Pennsylvania Game News - June 2012 - 62

THE NAVY ARMS reproduction Schofield revolver is a fun gun to shoot. When all chambers are fired the shooter unlatches the barrel and cylinder away from the frame, snapping up an extractor, which ejects all fired cartridges from their chambers simultaneously.

Schofield, .44-40 Win., .38-40 Win., .32-44, .3844 and .44 Henry. The Model No. 3 and other variations (Russian, Schofield and new No. 3 Models) were made from 1870 to 1915. When the Rollin White patent expired Colt had some catching up to do with the Smith & Wesson cartridge shooting revolvers, and it came out with the famous Model 1873, known as the “Single Action Army” or “Model P,” chambered in the .45 Long Colt cartridge. It was a solid framed, strongly built arm that became popular for both military and civilian use. Even though it was slow to eject spent cases (with the side mounted spring loaded ejector) and each chamber had to be individually reloaded, it was rugged and dependable. The only weaknesses were the leaf type springs that would occasionally break with hard use, as well as the very occasional firing pin or sear breakage (located on the hammer). This revolver became the most famous and popular of the single-actions and was made in many variations during its three generations of manufacture, and chambered in more than 30 cartridges, ranging from the .22 LR to the .45 Long Colt. The last well known single-action was the Colt Bisley model that was made from 1894-1917. It was essentially like the model P, but with a low designed wide spurred hammer and longer handgrip. It was initially designed for target shooting, but most of those manufactured were for general use using fixed sights. It was chambered in most of the same centerfire cartridges that the single-action Army was,
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plus the British .450 Eley and .455 Eley. Remington also ventured into the centerfire single-action game with its Model 1875, which was reminiscent of the Colt. It didn’t compete well against the Colt, though, and production stopped in 1889, with only three chamberings and only around 27,000 manufactured. The birth of the solid framed doubleaction revolver (late 1800s/early 1900s), as well as the semiauto pistol, drew the limelight away from the single-action and its popularity began to decline. It was the Colt single action Army that held in there until WWII, when demand of military arms stopped its production. After the war, Colt decided that there wasn’t much of a demand for it and chose not to bring it back. With the ever increasing popularity of Western movies and TV series in the 1950s, the public was clamoring for arms of that era. How or why Colt missed that boat is beyond me, but it gave the chance for foreign and domestic manufacturers to profit on the demand, before Colt decided to bring them back into its product line. One manufacturer that really capitalized on that demand was Sturm Ruger, bringing out its Single Six model, which was a scaled down version chambered in .22LR in 1953, and in 1955 a full-size version called the Blackhawk, chambered in .357 Magnum, .44 Special and .45 Long Colt. Ruger made a few design changes that made its single-actions indestructible, with a beefier frame, coil springs rather than flat or leaf springs, an in-frame reboundGAME NEWS

Pennsylvania Game News - June 2012

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