Colt's 1872 Open Top Great idea bad timing

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:01]Hi, I'm Mike Bell and today I'm at the Westshore Sportsman's Association and I'm going to be demonstrating Colt's new model holster pistol or as it's better known to people today, the Colt 1871 to 1872 open top revolver.

[00:00:19]Now, this gun is a replica and it's made by Ubertie in Italy and it's imported by tailoring company here in the United States. Uh it is the civilian configuration. It has navyized grips. These are ebony. Has a nickelplated barrel frame cylinder which was quite popular with civilians.

[00:00:42]And though most of these were chambered in 44 Henry rimfire, this one is chambered in 38 special. And I'll be shooting it today with black powder 38 long colt. Now, that's not as inauthentic as you might believe because Colt actually chambered a number of these in 38 long colt for the Navy and they certainly would have made it on order for any civilian who wanted one.

[00:01:08]So, I think we can safely shoot this and feel totally historically accurate.

[00:01:13]Now, the 1872 open top loads and unloads just like the single action army. Put it on halfcock. Open the loading gate. And I happen to have this filled with snap caps right now, which is the way I like to store most of my guns. So once we get those out, of course, it would, you know, has the ejector unloading. So let's load it up.

[00:01:38]I'm going to load five. I know some of you think that's chickening out, but uh these guns do not have any viable safety. Now, a lot of people think you can use the safety notch or the halfcock notch, but they really didn't do that in the 19th century because [ __ ] that. We got it empty right there because that notch, if you drop the hammer on it, it's going to break the sear off of the trigger and probably fire. Uh, it was just very unreliable.

[00:02:15]So, what we need to do is just load five. Now, I know you're going to say, "Well, you're at the range. You can load six. No problem."

[00:02:23]That's true. But I like to just stay consistent on that stuff. So, that's how we load her up.

[00:02:44]All right. So, unloading is just like any other colt halfcock.

[00:02:49]And then the empties are pushed out by the uh ejector.

[00:03:09]And there we go.

[00:03:16]The patent for the Richard's conversion was issued in 1871.

[00:03:22]When the Civil War ended, the federal government cancelled all of their outstanding arms contracts. And this was a calamity for companies like Colt and Remington. In fact, Remington almost went bankrupt.

[00:03:35]Now, both companies found themselves saddled with a huge number of parts for their Civil War cap and ball guns because, of course, they had been in full production right up until that switch was turned off. Uh so Colt's goal for the Richard's conversion of the 1860 army was to use up as many existing cap and ball parts as possible.

[00:04:03]Now some parts had to be newly manufactured. They newly manufactured cylinders.

[00:04:08]Uh but they used a lot of the cap and ball parts and that's exactly what they wanted to do.

[00:04:15]But that design was always considered a stop gap, even though the army did adopt it as a service revolver. Um, approximately 9,000 Richard's conversions were made and 2100 Richard's Mason conversions of the 1860 Army were made.

[00:04:36]And by the time Colt had produced all of those, their stockpile of existing parts was dwindling.

[00:04:43]Now, parallel with the development of the Richard's conversion, Colt had been working on a totally new pistol, and that was Colt's new model holster pistol.

[00:04:54]And that is, of course, the Open Top.

[00:04:58]Now, the Open Top was designed for cartridges from the ground up. And I know it looks very similar to the cartridge conversions, but it really isn't. Uh, it has a newly manufactured frame and unlike the 1860 Army frame, there is no step in it because the cylinder is not rebaited. It is straight. It's made to accommodate 44 Henry rimfire cartridges and their rims. Uh the 1860 uh Richard's conversion used 44 Colt cartridges which have a minuscule rim because that rebaited back end of the cylinder made it very difficult to fit those six cartridges in there unless the rim was almost non-existent. So that was not a problem on the open top.

[00:05:44]Um and basically it used a lot of the design elements that we're going to see later in the 1873 Colt single action army.

[00:05:53]But this was made from the ground up.

[00:05:55]All new parts, whole new design, and it was their first metallic cartridge firing handgun, you know, purpose made.

