I am so lucky I have a 1906 7 1/2 barrel 45 Colt. Every time I pick this gun up. I am stunned at the quality of workmanship from 1906. The gun has got a great trigger from 1906.

Own a 1964 Colt Single Action Army Nevada Centennial she’s gorgeous. Shot 96 rounds through it.

Half of them were made before the turn of the century. A powerful statement.

Truly a masterpiece.. thinking where they came from, iconic, powerful, awesome

Truly an iconic revolver. When the '73 is tuned up, nothing is smoother.

Good video!  I am fortunate to have inherited one (an 1895), and I am enjoying learning about the Colt SAA.

They got it wrong saying the 45 acp was equal to the 45 Colt the original load was a 250 grain bullet at 1000 to 1050fps powered by 40 grains of black powder.
The 230 grain at 850 fps powered by 28 grains of black powcer in a shorter case is the Schofield loads which were shorter than the Colt load. They worked in the SAA and Schofield both but we're not nearly as powerfull as the original Calvary Colt load. The 45 Calvery load was designed to kill the enemy horses inside a 100 yards, and it is fully capable of doing so.

I've watched a lot of comedy on youtube, but I gotta tell you, the funniest joke I ever heard was at the end of this video, where the guy says you can still buy one of these Colts today.Yeah, well, hell, i've been trying for twenty five years to buy one. And I ain't got it yet.   Good luck to all y'all trying to get a new one from Colt.

I love that they STILL make them! I’m buying one VERY soon! …God willing!

The BFR made by Magnum Research in Bisley Grip frame is the highest form single action design that is affordable to obtain.

Simon is correct-ish (There was a story and MANY cartridges along the way).

Original .45 Colt loading was a stout 255 grain (gr or grs) hardcast bullet over 40 grs Blackpowder in a crimped copper case (imagine: half centerfire/half rimfire).  I can only speculated that Colt believed a slightly less magnum metallic cased version of the .45 Colt Dragoon ballistics would attract old Cavalry Generals that respected that pistol from it's Mexican and Civil War successes as a proper cavalry weapon not just a side-arm.  The .45 Colt went through three primer/case design technologies from rivalry between Benet, UMC, and finally Frankfort (four if you include the modern post-1945 cut above the rim).  The more reliable designs reduced the powder case capacity below 40 grs to 35 grs and bullets to between 200-255 grs by structurally reinforcing the rim.  It was discretionally reduced again after complaints from the US Army down to a 220 gr bullet over 32 grs of powder inside the same improved .45 Colt cartridge casing.

Quartermaster problems supplying the Colt and S&W Schofield pistols on the frontier in the 1880s discovered the .45 S&W would fit in both pistols, but only if the Colt skipped chambers for a maximum capacity of 3 bullets because of the wider rim on the .45 S&W.  The .45 S&W cartridge's rim was modified, the 250 gr bullet reduced to 230 grs and the powder reduced from 34 to 32 grs to mirror the Army's final .45 Colt specifications, and this became the M1887 .45 Military Ball Frankfort Arsenal cartridge (note the patented ".45 S&W" and "Schofield" words are no longer present).  The M1887 as a hybrid between both cartridges could load 6 rounds in both pistols reliably.

John Browning's .45 ACP initially copied the M1887 ballistics to meet the requirements of the INFAMOUS Thompson-LaGarde Cadaver Tests of 1904 that favored the M1887 or either of the British .455 cartridges (A separate long story on British naming conventions).  This is also the 10-20 year range when many pistol cartridges upgrade from copper to brass alloy casings, metal jackets on the projectiles, and smokeless powders.  Frankfort Arsenal suffered quality control problems, over-reaching to incorporate all of these changes, producing Browning's .45 ACP design for the initial batch of 5,000 test cartridges and so Hugo Luger produced around 200 pistols in .45 ACP with his own DWM .45 ACP ammunition for the US Army trials.

The Savage M1907 and Luger model 1906 competition lost to John Browning's M1911 which performed the best with the Frankfort arsenal 230 gr FMJ .45 ACP ammunition after re-call/re-production replicating their own M1887 ballistics despite the Luger performing well with its own proprietary DWM .45 ACP ammunition and the acceptable Savage.

So the .45 ACP was Frankfort Arsenal producing John Browning's design bringing their M1887 into the 20th century, which was originally a Frankfort Arsenal hybrid of the .45 S&W case designed for the S&W No. 3 Schofield and the .45 Colt's downgraded ballistics.

I've got a pretty good collection started. An 1880 45lc, 1891 44-40, 1906 32-20, 1901 38-40, 1901 38-40 Bisley, and just put a 1902 45lc on layaway.

Hey look my EDC ❤

What the heck is this guy talking about?

45 colt is still alive today....not just transferred to a 45 acp.

And 45 acp has nothing on the 45 colt original loading, 255gr bullet on top of 40gr black powder moving 1,050fps its not even a contest

Thank you!

The 45 ACP was designed to reproduce the lighter ballistics of the 45 Schofield.

I know that Smith & Wesson bought the rights to the Rollin White patent and was very aggressive in defending it - but sometimes they would get Rollin White to defend the patent (for whatever reason).

Don't forget the US Army didn't like S&W BECAUSE they defended the patent so aggressively during the Civil War. The US Army wanted a big cartridge revolver (.44 or .45 caliber) but S&W didn't make one, and wouldn't let anyone else make one without paying a huge royalty, so naturally the Army was displeased, to say the least. I suspect that's one of the reasons White DIDN'T get the patent extended when he applied for the extension.

It's an Old West icon and a piece of American (and to a much lesser extent Canadian) history. It's a simple gun, so a frontier gunsmith could fix it easily IF it broke (which didn't happen often). The only real flaw it had was that the screws on the gun tend to work loose with shooting (and there was no Loctite back in the day) so they were sold with a screwdriver for tightening those screws.

Would I choose it today for a self-defense gun? Probably not, there are handguns out there equally powerful that are much quicker to reload (the 1911 in 45 ACP comes to mind), but if it's the only gun I can get to, I'll still trust my life to that gun and its hitting power.

My 2 cents only, your opinion may vary.....

That was a great gun review 👍👍

Beautiful Firearms

My absolute favorite firearm of all time!
Just wish l cud afford one!!!