as black powder, so you need far less smokeless to get the same power as black).
Very rare. And hard to find. Every time I find a real one of these it’s not for sale. The baby dragoon without the lever I think was Intended for the red light district females. These are very nice examples. I can hear the crisp snap when the cylinder is turned like it was made yesterday. The loading lever snaps into place with one finger.not like that on the repop.ones..
Balls are easier to load well in the gun. Conical bullets are easy to "tip" and result in a little bit of an offset or bent point (and thus wobble when fired), so they're better to use with a loader. I think conicals are supposed to be more accurate if very well-loaded.
@@zacharyrollick6169 indeed. But less room for powder, so less energy at short range, while losing less velocity at longer range. I also wanted to say that the pointed bullet has better penetration characteristics, but again, for lead bullets, I am not sure that is even true. 😀
My Uberti likes loaded hot with conicals. It likes 3f right up to the point where you're compressing powder. It barks impressively and puts rounds into scarily tight little groups. It's slick handling and I like hammer sights for close work. I've got mine filed out wide and to point of aim. I've carried that little pistol loaded in my truck a few times and didn't feel unarmed at all.
One could probably make a case on the moral complications of the firearms industry's dependency on crime and war. But who cares? That's just a badass gun.
Eh, so-so. They benefit from people wanting to defend themselves from criminals, yes. But criminals rarely purchase new firearms from Colt for example, so criminals do not directly benefit the industry at large, rather the fear of criminals does. You could say that the medical industry benefits from illness, violence, crime and war too. Or that the motor vehicle industry benefit from accidents and crime. Tldr, there is not really a significant ethical/moral dilemma fir the firearms industry. The desire to be better able to defend one’s self is a perfectly valid need, and the firearms industry work to fulfil that desire.
@@thelemon0001 I fail to see how my reply was a breakdown, nor do i see how it was a joke. I can see it being one but it is not clear enough over the internet.
I wonder how full of lint and dirty these got from lack of shooting but a lot of carrying... i bet they NEVER changed out the charge :p. All of the current neglected pocket gun memes but way worse.
@@ScottKenny1978 Exactly. Moisture would get into the black powder making it useless. I didn't empty my muzzleloader when hunting a few years back despite the rain. The next day I had a deer in my sights. When I pulled the trigger all I heard was "pop". 😭😭😭
Interesting, it was civilian sales and marketing to the civilian carry market that built Colt. And, if you'll forgive the oversimplification, it was ignoring the civilian market that has pretty much ruined them now.
He hasn't covered this yet: www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/gun-nuts/2013/02/best-home-defense-gun-ever-colt-defender-shotgun/ There are no known surviving examples though maybe there's a replica. I mean he was able to cover that Stinger gun made during WW2 that had no surviving examples but a replica.
Was that scene on the drum "engraved" or rollerstamped like most of the other large scale decors on such drums? Okay you clarified that later on. Still think calling it "engraving" is a bit misleading if it's a rollerstamp, though.
A little over fifty years ago my sister always carried a pocket model of navy caliber as her go to pistol. She was scary accurate with it up to 25 or 30 yards.
Some people can’t have guns but in most states a BP gun is considered an antique and not a gun unless it’s used in a crime. (Being a felon, or otherwise prohibited possibly because of state or county laws and of course occasionally that’s the only gun they can afford or already own).
@@cyclonetaylor7838 That's cool. Sometimes I carry my '49 in my coat pocket. It's a regular five shot, 4" barrel, made in 1871. Still works like a charm.
I use to be apart of a western gunfighting reenactment group some years ago, and one of the actors in the group had a pair of these and every year either Wyatt Earp days or Helldorado days he'd let me use them. Dual wielding two blank firing guns doesn't sound like a lot of fun, but to a 12 year old, it's the best thing ever
There is a letter from Sam to his distributors berating them for not upselling the six shot pockets. The new "silver steel" that made the 1860 possible made the switch from 5 to 6 a no brainer, to paraphrase Mr Colt.
There was 4 feet between them when they stopped to make their play. And the swiftness of the 49er is still talked about today! Oh he might have gone on living But he made one fatal slip When he tried to rob the 49er with the small iron on his hip small iron on his hip
My friend had no carpet when he & his family moved into new digs. Since rug rats would, for the foreseeable future, have no rugs they were dubbed Linoleum Lizards.