[00:06:04]Now, originally, the guns were produced with a Navy grip, and that was really for the civilian market. Uh, Colt also submitted this revolver to the 187172 trials for a new service revolver for the army. And for those trials, they attached the longer 1860 Army grip frame to the gun. So, this gun was available with both uh 1851 Navy grips and 1860 Army grips.

[00:06:38]Now, the backstrap and trigger guard uh originally were silverplated brass and then on and then on later models it was blued iron.

[00:06:51]Now, the grips were one piece walnut grip with a varnish finish. However, on special order, ivory grips, pearl grips, and exotic hardwood grips were all available.

[00:07:07]The hammer and the frame were colorcase hardened uh as most Colts were and the barrel assembly was blued uh as was the cylinder which still had the roll engraving of the cap and ball model. So they're really getting their money's worth out of those roll engraving dyes.

[00:07:26]Now the barrel on the open tops was typically 7 1/2 in. Some of them were made in an 8 inch barrel length, but the official barrel length on them was 7 and a half. And as I said, the the open top revolver was chambered for the 44 Henry rimfire round, which was almost an act of genius, but it just didn't work out that way.

[00:07:52]Now, the 44 Henry cartridge had been developed for the 1860 Henry rifle, and it was still in use in Winchester's wildly popular 1866 model Yellow Boy Winchester rifle and carbine. And that meant that the 44 Henry round was available everywhere you went where ammunition was sold. If you went to a trading post in the farthest outback of the far west, you would find 44 Henry rimfire ammunition available. And Colt's idea was to capitalize on that. So they were making the first companion pistol. It was a companion to the 1866 rifle. And as I said, that was an act of genius, except it wasn't. Of course, they had submitted this gun to the army trials and the army rejected it. uh much the culture and they rejected it for two major reasons. One, they no longer wanted open top frames. They wanted a solid top frame like the Remington had.

[00:08:57]Two, they did not like the Henry rimfire round. They wanted a more powerful center fire 45 caliber round. So Colt went back to the drawing board and very quickly came up with a gun that we now know as the model 1873 single-action army or the peacemaker which of course won the trials and uh went on to be one of the most successful single-action revolvers in all of history.

[00:09:26]Now despite their disappointment with the army trials, Colts still expected this gun to be a winner in the civilian market. uh and they thought that they couldn't lose pairing it up with the 1866 Winchester.

[00:09:39]Unfortunately, they did not know that the very next year, the 1866 Winchester was going to be largely obsolete when Winchester unveiled their new model 1873 Winchester lever action rifle chambered in the groundbreaking 4440 caliber centerfire caliber.

[00:10:03]more popular uh excuse me, more powerful, reloadable, an improved gun for it, and Colt's six gun was not compatible with it, and sales dried up, unfortunately.

[00:10:24]I mean, Colt managed to sell 7,000 units of uh, you know, the 1872 open top in the first year of its production. That is actually very good.

[00:10:38]But when the 1873 Winchester came out, sales plummeted and Colt immediately stopped production on the gun and they put all of their resources into the 1873 Army.

[00:10:53]Now, by 1877, Colt had caught up with their army contracts on the Single Action Army, and they began chambering the singleaction army for the 4440 caliber uh to make it a companion piece for the 4440 caliber 1873 Winchester lever action rifle. And that was wildly successful. 4440 was the second most popular chambering in the single- army.

[00:11:20]the only 45 colt exceeded it. Uh so their concept was sound and and that's proven by the 4440 Frontier sixshooter singleaction army.

[00:11:36]Concept was sound, their timing was off.

[00:11:41]And that's a rare case of a truly bad marketing decision on the part of Colt.

[00:11:48]They're usually pretty savvy about that stuff. But they totally missed the boat on the 1872 Open Top. Though it is a wonderful handgun, uh, and it's certainly one of my favorites. It's a beautiful gun.

[00:12:00]It's It's as beautiful as a Richard's conversions, but it's better built because it's simpler built.

[00:12:12]There's no conversion.

