There was no such thing as credit cards in 1956 and who would give a credit card to a teenager if they did exist? My, how times have changed! Credit was available at Boyle’s and we all had an ongoing charge account. That 7-1/2" Colt .45 added $125 to my account. Fast Draw soon arrived, and I ordered an Arvo Ojala Hollywood Fast Draw rig finished in black basket weave. The first date I had with the blond teenager now known as Diamond Dot was in November 1958 as we went to Boyle’s Gun Shop to pick up my new Ojala leather. Both are still around, and in fact, that belt and holster is hanging in the room she uses for woodcarving.
I wish I could say I still had that .38-40, but dumb teenager that I was, I let it get away. I also wish I had the first Colt .45, however, it also got away, but at least for a more noble cause. By 1963 I was in college and Dot was a stay-at-home mom with three young babies to take care of. The Colt .45 went for tuition and groceries. I knew if I dropped out of school it would be awfully hard to get back, so the .45 had to go. I did graduate in 1965, started a teaching career lasting 31 years and took an early retirement to write full-time. By 1968 I was on the road to spending much of my life with Colt Single Actions. The first of my new batch of Colts was a 4-3/4" .44 Special. To this day, it is hard to choose between a .44 Special or .45 Colt when it comes to Single Actions.
A Half-Century With Sixguns: Part 2
Traditional single actions
It all started with that first January 1955 issue of GUNS. Taffin’s first two Colts are long gone,
but they have been replaced by this 7-1/2" 2nd Generation .45 and 4-3/4" pre-War .38-40.
December 1954. The Senate censures Senator Joe McCarthy; Bing Crosby is starring in White Christmas; Davy Crockett is fighting Indians on Disneyland; RCA introduces a 21″ color TV; and I am 15 and a junior in high school. I had a paper route with 103 customers and collected 35¢ from each one on Friday evenings. I had to ride the bus downtown within the next three days to pay my bill. Every weekly trip would also see me visiting two large newsstands looking for anything about guns. There were no gun-specific magazines being published yet—or so I thought. However, companies like Fawcett regularly published gun-related 6×9″ paperbacks selling for 75¢ (which I still have a large stack of), and I was looking for the latest edition.
This trip would prove to be different than any other. I made my way past the lunch counter to the back of the store to see what I could find. Suddenly, something catches my eye; I see the word GUNS on the top left corner of a magazine. Could it actually be a new magazine? My heart rate increased considerably as I reached up and retrieved the first issue, dated January 1955, of this magazine. No way could I know what an effect this publication would have on my life. The first cover was what I thought to be a cased set of a pair of 4-3/4″ Colt Single Actions. They instead turned out to be two relatively new single actions from Great Western, a new company that had just started production in Los Angeles, Calif., turning out replicas of the Colt Single Action.
Great Westerns
From that day forward I had to have a Single Action Army. Being a high-school junior and paperboy from a non-gun family, that wasn’t likely to happen very quickly. However, by December 1956 I had graduated from school, gone to work and had my first Colt Single Action. It was a 4-3/4″ 1900s-era .38-40 in excellent condition with faded case colors, thin bluing and worn gutta percha stocks. It was gorgeous! Fifty years after seeing that first cover, I was awarded the privilege of shooting those same two .45 Great Westerns for the 50th anniversary of this magazine. You can bet a lot of personal single-action history happened in between those two events.
Great Western had started producing replicas of original Colts in 1954. (They actually used pictures of genuine Colt Single Actions in their advertising.) When Colt ceased production of the Single Action Army on the eve of WWII, they said they would never produce it again. Not only was the machinery worn, but sales had been going down steadily as shooters discovered Smith & Wesson .357 Magnums and Colt 1911s. Great Western had received a letter from Colt in the early 1950s reiterating their plan to never resurrect the Colt Single Action Army, and Great Western even bought some parts from Colt. Never say never, as by 1956 Colt was back in the Single Action business.
By 1956 the .38-40 was basically a dead cartridge, so perhaps that’s why I was able to pick up my first Colt at reasonable price. A few months after finding my first Single Action, a brand-new 7-1/2″ .45 Colt now known as a 2nd Generation Single Action showed up at Boyle’s Gun Shop. Boyle’s was a wonderful place. Every Saturday, three of us got off work at noon and my ’49 Ford Club Coupe headed to the combination gunshop/shooting range, with a stop on the way at the local pizzeria. Boyle’s was a mom-and-pop operation, although mom-and-pop in this case were not very old with three young kids, and my teenage heart was somewhat smitten with the mom side of the operation.
Traditional single actions do not come any finer that USFA’s Single Action and Flat-Top
Target .44 Specials. The custom ram’s horn and walnut stocks are by Roy Fishpaw.
Colt’s Return
Over the years I added examples of both .45 Colt and .44 Special Colt Single Actions from all three generations, as well as both 2nd and 3rd Generation New Frontiers. I carried them, plinked with them, fast drawed with them, hunted with them, wrote about them, reloaded for them, and enjoyed countless hours just holding and appreciating them.
When I first started reloading for both the .45 Colt and .44 Special, I was not very smart. I thought everything had to be loaded heavy, so the .45 Colt was loaded with 260-grain Keith 454424 bullets over 10.0 grains of Unique or 18.5 grains of 2400, while for the .44 Special I used Keith’s 429421 over 17.0 grains of 2400. All of these loads are heavier than needed for normal everyday use, and I have wised up to the point of using 8.0 to 8.5 grains of Unique or Universal in the .45 Colt and 7.5 grains of the same two powders with the .44 Special; loads are in the 850 to 900 fps range.
Great Western was the first to replicate the Colt. They were totally American built, however, they could not compete with the resurrected Colt Single Action and disappeared in the early 1960s. Over the years I have managed to pick up several Great Westerns, especially in .44 Special and .45 Colt, though I made a major mistake: I wrote too much about them and now the price has gone up to where what used to be $125 a few years ago is now closer to $500.
After Great Western disappeared, we started seeing Italian replicas. Many of the earlier ones were not just bad, they were very bad. The steel was too soft, the actions were rough, the bluing was poorly done, and the less said about case colors, the better. Then to complete a poor package, the grip frames were brass. Colt Single Actions did not come with brass grip frames. That has all changed now, with a lot of the credit going to Cimarron and Navy Arms, as Mike Harvey and the late Val Forgett worked hard to get the Italians to not only produce authentic replicas, but also use stronger steel. I have several sixguns from both of these companies that will shoot alongside the best original Single Actions ever produced. No one has to be embarrassed anymore by shooting Italian Single Actions. They are even being offered in stainless steel.
Most sixgunners will agree the 1st Generation Colt Single Actions were the finest ever produced, at least until now. Today, if I want the best possible traditional single action, I look no further than United States Firearms, better known as USFA. They are not only turning out beautifully finished single actions, but they are also perfectly timed, with cylinders as tight as revolvers costing two to three times as much. In addition to beautiful blued and case-colored versions, USFA also offers less expensive finishes, such the satin nickel or all blue Cowboys and the matte blue finished Rodeo. Mechanically, these less costly sixguns are the equivalent of the standard Single Action. And for the traditionalist desiring adjustable sights, USFA even offers a Flat-Top Target, as was offered back in the 1890s.
We are living in a time of many problems, but coming up with an excellent traditional single action is not one of them. I just wish I had another half-century to spend shooting the grand old designs. William Mason did it right in 1873. The Single Action will always be a tribute to his genius or whatever supernatural force helped him along.
