The .45 Colt is great! Take that Venturino!

American Handgunner, July-August, 2005 by John Taffin

Mike Venturino, what have you done? You didn't kick my dog, make fun of my kids, or insult my wife, but what you did is almost as bad. In the March/April 2005 issue of Handgunner you trashed the .45 Colt! Mike, I've been reading your stuff since you started and have most of your articles on file, including one going back, way back, to GunSport with your custom leather for the 5 1/2" Ruger Super Black-hawk. Over the years you have written mostly about the firearms I am most interested in. However, I have somewhat against you. Actually two things.

You Did It Mike!

First, you have cost me an awful lot of money. Your books on shooting the old black powder sixguns really stirred my soul and spirit, and since reading them my wife and I have added a lot of black powder sixguns to our shooting collection. We have been able to come up with six Top-Break Smith & Wesson 19th-century sixguns, five chambered in .44 Russian, one in .44-40; three of them are single actions and three of them are the old frontier double actions. And then there are the Colts, the three .44-40 Frontier Six-Shooters, and the 1878 Double Action .45. Mike, these things are really expensive! I could have bought at least two new guns for what I paid for any one of them. You did it to me, Mike.

Even though my checkbook is empty and my credit card is on fire I can forgive you. However, it will be tough to forgive and forget what you have just done. You trashed the .45 Colt! I will grant you are in good company. In 1927 Elmer Keith basically gave up on the .45 Colt, turned to the .44 Special and the rest, as they say, is history. In 1958, Col. Cooper, writing in his book Fighting Handguns, said he saw no need for anyone to purchase a new gun chambered in .45 Colt.

However, on the flip side I'm also in very good company. In the 1950s, a young Utah gunsmith by the name of Dick Casull turned from the .44 Special and began experimenting with the .45 Colt, and once again the rest is history. John Linebaugh of .475 and .500 Linebaugh fame started his career building custom .45 Colt sixguns and his everyday carry gun is a double action .45 Colt.

Some Truth Here

Now I will grant some of the things you said are true. The .45 ACE the .45 Auto Rim and even the .45 Schofield are much more efficient with smokeless powder than the .45 Colt, as they require less powder to get the same results, and it is more difficult to have a case loaded with a double charge of the slow burning powders. One way to avoid this is to use such powders as H4227 or XMR5744 in the .45 Colt as they bulk-up so nicely, making a double charge impossible.

Let's take a serious look at accuracy. Now granted you have said, "The .45 Colt has never had much of a reputation for accuracy, but to be honest that has been more of a problem with the gun's dimensions rather than anything inherent to the cartridge itself." Bingo. You are so right on the money here. Then you said, "In all my test firing of .45 Colt handguns over almost 40 years, I feel it's a rare one that will group five shots under 2" at 25 yards. With my assortment of .45AR's, often the first five shots cut a ragged hole, and many times five more dumped on top of them still left groups under 2". "Like I said, there have been many .45AR target-grade revolvers." Double bingo, HOWEVER, that is not the cartridge, that is the sixgun!

When working on my book, Action Shooting Cowboy Style 1 tested every .45 single action sixgun and levergun I could come up with, using five different powders and the Bull-X 250 RNFP all loaded in the 850-950 fps range. A pair of 7 1/2" stainless steel Vaqueros would both place five shots in 7/8" with a cowboy action shooting distance of 50 feet using eight grains of Unique.

Had Smith and Wesson held the same tolerances with their .45 Colt cylinders I doubt there would be any difference, in fact, you might find the .45 Colt would actually outshoot the .45 Auto Rim, which requires the bullet to jump quite a way in that long cylinder. Remember, Smith & Wesson's 1950 and 1955 Target sixguns started out chambered in the .45 ACP/AR with the .45 Colt added as an afterthought.

Playing The Numbers

I have three Model 25-5 .45 Colt S&Ws hereabouts. The largest plug gauge the 8 3/8" and the 4" will accept in their respective chamber throats are both .451", while the 6" version easily swallows a .457" plug. Want to guess which one doesn't shoot all that well? On the other hand, a .45 ACP/AR Mountain Gun and a 625-2 both measure out at .451" while a Model 25-2 accepts a .455" plug. The latter .45 ACP/AR won't shoot all that well either. In neither case is it the fault of the cartridge, but rather poor tolerances on the part of the manufacturer.

Colt cylinders chambered in .45 Colt have also been a problem as they are often oversize. Again, this is a gull problem not a cartridge problem. To counteract this I turned a 2nd Generation Colt New Frontier .357 Magnum and a 4 3/4" Colt New Frontier .45 Colt barrel over to gunsmith John Linebaugh. John re-chambered the cylinder to a tight .45 Colt and the result at 25 yards using Keith's #454424 bullet over 20 grains of H4227 is all five bullets cutting one ragged hole. The beautiful little sixgun and target is pictured on page 42 of my book Big Bore Sixguns.