[00:12:14]There's no uh there's no spring-loaded firing pin, which is a great thing. but with black powder fouling that can jam up. Uh it's a it's a simpler, more robust gun and it's got elegant lines and it shoots like a house of fire as as you've seen today. I hope So, I enjoy it. Now, as I said, I got I got this baby here from Taylor's and Company.

[00:13:22]Uh I have a 44 caliber uh with Army grip that just like the one that went to military trials, but I wanted the 38 caliber to shoot 38 long colt in it, which you saw me do today. It'll also shoot any 38 special round uh that meets Sammy specs, though I would certainly stick to lead bullets and I would not use plus P ammunition and and the gun will stand it probably because it is made for modern ammunition. The reason I don't like shooting those in it is because it doesn't have a full frame and therefore the forcing cone of the barrel is unsupported.

[00:14:01]And uh with high velocity jacketed bullets, you might crack it. I I've seen that happen on cartridge conversions.

[00:14:09]Um I've not seen it happen on one of these, but I'm not going to chance it.

[00:14:14]So, I'm perfectly happy to shoot it with standard 38 specials with lead bullets and to shoot it with black powder, which I love doing.

[00:14:42]Well, that was more impressive than I expected.

[00:14:46]I just want to mention one other thing while we're here. You may have noticed my new hat. Uh, and generally when I have a new hat, I get buou questions in the comments.

[00:14:59]So, I'm going to try to get ahead of that right here. This is new. It was made for me by Dirty Billy in Gettysburg, PA. He is a custom hat maker. Makes a lot of military reenactment hats. He really serves the reenactment community, but he can make anything. I mean, just bring them in a picture or a drawing, tell them what you want, and you'll get that hat. Uh, and I can say that for a fact. He made a British military shako for me that was very complicated and he did a great job on it. So that's where I got it. It's kind of got a little Wild Bill Hickok flare to it, which is what I was looking for and it's a great hat and I hope you like it. So there you go. So that that wraps up this video. I hope you enjoyed it. Uh this is a non AI human presented video by the way and we are becoming much more rare here on YouTube as YouTube gets inundated with literally hundreds to thousands of AI generated videos a day. And most of the gun ones I've seen have been awful.

[00:16:04]They're inaccurate. They show the wrong guns in the pictures. They steal clips from real gun tubers. They show the shooting. It's They're pretty terrible.

[00:16:13]So, I'm just going to ask you when you see that stuff, say you don't want it, which you can do. Don't show me any more of this. And stick to gun tubers that you know are real life human beings because we're going to get buried by all this crap and uh we may disappear from YouTube eventually. I I don't know how long it's going to take, but this AI stuff has taken over much faster than I thought it would. So, it is a matter of concern. So, what can you do? Well, when you've got a real live gun tuber like myself and you like the video, then give it a thumbs up.

[00:16:54]Uh, make a comment, share it. If you don't like it, make a comment, too, and tell me why it stinks and why you think that AI stuff is way better than than mine. I read them all, and I like to know what you think. But that interaction helps to boost it in the algorithm.

[00:17:12]Now, I know a lot of you who are subscribers and have notifications turned on tell me that you never get notified of my new videos.

[00:17:21]And that's because of the way YouTube has been doing business for the last couple years. uh they ignore your subscription and notifications on and they look at your viewing practices and then they give you what they think you ought to see. I'm not kidding.

[00:17:39]Uh now the more interactions on my videos, the more likely you are to get a notification of it. And that's why I say, you know, if you've seen it, uh, give it a like, give it a comment, try to push that in the algorithm so more people do see it because unless you search my stuff out every week, YouTube is not interested in showing it to you. And that's not just for me. That that goes for most gun tubers, unless you have a gigantic channel. But even guys like Hickok 45 tell me that they see the same thing.

[00:18:15]So, it's pretty much universal uh here in our world. Um, and as I say, a lot of our stuff's being swamped by the AI garbage that's out there. So, you know, support your actual living, breathing YouTubers.

[00:18:31]And, uh, hope you enjoyed this and I'll see you next time. Until then, bye.