Big, bold and beautiful: Colt's New Service: or one man's talent for swiping dad's guns

Guns Magazine, Sept, 2004 by Glenn Barnes

With the obligatory, albeit brief historic trivia of the Colt New Service concluded, I'm ready to finish the story about "my" New Service, the one I attempted to liberate from Dad before I was collared, fined and sentenced to a hot summer of grass mowing, weed eating and car washing. I've been liberating Dad's firearms for most of my 40 years, generally without any repercussions, so when I decided to give the old New Service a test ride I did so with full intentions of returning it in a year or so, depending on how well it shot.

The Gun In Question

There's nothing out of the ordinary or collectible about this particular sixgun, in fact, having been re-blued at some point in its life, collector value is virtually nil, however, shooter value is an altogether different proposition. Cosmetically speaking, it sports a 7.5" fixed sight blued barrel, lanyard ring and custom stocks crafted from genuine hard plastic with Colt medallions embedded slightly askew--and it's chambered for .45 Colt.

Internally speaking, all the parts appear to be new, hmm; maybe I'm on to something here. The bore is mirror bright and shows no evidence of wear of any kind. The chambers are clean and shiny, and the action is smooth and heavy, just like every one I've encountered. After examining the New Service, I came to the conclusion it had spent most of its life tucked away in a holster, forgotten and unused, where it acquired stone light pitting. Sometime later its previous owner had it re-blued, Dad somehow ended up with it, and now it was mine, sort of.

Rummaging through the old amino chest, I came up with an assortment of factory .45 Colt ammo from Black Hills, Hornady, Winchester and Speer, mostly "cowboy" stuff, with the exception of the Speer load. Retiring to the loading bench, I assembled a few favorite handloads using several varieties of commercially cast bullets weighing between 250 and 255 grains, and one homebrewed cast bullet featuring straight wheel weights and RCBS' 45-255SWC mold, sized to .454. The latter drops from my mold at 265 grains.

Traditionally, Alliant Unique has been the top powder choice for reloading the big .45 Colt case and has long been a particular favorite of mine for delivering good velocities and superb accuracy. For general purpose loads, which is all I desired for the old New Service, eight to nine grains of Alliant Unique and a quality 250 grain (or so) bullet is all that's needed, producing around 850 to 950 feet per second or so. I loaded-up several hundred rounds of each, grabbed the factory ammo and headed for the range.

Shooting Extravaganza

It's been my good fortune to own and shoot perhaps a dozen or so Colt New Service sixguns over the years, the majority of which were chambered in .45 Colt. Without exception, they were all very accurate guns, with some delivering precision bordering on phenomenal. My newly-liberated New Service's accuracy fell somewhere in-between. Winchester's 255 grain lead soft point was the most precise factory load with a five group average of just under 2" at 25 yards. The Hornady, Speer and Black Hills offerings were nearly as accurate, collectively averaging slightly over 2". Loads featuring a variety of commercially cast bullets were hard put to stay much under 3", but when I switched to my own cast pills, things began to look up considerably. Using both 8.5 and 9 grains of Alliant Unique, groups ran between 1.25" and 1.5" at 25 yards, with velocities averaging 901 and 946 feet respectively, making this one fine general purpose load.