38 colt

[TaylorS]

I purchased a old colt revolver marked 38 Colt over the weekend while out of state so can’t play with it for a couple days but I’ve been researching the round best I can. According to wiki and my cast bullet V.4 it’s the same round as 38 Smith & Wesson and called half a dozen other things. I’m curious if any of y’all have a line on brass or do y’all make it out of 357 or 38 special brass? I’ll slug the barrel soon as I receive the pistol to determine bullet size and determine loads from there. I’ll check my other manuals when I get home see if they show anything.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[one-eyed fat man]

There's .38 Colt and then there's .38 Colt New Police. The .38 Colt that is chambered in an Lightning or a New Model Army is not the same .38 Colt that is in a Police Positive. The .38 Colt that started as an outside lubricated cartridge in cap and ball conversions eventually grew to become the .38 Long Colt in the Lightning and New Model Army and Navy Model revolvers. In the 1890's it was sometimes called .38 Government and earned a lousy reputation in the Phillipines.

Now enter Smith and Wesson with their new Military and Police Revolver with their new "more powereful" .38 S&W Special to complicate things. What S&W did was NOT make a bigger version of their .38 S&W cartridge but a longer version of the Government cartridge. So in reality the .38 Special is a .38 Colt extra long.

The .38 S&W cartridge is shorter and fatter and will not fit a Special chamber. Colt called their version of it .38 Police or sometimes . 38 New Police

So what flavor of Colt revolver do you have? The revolver on the left is a Bankers Special, same frame as the Police Positive and chambered in .38 New Police aka .38 S&W. The revolver on the right is a Police Positive Special, note the frame and cylinder are longer, it is chambered in .38 Special.

233099233100

The short fat .38 S&W fits the one on the left, the longer, fits the .38 Special on the right.

233101

[Outpost75]

Good link to research your Colt revolver and identify which one you have:

http://www.coltfever.com/Home_Page.html

.38 Colt New Police as used in Colt New Police and Police Positive uses the same cartridge case as .38 S&W.
233102

The Colt Police Positive was an improved version of the New Police adding Colt's "Positive Safety" feature.
It was produced in various forms from 1907 to 1947.

The 1889 and 1892 New Army and Navy revolvers were chambered for .38 Long Colt. These Colt's have extremely complex actions that get out of order or break easily. Due to a lack of usable parts and few gunsmiths willing to even attempt repairs, these guns should be treated very gently. The New Army & Navy model is unique to Colt in that the cylinder rotates counter-clockwise, and the frame's side plate is on the right side. In later Colt revolvers the cylinder rotation is clockwise and the side plate is on the left side of the frame.

The Model 1889 originally had no locking notches on the outside of the cylinder, using the hand that advanced the cylinder to lock it in place during ignition. This system was a major weakness in the design, since when the action was at rest, the cylinder was free to rotate. This could cause the cylinder to rotate so a fired cartridge was struck when the trigger was pulled instead of a live cartridge.

This was corrected by rebuilding almost all US Navy issue guns to use the same double cylinder locking notches on the outside of the cylinder that were used on the upgraded Model 1892. Commercial Model 1889 revolvers were not recalled for the upgrade, so these guns are recognized by the lack of locking notches on the cylinder.

Brass for either caliber is available from Starline.

[TaylorS]

I believe it to be a 1901 which comes to a 1892 new navy mod 4? Not positive til it gets in hand. From what I’ve found it’d be earlier than 1901 model it is without the lanyard loop on the bottom of the grip. The barrel marking was 38 Colt though and I believe there was a pat date on it but I can’t recall what the other markings are


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Baltimoreed]

If the sideplate is on the right side of the frame it sounds like you have a double action .38 Colt that uses heel base bullets. I have a couple civilian models that I swage bullets for. The .38 special is a tad longer and will fit in the chambers but does not shoot too well as it’s bullet dia is .357 while a .38 Colt heel base bullet is .375 dia. If you can find .38 Long ammo they have a hollow base and will expand somewhat to make them shoot a little more accurately. If you reload you can use hollow base wad cutters. Whatever you do, DON’T put anything hot in your pistol, no plus-p or .357 mag. There is no step in the cylinder so anything will drop in. The last one that I picked up was from a casual aquaitance who complained that he couldn’t hit anything with an old Colt he was carrying. I swapped him a nice Army Special [aka Official Police] for it, which was chambered for .38 Spcl. Colt did chamber a few of these 1890s Colts in .38 Special at the very end of production. When they overhauled their DAs they created the Army Special but the military wasn’t interested in revolvers as the 1911 was about to be adopted so Colt changed the name to Official Police and sold them to the coppers who bought a gazillion. Neat old Colts.

[one-eyed fat man]

If want to see the Army Manual for your M1901 revolver, it is here:

Description of the Colt's double-action revolver, caliber .38, with rules for management, memoranda of trajectory, and description of ammunition ... April 1, 1905. Rev. Oct. 3, 1908 (https://archive.org/download/descriptionofcol00unitrich/descriptionofcol00unitrich.pdf)