Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today I want to talk briefly about the Colt Model of 1847 Walker revolvers.
These are perhaps the most valuable US martial handguns on the collector's market.
The things bring hundreds of thousands of dollars,
sometimes hitting a million dollars apiece on the collector market.
And yet from a manufacturing and quality perspective, they are kind of garbage.
There were massive problems with the Walker revolvers
to a level that today I think people would find absolutely stunning.
So let me begin with a quote from Colonel George Talcott, who was US Chief of Ordnance,
who oversaw, among other things, the adoption and approval of the Walker revolvers.
Quote.
"The first issues of Colt's pistols proved to be almost complete failures for practical utility,
as had been the case with other repeating breech-loading arms,
and created a prejudice against them.
In support of this, I need only refer to the issue of these pistols to the Texas Rangers
under the celebrated Colonel Jack Hays.
There were received 280 pistols (it was actually like 394 pistols).
And after less than a year's service, there were left to be returned to the arsenals but 191 in all.
Of which only 82 were serviceable, the remainder chiefly bursted in the hands of the men,
a few being lost in skirmishes with the enemy."
So over the course of about a year's combat service,
what started as about 400 Walker revolvers turned into 82 serviceable guns
returned to the armoury when the unit disbanded.
Now, this isn't entirely due to all of the others exploding.
There was almost certainly a fair amount of incidents of guys
reporting their guns as lost, or damaged, or destroyed,
so that they could just keep them and take them home as souvenirs.
Handguns have always been highly prized possessions of military folk.
But it is indisputable that there were a significant number of burst guns
in what ... Talcott here refers to as "the first issue",
which is to say the first production, the first deliveries of Colt Walkers.
And specifically what would happen are a couple of things: the cylinders would explode.
Barrels would sometimes explode at the muzzle.
The barrels would also sometimes be damaged at the chamber.
The arbors that the cylinders ran on would sometimes break,
resulting in the barrels being blown off when the gun was fired.
And of course there are the less ... critical issues of the loading lever never worked right.
The spring retaining the loading lever was a very poor design,
and the loading levers, once the guns got a little bit of use to them, would fall down with every shot.
So the reason for all of the exploding Colt Walkers,
this is actually a combination of a number of factors.
So the first factor is the Walker was an incredibly powerful gun.
It was the most powerful US military handgun,
actually it might still be to this day, depending on what you consider "adopted".
A Colt Walker would fire approximately a 220 grain bullet
at between 1,100 and maybe 1,200 feet per second.
That's like well beyond .45 Super, this is a really potent gun.
And it did that by having a powder capacity of, depending, 50 to 60 grains.
It's important to consider here that 60 grains was basically a rifle charge.
You think of the .45-70 rifle cartridge, that's 70 grains of black powder.
We're talking about a handgun here that's holding 60 grains of black powder.
Now, there is discussion of the fact that the Walker was originally actually designed
to use not a round ball specifically,
but what was called a "picket" bullet, which is a pointed bullet.
And ... it was a little fiddly to get the thing loaded square into the chambers.
Didn't always work right. And allegedly a lot of the troopers who were issued these guns,
who had no prior experience with revolvers,
and minimal experience with bullets instead of round ball,
found it a lot easier to flip the pointed bullet around and load it point first.
Because then it stabilised itself, and it was a lot easier to push it squarely into the cylinder.
Now allegedly, if you do that, because you are actually creating more volume
for powder inside the chamber.
Because that area around the pointed tip of the bullet is now inside the ... chamber
where you can fill it up with more powder.
And that is an issue, but ... you shouldn't think of that as the only issue,
or the specific cause of Walkers exploding.
Because the issue there was compounded by a couple of other things.
First off, the strength of the cylinder and barrel
was really pretty much marginal for the powder charge that it was designed for.
Even if you don't overload it, even if you load it correctly, there's a very small margin of safety
in the material strength of the cylinder and the barrel
for the pressure that it's going to undergo when it fires.
It's important to point out that these cylinders were made of wrought iron, this isn't steel.
