51 VS 61 NAVY

[Applause] hi guys it's Blackie for shamans forge woodcraft and today we're gonna talk about the 1851 in 1861 Navy and how they compared to each other stay with me okay guys let's look at to the great icons of the percussion revolver era that is the 1851 Navy 36 caliber buy coat and the 1861 Navy 36 caliber buy coat now many people will look at this gun and initially think it's an 1860 army because of the streamlined barrel but the dead giveaway is the cylinder is not rebated it doesn't flare out to the bigger caliber now the game began with this and I'll give you a close-up here in just a second now this is the 51 Navy it had the square trigger-guard that was popular at that time under the gun revolvers which was the big moneymaker for Colt and for the baby Dragoon which was the huge seller that was for the 49 gold rush etc and slipped in a pocket so coat was very much capitalizing on a branding a style if you will the caliber was 36 and the standard load was somewhere around 2025 grains of black powder over a conical bullet or round ball now these getting and please excuse the gunfire it's hunting season in Alabama dove season in the field around here got people sheep dug so the gun itself is 36 caliber and the initial name for this gun was originally the Ranger and it didn't go that well because he's trying to capitalize on the Texas Rangers at that time they had been a big buyer before and he hoped they would jump on this because it was an improvement over the Colt Paterson that they had liked so much but what really made it and then you look on the cylinders and you'll have an engraving pattern there of a naval engagement between the Texas Navy in the Mexican Navy and that's the reason we call this the Navy model coat yes the US Navy did buy some but army ma bought these as well but it became known as the Navy caliber 36 because of that and this gun was hugely successful this was the gun that Wild Bill Hickok liked to use it was a favorite of many of the gun fighters of the Old West in the early days before cartridge and even after cartridges that came out man these were converted to 38 Long Colt and well up into the 1890s you can still find some salty old dog still packing one of these they were very effective handguns for combat and for news of that day and after the Civil War there was tons of them available as surplus now many of the generals of the Civil War preferred this gun it was thought that the 36 shot easier it was easier to be accurate with due to its less recalled versus the more powerful 44 now in 1860 Colt had kind of jumped up his game civil war was just beginning and he had created the 1860 army which he took a 51 Navy he cut the frame right here to allow thicker made a cylinder with a thicker ring and turned it into 44 caliber and he had one as I understand one prototype they bored out square barrel like this to be a 44 caliber that was the prototype but this new design was already on the horizon of this streamlined barrel and here's a close-up of this one now this streamlined barrel gave it a more graceful look and when you initially look at this you're gonna think it's in 1860 like I said but the cylinder is still a fifty-one Navy type cylinder from here back it's basically still a fifty-one Navy except it's got the rounded curtain guard and many of the fifty ones had round trigger guards it was one of the early ones had these square trigger guards by definitely by the mid 1850s this has gone to a round trigger guard because people complain to cutting their finger into that guard that finger didn't want to go into that small opening so you know cochlea stand made a round trigger guard now the 61 Navy was the improvement so the 1860 army 1861 they took the 51 Navy and they created the streamlined barrel image for it all the specs were the same except for the streamlined barrel so you can consider it like an improved Navy revolver and it was designated the 1861 and then in 1863 they took their pocket Navy and they in the 49 pocket model etc and they streamlined that and made the 1863 pocket police which has this kind of streamlined barrel so ballistically these should be the same gun there were very very minor improvements between these two models all you're looking at is a cosmetic basically changed now yes the addition of the creeping loading lever was an advantage over the older style pen type lever it didn't want to bind is bad except there were minor cosmetic differences there were also a minor technical differences where they changed the forcing cone inside slightly they went to this blade front sight approach to the pen front sight of the original these were just little improvements where they have learned over time and they were applying it to this model much like in our modern era where you have this model car comes out say a Mustang and then two years later they change suddenly keys and it's got a bigger motor now and it's got a better this and the better that and he make these improvements for five or six years before they radically changed the look of the car well that's way the coke did as well Colt had a winner right here and it was a very rugged and accurate right pistol and he wanted to keep that tradition but make it come up the moon they didn't just quit making these fifty ones they still made him for a while after that started this because the popularity of the 51 was so big and long after the percussion era ended let's say realistically 1870 because there were so many surplus guns flooding the market from the war and so many gunsmiths had created cylinders whatever to convert these over to percussion inspired but cartridge guns we call these conversion guns and they were being sold at a good price versus the new gun so for example excuse me a Colt Single Action Army was a $20 gold piece you could pick up a surplus 51 for $2 or less depending on where you were in the country so these guns soldiered on in the civilian market long after their day in the Sun and like I said is as I've read articles and stuff of really well documented I think it was in the late 1880s like 1886 87 the last coat percussion gun they had cease production but they still had parts and they would assemble parts guns and put them out and so you do encounter today in the collectors market something called a myth that's code you couldn't find a 61 Navy had a war back with a guard on well it was made up either by a gunsmith taking two broken guns and making one or parts from the Benz in the factory that some lower gunsmith had been asked to make something that was marketable and these guns would be given to the coat representatives so that when they were out on the frontier they can sell them it's a not in production model but we're getting some money out of parts same so when asked which is better that's up to aesthetics if you're talking ballistic performance they're almost identical there are such minor differences between the two you might as well just you know it'd be two of fifty-one navies and they can be minor differences between the two or 260 ones and they'd be minor differences between them as to be a moot point they're the same gun it's just whether you want the improved model and streamlined or you want the original model for my I to me I've always talked to the 51 Navy with a squareback truguard was the sexiest one of the bunch and Cole loved it but he said that his favorite was the 61 because of the look maybe I was a marketing ploy at the time he was very close to him passing away it was on the books and it just hadn't come out so guys I hope this gives you a fresh look at some of it please leave any questions or comments below and a little later on once it's a little cooler and I get the opportunity I'll be doing some shooting videos where I'll compare these head-to-head / chronograph in etc to see how they perform together till then guys I'm Blackey for shaman's for words wishing you safe journeys have a great day guys

Channel: BLACKIE THOMAS

Views: 17,907

Keywords:

Id: I5NSGNWwniI

Length: 9min 56sec (596 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 17 2019