• This community needs YOUR help today. We rely 100% on Supporting Memberships to fund our efforts. With the ever increasing fees of everything, we need help. We need more Supporting Members, today. Please invest back into this community. I will ship a few decals too in addition to all the account perks you get.



    Sign up here: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/account/upgrades

Patterson Colt

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

crockett

Cannon
Joined
May 1, 2004
Messages
6,352
Reaction score
40
Anyone own/shoot one of these early type Colts with the fold out trigger, etc? How to you reload? Like the gun or just a lot of bother? How well do they shoot?
 
Have had a 9" & a 7 1/2", both were older Replica Arms versions from the 70's. Also have shot a friend's who had the 4 5/8" version, which is about as rare as the long 12" version they also made. Granted, they load slow, since you have to take the barrel off to use the additional loading lever (a separate part) for the loading or reloading process, and only hold around 15 to 18 grains of powder...and are a bear to work on with a gaggle of internal parts. Glad Sam Colt & Sam Walker thought up a different twist for the next version. They're pleasant enough to shoot, once you get used to the hinged trigger and no trigger guard, but they're basically historical replicas that guys these days can play with. They were, and are, deadly smoke-poles but keep the range short. Like Jack Hays told his rangers before they engaged the Comanches west of Bandera Pass, "Powder-burn'em!" Impressed the Comanche's who came to call those Patersons, 'guns-that-speak-a-time-for-every-finger-of-a-man's-hand'! When you think that they knew John Coffee Hays (a.k.a.: Captain Jack or "Devil" Jack) as 'man-it-is-very-bad-luck-to-get-in-a-fight-with-because-devil-help-him', you begin to understand the respect these tough horseman had for the slim, grey-eyed Tennessean transplant. His attack order also insured more hits on target since actually hitting anything but the ground from the back of a thundering horse in a free-for-all fight is chancy at best...it ain't like a Roy Rodgers movie!
 
I had a chance to shoot one last month. Glad I didn't have to load it. It looked like a PITA to load. My 1858 Remingtons are a lot easier to load and shoot.

It seemed to point well and was easy to aim. There was very little recoil. The trigger pull was very heavy. I understand the guts of these pistols are pretty complicated so I don't know if it would be worth trying to do a trigger job on one.

Bottom line, fun to shoot, fun to hold, glad someone else had to load and clean it. Glad I had a chance to shoot it. I now know that I don't want one.

Many Klatch
 
Closest I ever came to a real one was watching Rick Harrison play with one (on tv) in his Pawn Shop in Vegas, lol!

Much prefer my Walker, but being the Paterson and I are both from Jersey, I'd like to have one to just show it off--never fire it!
 
Well I was at the Ranger museum in Waco two weeks ago and they had one you could take apart and put back together and so I got sort of interested in the thing.
I drove all around Bandera Pass(San Antonio-Del Rio- Fredericksburg) but missed the actual pass. Pretty country. Just how much of a "pass" was it? It seems the ground isn't that hilly but I wasn't in the exact location.
 
I have had one for several years. It is my sacred peice of weaponry. No-one touches it but me. You can play with my Remingtons, or 51/60 Colts but not touchy the Paterson. Buy yourself a loading stand, you know one of those you put the cylinder on and load. I use one now after breaking the leaf lever that gets inserted into the arbor slot. They are just to delicate. Mine is a Pietta Texas Paterson. I have every thing to put in a display box but the "snail" capper. The only one thats affordable is the one from "Dixie" but I hear thru the grape vine that it sucks.
The only trouble I have is trying to put the caps on by hand, with those lovely small nipple apertures.
 
crockett said:
Just how much of a "pass" was it? It seems the ground isn't that hilly but I wasn't in the exact location.

The actual pass is west of Bandera between 16 and 470 which run northwest & southwest of the city. I don't recall the actual mileage distance from town, it's visible but not a spectacular saddle or pass unless you're actually over there. The actual engagements were probably west of the pass itself. Next time you make the tour, ask somebody there, they an give you the best directions.
 
Haven't looked recently, but Dixie and others always seemed to carry them.
 
I've always kinda wanted to own a Paterson but the prices are always high enough that I can't force myself to buy one.

If I did buy one, I doubt that I would shoot it more than one cylinder full. Then, after cleaning it, it would hang on the wall for looking at.
 
Zonie said:
I've always kinda wanted to own a Paterson but the prices are always high enough that I can't force myself to buy one.