Steel wouldn't enter into Colt handguns for a few years after this.
It's also worth pointing out that the Walkers were produced kind of in a rush. ...
This wasn't a well-established Colt factory that had good quality control
and procedures in place, and understood exactly the product it was making.
This was the first 1,000 guns, which might be the only 1,000 guns,
which Sam Colt is desperate to get out the door
and actually make a profit on so that he can continue his business.
Later on, Colt's quality standards would become much more important to the company,
but at this point Sam Colt's just a guy desperately
trying to finish a single contract to make something.
And so QC was basically non-existent for the Walker contract.
The guns were initially actually proof-tested by the military before they were accepted,
and a substantial percentage of them failed that proof test.
And failing a proof-test means they loaded all 6 chambers in the cylinder and the gun exploded.
This happened, and this was kind of an accepted part of the proofing process
that some guns just aren't going to pass.
And the ones that don't you send back to the factory, and the factory goes,
"Oh, I guess we had a flaw in that cylinder, we'll put in a new cylinder.
Here you go. Oh, it passed proofing this time, good to go."
It doesn't actually necessarily mean that that gun's not going to explode later on
if someone loads it the wrong way, someone loads it with a little more powder,
or one of the other issues that compounds the quality, and well the history, of the Walkers.
We had variable qualities and sizes of black powder.
We have really pretty regulated standards on black powder composition and grain size.
And the grain size of black powder makes a big difference in how fast it burns.
Large grains burn ... slower because they have less surface area compared to their volume.
If you ... grind that black powder up into much smaller grains,
it's going to burn a lot faster because there's a lot more surface area
to burn all at the same time.
So if you take your Walker, and let's say ... there happens to be a little bit of inconsistency
in the slag that's inside the cast iron that the cylinder is made of.
Which is, by the way, an essential defining element of wrought iron,
it has slag still in it, it has impurities.
And as long as those impurities are reasonably uniformly distributed,
and the iron master was pretty good at his job, that's fine.
But if someone slipped or stopped paying attention for a moment, and you end up with
irregular imperfections and impurities in the wrought iron in your cylinder,
that becomes a weak point where, kablooey, it can fail.
So you take a cylinder that has an undetected weak point in it,
and now maybe you're going to load that bullet upside down
because you're sick of trying to deal with this stupid wobbly bullet getting off kilter
when you try and press it into the cylinder.
And maybe your powder today is a little finer grained than it was in the last batch,
or maybe it's just been bouncing around in your powder flask long enough that it's
degraded and ground itself down a little bit.
Now all of a sudden you have more powder, higher burn rate, higher pressure,
weak point in the cylinder, and kablooey, there goes the gun.
And this is a story that happened to something like 20% to 30% of the Colt Walkers
that were actually issued in military service.
The ones that were actually turned back into the armouries
tended to also have cut down barrels, which was a field-expedient repair to a burst muzzle.
... These guns just weren't really that good.
And it's a testament to Colt's marketing abilities that he was able to overcome these problems.
And to be fair, he did also improve the quality of steels substantially
over the next couple of years.
By the time he gets to guns like the 1849 Pocket and the 1851 Navy,
a lot of these issues have pretty much gone away, or massively reduced in frequency.
But man, with those original Walkers, I think people may underestimate ...
you look at this massive, just behemoth of a gun, and you just kind of naturally think,
"Well, it's so huge and so heavy, it must be very strong."
And the reality of this situation is they actually weren't quite
strong enough in general for the powder charge that they were being used with.
So anyway, ... I think it's an under-appreciated aspect of a gun
that is insanely highly priced on the collector's market.
And it makes for an interesting contrast to me.
I should also point out real quick, if you would like a further expanded history of the Colt Walker,
I have a relatively short video that I did myself a while back
on the Walker and its development into the Dragoons.
And if you want a whole lot of depth and detail,
check out the C&Rsenal "Reprocussion" video on the Colt Walker.
I will link to both of those in the end cards on this video.
Thanks for watching.