Colt's made just 18,500 .44 Dragoon models up until 1860, production exploded with the civil war and the follow on Army model sold over 200,000 in the thirteen years to 1873. The Navy model was even more popular, Colt's made over 270,000 before centerfire replaced percussion. Although the production periods don't quite align pocket size .31s outsold the others with close to 340,000 made despite being made for private sale not government contracts.
Indeed. Peritonitis is a hellish way to die. Aaron Burr did that to Alexander Hamilton during their duel. Burr supposedly insisted on dueling pistols with set triggers. Hamilton accidentally discharged his firearm as he was bringing it down, because of the light trigger. Burr then took a long time aiming, and shot Hamilton in the gut. Truth be told, both of them were absolute bastards.
I've read that moulding bullets can be quite relaxing for some. I'd be too worried about spilling molten lead on myself, which in the 1800s could lead to a pretty nasty infection. Proper antibiotics weren't invented until 1928.
*3:40** That's actually Colt's last and best latch update. That design carried on to the '51 Navy's, '60 Army's, eta. It won't open under normal recoil.*
Don't care what ya say. Guns pre about 1880 where designed with a certain art and eye appeal that more modern gun don't always. They seem to go more utilitarian.
Ah, I was waiting for a video on these little beauties. My personal favorite colt percussion pistol, even if they are a little, erm, small. But hey, good things come in small packages (or .31 caliber revolvers).
Colt in 1870: civilian, self-defense pocket pistols make us our fortune, not military contracts Colt in 2000's: let's forget the civilian market and just chase military contracts Colt today: oh no, what happened At least they're making snake guns again. They're even good revolvers.
Nobody needs to carry one of these high capacity assault pistols. My grandad served in the war of 1812, and he only needed a single shot flintlock. He said these high capacity revolvers need to be banned! These didn’t exist when they wrote the Second Amendment!
Ian, this prompted me to dig out my '49 Pocket, which came to me as a family heirloom about fifty years ago. Were all the frames case hardened? Mine has no color remaining even though the firearm itself is in amazing condition. Also, could you mention a current range of values? Mine is a six-shot five inch model. Judging from your information, with a serial number in the 230,000 range, it was possibly manufactured during the civil war(?).
My great grandfather was a signal repairman flr the railroad. He carried one of these, a 5" barrel and 6 shot, in his coat pocket as he went about his day. He replaced it with an iver johnson safety hammerless, which he wore out. His final edc was a h&a f&w marked 6 shot 4" .32 long.
Oddly the Baby Dragoon is more pocketable than the 1849 Pocket. I've got an 1873 Colt New 22 with an 1874 .22lr 7-shot cylinder that's beyond pocket it's incredibly small and even 146/7 years later it's fully functional.
A thing I have always wondered about guns sold in this era is did the gun come withe a bullet mold of the right caliber to make your own cartridges or were premade cartridges sold for them? It would seem like a difficult logistic in the west to find the right cartridge for your particular gun. Thanks Ian!
Sooo cuuute..! Thanks for explaining the cylinder marking; it makes perfect sense. It had always seemed to me to be rather ostentatious, and simply a fad of the times.
I didn't realize that Colt died ten years before the SAA revolutionized the sidearm world. So I guess his heyday was when he was building up the brand with these ubiquitous, handy hold-outs.
True but cartridge ammunition was intially expensive, and fincky with supply. Black powder percussion caps and lead could be found most places alot cheaper,sowhy be an Early Adopter?
If Colt set up an armoury in London in the early 1850's, then you would expect these London models to be arriving in Australia with the gold prospectors coming to the goldfields of Victoria in the mid-1850's. Especially if the London guns were manufactured in large numbers.
Colt's London Factory was only open 1853-56. Colt's made c.40,000 revolvers, mostly 1851 Navys. With nearly half of those being bought by the RN and British Army during the Crimean War.
Would like to see the police cap and ball, short style. If you could find a current copy, please take her to the range. The New York Police Dept and Larger Cities use them. Thanks.
@Forgotten Weapons - Great content, as always. Did the models without a loading lever come with a separate loading tool... or did the user just utilise a rod and a small rock to seat the bullet?
They used the arbor aka the centre pin the cylinder rotates around; when you unscrew the barrel assembly to take the cylinder out you use the end of the arbor to seat the ball.