If I did buy one, I doubt that I would shoot it more than one cylinder full. Then, after cleaning it, it would hang on the wall for looking at.
That's kinda where I'm at with it. Neat to have but I wouldn't want to use it much.
 
Zonie, I alus suspected that you moderator fellas were rich, but to buy a $300,000 Paterson to fire once and hang it on the wall just about beats it all.

tac
 
I guess the other aspect was how well they worked mechanically. In other words the Walker has the loading level drop on recoil sometimes. I was interested in things like that. Did the Patterson function okay? Were there any troublesome areas that were corrected with later models or was it simply that a trigger guard and loading lever were needed.
 
While we're at it, was the Patterson completely the Brainchild of Sam'l Colt, or is there more to the Story? Seems the Patterson, while not ignored, does kinda get glossed over. But in the History of Firearms Development, it really was a very, very Big Deal...
 
"While we're at it, was the Patterson completely the Brainchild of Sam'l Colt, or is there more to the Story?"
------
Good question and one that has been debated for years.

Colt worked on a ship and he had been to Europe and was on-board ship when he carved out his wooden model of his first revolver.
There is no question that the idea of a revolver was being worked on in England and in France at the time.

There is no way of knowing who Colt talked to overseas or what he might have seen.

One thing is for certain though.
His Paterson revolver was the first production gun sold in moderately large quantities in the US and sit the stage for his later thriving business.
 
Zonie said:
There is no question that the idea of a revolver was being worked on in England and in France at the time.

There is no way of knowing who Colt talked to overseas or what he might have seen.

One thing is for certain though.
His Paterson revolver was the first production gun sold in moderately large quantities in the US and sit the stage for his later thriving business.
Actually there are flintlock revolver pistols (and some long guns) that were made in England and France long before Sam Colt was even born - the whole shipboard story is just that a story at best, albeit he may have seen the rvolvers while in England...Several books on English arms will include these early revolvers...Sam mainly was a good salesman which led to the popularity of the Colt revolver in all it's various permutations...

and yep it's Paterson and not Patterson - named for Paterson, NJ where they were first built.

As for comparing the durability to a SAA or even the earlier 1851 Navy - the innards are much more fragile in the Paterson. Regarding loading - the Texas model was made with a loading lever similar to that used on the M1849 and the Dragoons...
 
Well this is out of my area of knowledge but I thought the idea of a revolver had been around for some time but none of them worked very well. Colt was on board a ship and all the sailors grabbed a short stout stick that got stuck into an opening in the turn-table (term/sic?) that rotated to pull up the anchor and Colt saw that the thing could be applied to a pistol- sort of the hand on a pistol that rotates the cylinder. I think that was the part of the revolver's evolution he developed.
 
crockett said:
Colt was on board a ship and all the sailors grabbed a short stout stick that got stuck into an opening in the turn-table (term/sic?) that rotated to pull up the anchor

The naval term was 'capstan' and it did take 'all hands' to get the anchors in, particularly on ships of the line. It was one of those jobs even the Marines could handle...basically a 'strong back & weak mind' evolution. Besides, you had to keep them busy doing something to keep them out of trouble! :wink: As an interesting aside, the actual anchor cable was so large it wouldn't fit around the capstan and was attached to a 'messenger cable', which was a smaller line used to raise the anchor by being attached to the anchor cable itself. The capstan was basically a lockable wench and could also be used to turn an anchored vessel using kedge anchors and spring cables. This allowed the ship to rotate in place by taking in or letting out the spring cables and was used to adjust firing at fixed targets or cover a nearby moving vessel. Though mostly wood, it would prove inspiration for a revolving, lockable devise.
 
crockett said:
Well this is out of my area of knowledge but I thought the idea of a revolver had been around for some time but none of them worked very well. Colt was on board a ship and all the sailors grabbed a short stout stick that got stuck into an opening in the turn-table (term/sic?) that rotated to pull up the anchor and Colt saw that the thing could be applied to a pistol- sort of the hand on a pistol that rotates the cylinder. I think that was the part of the revolver's evolution he developed.

Again that's just good advertising copy by one of the best salesman of any time period - Sam Colt - the earlier revolvers worked just fine within their parameters - the biggest bugaboo was the flint ignition - with the introduction of the percussion cap things changed for the "better"
 

Latest posts

Back
Top