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Nothing says "I Love You, Dear" like screaming lower back pain!

Sometimes Wrong but rarely in doubt!

07 July 2011

Comparison of Colt 1860 Army vs. Colt 1911A1

Last night I had the two pistols out to the range.  I shot roughly equal numbers of rounds from each of the pistols and while my accuracy was better with the 1860 Army, my reloading times were epically better with the 1911 (d'uh).

I'm pretty diligent about cleaning my guns as well. From last nights cleaning sessions here's an interesting poser, how many more parts are there in a Colt 1911...








than in a Colt 1860 Army?








Three less.  There are fifty-four parts total (45 unique parts) in a Colt 1860 Army and fifty-one parts (forty-eight unique parts) in a Colt 1911A1.  It takes me about forty minutes to leisurely completely disassemble clean and lube my Colt 1911.  It took me two and a half hours to do the same with the Colt 1860.  While I'm sure that I will get faster with practice I feel rather confident that it will always take longer to clean the revolver.

All I've got to say is that Browning was the Einstein of firearms, Brownings contributions to the development of firearms was more revolutionary than Colt's revolver.  Pardon the pun.





11 July 2011

You can add six to the number of parts in the Colt 1860 Army, I forgot about the nipples...get your mind out of the gutter, I forgot about the nipples for the caps on the cylinder.

2 comments:

  1. There's a reason we're still making designs based off the Browning Hi-Power and the Colt 1911. The design of these is time-tested, battle-proven and they are maintainable and sufficiently accurate for a sidearm (for which only a very small percentage of the world needs extreme accuracy).

    Still, I give the aesthetic bump to the Colt 1860. It's an attractive piece.

    I'm also not sure, but I think you could probably keep it in action in a 'we've lost the technology to make self-contained cartridges' scenario. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but it seems like it has a lower-tech support requirement.

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  2. If you could maintain an 1800's technological base then you'd be able to keep the 1860 going. The tough part would be the percussion caps. You should keep in mind that the brass cartridge was actually developed before the 1860 was released. Primers were the problem and once the primer problem was solved the brass cartridge gained wide popularity...obviously.

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