[ Colt Prototype D/A 1911 ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today
courtesy of Tom over at Legacy Collectibles,
we are taking a look at a 1911.
Not just any 1911, a rather unusual Colt factory prototype 1911.
Now I don't know if you can see it so well from back there, but you might notice that
something's not quite right about the structure of the fire control group here.
And you might also notice that there's an extra lever on the side of the slide.
Well, this is a Colt experiment with a double action variation on the 1911.
So let's take a closer look at it.
I have basically no details about the specific provenance of this particular pistol.
In fact the only way we can really effectively date it is using the pattern of the grips,
which are these old brown plastic grips,
as well as the style of the markings on the slide.
So we of course have Colt's Manufacturing, Hartford, Connecticut.
You can also see we have the serial number here,
and that is a "GX" prefix, number 2490.
Now GX and X were both used by Colt as serial number prefixes
specifically for experimental factory prototype guns,
and this one fits ... into that category very well.
Here on the other side we have the rest of the markings.
These markings plus the grip panels tell us that this is approximately a 1950s period gun.
Which kind of makes sense, post-World War Two there are now double action
military and police pistols out there on the market, double action semi-autos.
And so it makes sense that Colt would go experimenting
with the possibility of doing that themselves.
Essentially what they have done here is deepen the frame just a little bit here
to give space for a little extra bit of trigger mechanism.
We have this side panel on the gun, ... basically they milled a big ol' open space
in the side of the [frame] to put in a double action mechanism.
And we'll take a look at that in just a moment.
... This may sound weird, but I actually don't have a normal 1911 to compare this to.
But I do have a Ballester Molina here which has the same basic structure of frame.
And so if I put this down on top, you can see how the trigger guard
on this Colt experimental has been dropped down relative to where it would normally be.
And so that's what makes the gun look a little bit unusual.
Now the double action hammer is just that, you pull the trigger and it cocks the hammer.
But there is also this secondary feature on the slide
that is actually unrelated to the double action mechanism,
but it's very much a prototype experimental sort of feature.
And it's not a de-cocker, which was my initial assumption when I saw the gun.
Instead what this does is retract the firing pin.
So you can see right there the firing pin is exposed, and if the hammer drops it will fire.
Where if I drop this lever down it retracts the firing pin forward
such that the hammer can't actually hit it.
So this is yet an additional safety on a gun that already has a manual safety and a grip safety.
And so, as I said, this is unrelated to the rest of the lockwork.
You could drop this slide onto a standard 1911
and this would still act as a firing pin safety on there.
So in fact the whole upper assembly of the gun is totally standard.
Now for disassembly I'm going to go ahead and take off this grip panel,
and then we can take ... off that side panel that covers the double action mechanism.
Alright, so this grip panel comes off.
And then we have one more screw holding this side plate on.
You can see we have a grip screw bushing here coming through that side plate.
Alright, and now we can take this off.
We have one very finicky little flat spring in here,
and then we have a ... linkage, effectively, between the trigger and the hammer.
So take this guy out, this is ... a very finicky little spring,
and appears to be a really super-kludgy sort of thing.
This is definitely a shop prototype sort of gun, not something in actual production.
But what's really interesting to me here is
essentially the trigger and the hammer have been left intact as on a standard 1911.
So I can cock the hammer, and then I can use the trigger to
drop the hammer just like a regular 1911.
And if we look inside here
you can see this bar, that is the trigger bar.
And so just like a standard 1911, this has the stirrup style of trigger [bar] that sits here,
and gets pushed back by the trigger.
And it straddles both sides of the magazine well and comes back here to interact with the sear.
They changed the shape of the trigger,
but they didn't actually change any of its single action functionality.
What they did is they of course changed the shape of the trigger to give it a lot more travel.
There is now a little trigger return spring up in here.
And we now have this top lug on the trigger, which is what this thing connects to.
We also have this little lug that has been added to the hammer,
so that the trigger can pull the hammer into the fully cocked position.
And then it is actually the original lock work down here that is going to drop the hammer
when you pull the trigger all the way through.
So that is going to sit right there, and holding it down here so it doesn't come out,
normally it would be held down by that side panel.
The beginning of travel ... (it's a really stiff double action too),
but I am pulling the hammer back like this.
And we have a little roller bearing on the screw bushing there,
so that when this comes all the way back it's going to get pushed down.
This hook comes off the ... hammer lug, and the hammer drops.
Then when you release the trigger, this goes back into position
and that little flat spring somehow (it's a little unclear to me) holds this back up into position
so that it will begin ... oops ... begin a double action trigger press again.
You can see we do have an extra pin hole here,
that is the trigger pivot, right there, the trigger access pin.
And then this is all they really had to do to make it into a double action.
It's a bit of a kludgy double action, but it does actually work.
As I said, unfortunately I have been able to dig up nothing
about the specific history of this particular pistol.
Quite a lot, relatively speaking, of one-off Colt prototypes
came out of the Colt Company in I believe the 1980s,
and were sold onto the private collector market.
And this is almost certainly one of those.
In theory one can get a letter from Colt
about the history of any particular pistol based on its serial number.
Unfortunately those letters will tell you some basic facts like where it was shipped.
But in the case of something like this
they won't tell you anything about its actual developmental history.
So we don't know specifically like if there was a particular goal they were trying to get.
If there was a particular criteria.
Like why maybe they had a firing pin retracting safety
in addition to a manual safety, and a grip safety, and a double action hammer.
That unfortunately is still up in the air.
None of the reference books that I've been able to find have any mention of this.
So we're left with just looking at it as an interesting mechanical experiment of Colt's.
A big thanks again to Legacy Collectibles for giving me access to this pistol to bring to you guys.
If you like this sort of thing, definitely check out their YouTube channel as well.
Thanks for watching.