Innholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2021 i Guns of the Old West

In today’s world when you want to see a product you search for it online. In an instant it appears and you can order from any of a dozen suppliers or sometimes directly from the manufacturer, and it arrives in a matter of days, even overnight. We still have paper catalogs of course (check your mailbox, ’tis the season), but they’re not as important to consumers today as a hundred years ago. Back in the late 19th century, a catalog was the easiest means of seeing what the product looked like, reading the description, and if not ordering directly, at least knowing what to order at the mercantile or hardware store in town. Two major retailers, Montgomery Ward and Sears, Robuck & Co. made this a much easier and reasonably…

THE PATERSON WAS JUST THE BEGINNING. Samuel Colt was only 21 years old when he created his first design for a percussion revolver with a mechanically-rotated cylinder. This concept led to the Paterson revolvers built in Paterson, New Jersey from 1836 to 1842. There were earlier guns with cylinders, like the Collier, but Sam Colt invented the revolver as we know it, the basics of which are still used to this day. Whether or not it is true that Colt never saw a Collier (which were built in England with a 5-shot cylinder that had to be manually rotated), what’s interesting is that Colt took a different approach. He also knew a little bit about patent laws and didn’t file the first patent for his design in the United States,…

If you’re thinking of having Turnbull restore a firearm, here’s how it works. You ship the gun to the company and outline the work you want done. Turnbull will examine the firearm and respond with a free quote, usually within a couple of weeks. The clock is then ticking—you have a month to decide whether or not to proceed. If you decide not to go ahead, you pay only for return shipping. If you do give them the go-ahead for the project, expect that your gun will wait in line for about a year.…

It’s a staple of every Hollywood Western. The sun sets orange against the backdrop of a prairie town of ramshackle buildings and squint-eyed lawmen set against the spires of Monument Valley. Propelling the plot, a Concord stagecoach with Wells Fargo livery careens into frame. It’s dusty, studded with arrows and driven by a wounded Andy Devine. Racing behind its rickety wheels and barking to announce the stage’s late arrival and dangerous situation to the townspeople is a pack of nondescript dogs. “More than companions, the REAL DOGS of the American West were WORKING DOGS kept for purposes beyond what THE MOVIES ever portrayed.” These are Old West dogs—rogue, rough, almost but not quite strays and as formidable as any Clint Eastwood character. Rin Tin Tin, Strongheart, Lobo, Kazan and Bullet…

Mark Twain may have been the first famous firearms critic. In his 1871 book Roughing It, chronicling his early adventures in the American West from 1861 to 1867, he used his famously lighthearted and sarcastic wit to at once define, defile and glamorize—dare we say immortalize—the Smith & Wesson Model No. 1 Tip-Up .22 Short revolver. “I was armed to the teeth,” wrote Twain, “with a pitiful little Smith & Wesson’s seven-shooter, which carried a ball like a homeopathic pill, and it took the whole seven to make a dose for an adult. But I thought it was grand. It appeared to me to be a dangerous weapon. It only had one fault—you could not hit anything with it.” Indeed, Daniel B. Wesson’s first patented self-contained metallic cartridge, the .22…

ONE OF THE GREAT ATTRACTIONS of firearms for many people is that they can be much more than purposeful tools. They can represent great works of art as well. Look at an Ulrich-engraved Winchester presentation rifle om the 1800s, for instance, and you can see that pride of ownership went beyond appreciating a firearm merely for its ability to down game or defend the ranch. While you’re not as likely to view a polymer-frame Glock or an AR-15 as an object of art today, there are still opprtunities to achieve great beauty alongside excellent performance. Turnbull Restoration Company provides such opportunities. Turnbull is where you turn when you want to restore a family heirloom to its original appearance, personalize a favorite firearm with custom embellishments or turn a plain old…

■ One of The Crossdraw Kid’s last in-front-of-the-camera Westerns was Cimarron (1960), starring Glenn Ford and Maria Schell. Crossdraw was the elevator boy, circa 1914, when Schell’s character, Sabra Cravat, retired from her post as owner and publisher of the Oklahoma Wigwam newspaper, near the end of the film. Obviously, his acting career was either on its way up or down, almost certainly the latter. His $200-a-day job started on a Friday. Due to the pending Screen Actors Guild (SAG) strike scheduled for Sunday at midnight, the motion picture—a sprawling tribute to Edna Ferber’s novel about the Oklahoma land rush of 1889, directed by Anthony Mann—had to be finished by the Sunday deadline. MGM had built the largest Western town in its history for the film, encompassing more than 11…

My friend and respected firearms writer John Taffin first used the term “Perfect Packing Pistol,” now commonly called a PPP. For many years my personal PPP has been a .45-caliber 2nd Generation Colt Single Action revolver with a 4.75-inch barrel. However, if one habitually carries their everyday carry gun from “can see to can’t see,” even this SA revolver, at 38 ounces, becomes surprisingly heavy and uncomfortable. Enter the lightweight modifications to the SA revolver. Elmer Keith, the first Outstanding American Handgunner, passed away 36 years ago, so some of you might not know of him and his custom .44 Special Colt SA No. 5. Keith spent a lifetime experimenting with high-performance handloaded ammunition, and his heavy .44 Special loads were instrumental in the development of the .44 Magnum cartridge.…

Not everyone can afford an original Civil War Parrott rifle or an M1857 12-pounder “Napoleon.” These are highly desirable field pieces, and while millions of cannons were likely made over the centuries, time has been a cruel mistress. As a result, original cannons can fetch prices close to those of new cars! Fortunately, there are now plenty of quality replica cannons—many of which are more than capable of firing black powder and producing that bang that puts a smile on most guys’ faces. And these are often available at a fraction of the price of antiques. Many of the cannons now on display in national parks and at battlefields such as Gettysburg and elsewhere are, in fact, reproductions. If these are good enough for those places, they are good…

1. Publication Title: ATHLON SPORTS COMMUNICATIONS, INC/GUNS OF THE OLD WEST 2. Publication Number: 22863 ISSN 2469-3162 3. Filing Date: 09/25/2020 4. Issue Frequency: Quarterly, 5. Number of Issues Published Annually: 4 6. Annual Subscription Price: $20.97 7. Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication: ATHLON SPORTS COMMUNICATIONS INC., 2451 Atrium Way, Suite 320, Nashville, TN 37214-5102, CONTACT: Mark Malone 615-440-5548 8. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters or General Business Office of Publisher: 2451 Atrium Way, Nashville, TN 37214-5201. 9. Full Names and Complete Mailing Addresses of Publisher, Editor, and Managing Editor: PUBLISHER: Nicholas S. Seifert, 2451 Atrium Way, Suite 320, Nashville, TN 37214-5201 EDITOR: Nino Bosaz, 2451 Atrium Way, Suite 320, Nashville, TN 37214 MANAGING EDITOR: Linas Cernauskas, 2451 Atrium Way, Suite 320, Nashville, TN 37214-5102 10. OWNER:…