Almost makes you wonder why anyone would be crazy enough to even consider a Colt double action.
Call me crazy. But what do I know? Having only been shooting them for more than fifty years (and I'm pretty sure I'm not the Lone Ranger on this forum in that regard).
Except that when it *does* go out of time (not *if*, but *when*), you're gonna pay out the rear for a gunsmith who knows what they're doing to retime it. And it probably won't be all that long either.
And before anyone chimes in with "I've shot a ba-jillion rounds through XXX Colt double action" remember: in everything there is the rule, and then there is the exception... *you* are the exception.
I am the exception, and I am personally acquainted, and shoot regularly with, a couple of other exceptions (I have an acquaintance, wish he was a friend, who owns at least fifteen or so older Colt revolvers, including three Pythons and a couple Diamondbacks).
One should also note that virtually all of the criticism on Colt's revolver mechanism is based on the old Python's V-spring mechanism. At least with the advent of the New Python, we've finally solved that "issue."
Peter M. Eick, a noted long-time member of TFL and this forum (although we haven't heard from him since 2016?) once mentioned that he'd fired 41,149 rounds before the spring from the hand broke on his Diamondback. He also noted that his Diamondback was his
only centerfire handgun for years and took a lot of abuse. So there's one benchmark round count.
TFL used to have threads on Colt revolver maintenance crop up regularly, which typically spawned a lot of arguments. However, those that came down on the side of Colts were those that owned them and shot them regularly. Seems a lot of forums have Colt "experts" without any ownership experience regularly expounding on the perceived weaknesses of Colt's revolvers. Interestingly enough, many of these same individuals seem to be dedicated S&W or Ruger fanboys. Well, anyway, a lot of the younger folks nowadays seem to get all of their information on the internet. I'm gonna side with the oldsters who have actual, meaningful experiences with a given firearm.
All this said, however, there is one very real problem extant: there are very, very few gunsmiths remaining in this country who are qualified and experienced enough to work on the old Colt revolvers. Which reminds me, need to contact Cylinder and Slide to see if they still work on old Colts.
