Category: All About Guns

Interesting things start happening after completing our 50th ride around the sun, especially among hardcore gunmen and women. Rather than pursuing the newer, latest greatest releases, we tend to gravitate toward the used gun racks of our local shops, where the older guns reside. Golden treasures of times past, freed from the confines of safes, closets, attics, or under the beds of their previous owners, are here for the taking.

Everywhere across America long-forgotten relics are stumbled upon by surviving family members, while cleaning up the possessions of a departed family member. “Wow, I never knew dad had so many guns,” are words commonly heard in these situations.

Why?

Why are these older guns more enticing to us, as we get older ourselves? I can’t speak for everyone, but I do have my own reasons why I appreciate these older relics. Older guns from a certain time provide the perfect median for time travel. Holding, feeling, aiming, and in some instances, shooting these guns let us experience what our heroes, or beloved family members experienced long ago.

How cool is it to be able to hunt with great grandpa’s old deer rifle, or beloved side-by-side shotgun with Damascus barrels? How about shooting an elk, or wildebeest with a Winchester 1895 like Teddy Roosevelt did over a hundred years ago? These are the magical moments we strive to repeat when we are seasoned enough to appreciate these special experiences. Not to be wasted on youth, these fine moments are for those wise enough to savor each instance spent afield with such arms.

Hand Fitting and Finishing

Pick up an early 19th Century firearm and it’s obvious. The fit and finish are perfect! During the time these guns were made, skill and elbow grease were the recipe for the quality of these guns — and it showed! When perfectly polished, bluing is deeper, darker and more beautiful than someone using a buffing wheel to “good enough” status. Workers took pride in their trade back then, and it showed. Compare the factory finishes of today, to yesteryear, there’s no comparison.

Garbage Free

These older relics are free from warning labels and silly safeties. People were responsible for their actions during the good ol’ days. There were no frivolous lawsuits. The only markings on firearms were the brand name, model and caliber. There was no billboard warning stating the obvious. Oh, how I cherish those days and these fine old guns remind us of the times when things were more right with the world.

Cool Counts

Owning vintage guns has a coolness factor that doesn’t need explaining. Whenever unzipping that vintage shooter, you see the envy in the eyes of your friends. By explaining pertinent historical events and finishing it with, “and he did it with a gun just like this one….” is mesmerizing to your audience. Hearing history is one thing, but seeing, feeling, holding, or perhaps shooting a part of history is unforgettable.

Memorial Guns

This last category is perhaps the most bittersweet of reasons we have for owning a cool, old gun. The gun is either passed down to you, or you’ve bought it from the estate, or it was simply given to you, because someone close has died. You’d do anything to bring the loved one back, but we can’t. When we end up with a gun in this situation, it obviously means more to us.

We feel a real connection to the person through the gun. It’s the last real thing of theirs we can hold, something that still has their DNA ingrained in it. It may sound silly, but gun people know this feeling all too well. Like a double-edged sword, it cuts both ways.

Lastly …

Owning an old gun lets us partake in history. We get to experience what common men felt by shooting, hunting, or just holding the arms they used. The older we get, the wiser we become, hopefully. We’re mature enough to understand just how special these older guns really are. While I’ll never turn my nose up at a new gun, the older ones sure are a lot more interesting to me …

Behold — the revolver. It appears I have peers among you who also suffer — perhaps not quite the right word, there — from an affliction I affectionately call “Um, uh … I really like revolvers, do you?” Leading me directly to the part where I have to laugh when I hear people say, “Wow, there is sure a lot of interest in revolvers these days, isn’t there?”

These days? I think for a certain segment of we die-hard “gunists” (may I call you fellow Guncranks?), the revolver renaissance supposedly occurring today isn’t newly minted. It’s been going on in my own life for, well … 60 years or more. I’ll also wager a significant bet on the fact it’s been going on for some time prior to then too. I think what we have here are people who are suddenly discovering these marvelous contraptions in which cylinders go round and round. “Wow, these are great, aren’t they?” they exclaim in wonder!

Cue we ’Cranks smiling in unison as we nod our collective heads.

If you still have your Nov/Dec 2000 issue of American Handgunner, go dig it out. I’ll wait. To kill time though, I’ll enlighten those who weren’t savvy enough to subscribe back then. You see, even then in the “very dark ages, a long, long time ago” there were revolvers of all sorts, and yes, some were even marvelous. The one in question here is, I feel, more “marvelouser” than most. Just maybe, dare I say it — “The Most Excellently Marvelous of All?”

Okay, if you’re back with your magazine, you’ll see a feature I wrote called “The Ultimate Outdoorsman,” which is, I might add, an incorrect title. It should have read, “The Ultimate Heavy Duty” but for some reason the then-editor called it by the wrong name. Oopsie. I wasn’t the editor at the time, but confess when I saw it I thought, Oopsie, that’s not right. It’s neither here nor there now, but I know what it is, and it isn’t an Outdoorsman. Now you know.

The Back Story

I always thought S&W fixed sighted 4″ N-Frames to be purveyors of all things good about fighting revolvers. Just enough heft, just enough authority in look and feel and even enough power to solve problems handily. At the top of the pyramid would have been a .44 Special and, more rare than common sense in Congress today, one chambered in .45 Colt — be still my racing heart.

As time passed, S&W brought out the Model 58 in .41 Magnum but alas, to me it was a swing and a miss. The heavy barrel, longer cylinder and more “clunky” feel wasn’t quite the right number of notes, if you will. Yet some did convert them to .45 Colt, and to his credit, the shop of revolver sage Hamilton Bowen turned the heavy barrels down and orchestrated other magical machinations turning even the challenging 58 into a semblance of loveliness. But to me, it was still an almost proposition.

Then I found an aging, beater of a .38/44 Heavy Duty with a 4″ barrel calling to me softly from a display case. Perhaps sensing someone was close by who would understand and rescue it, it whispered “Take me … take me …!”

So I did.

As I looked at it under the harsh fluorescent lights of the gun shop I saw past the nicks, scratches, worn blue and flattened checkering of the original small S&W “Service” stocks. This hardy gal had likely taken good care of a beat cop, then languished in a bedside drawer for how many years protecting a family? What I saw there in my mind’s eye on that olive-colored felt pad was the ghostly image of a richly blued, ivory-gripped, elegant lady with no small amount of experience in life.
I also saw her in .45 Colt.

Bowen Understanding

Hamilton is a teacher, author, accomplished pundit, genial soul, old friend — and the best revolver pistolsmith in the world. I told him what I had and asked if a .45 Colt would be possible. Hamilton said it’d be a tragedy to install a heavier barrel on the svelte gun so I grinned and said, “Heck, let’s rebore and re-rifle the existing barrel, take off the caliber stamp and turn it into a .45 Colt barrel.” When your skills can keep up with your imagination, saying such things earmark what follows as something to often wonder at.

Time passes, slowly I might add. Eventually, after administrations at Hamilton’s shop, a trip to Roy Fishpaw for ivory grips — the junction of metal and ivory isn’t discernible by touch — the old girl came home.

Hamilton and his gremlins turned the beater into a beauty, magically erasing those hard-living decades. The custom pinned front sight, 600-grit hand polish, case-coloring on the hammer and trigger and sublime yet meaningful blue conspire together, creating something triggering most who see it in the flesh to simply sigh, look at me, back at the gun, at me again, then sigh again.

I understand completely.

I do shoot it, have been known to carry it now and again thanks to Thad Rybka and the Milt Sparks shop, and it often spends weeks on my desk simply being there to enjoy. If you don’t own such a thing, do not pass go and do not collect $200, but sell some safe queens and put the money to use while you still have time to enjoy it all. Trust me on that.

Is this the best revolver ever? Some might argue the point with me, but I confess to smiling often knowing at least this one — is mine.