Colt Paterson - Operation

Operation

The early Colt revolvers were of single action design meaning that the trigger functioned only to discharge the weapon. It was necessary to manually cock the hammer prior to firing. The close tolerances, folding trigger and multiplicity of small parts and springs seemed more appropriate to a fine timepiece than a tool destined for field service and fouling from black powder residue.

The first Paterson Models (1836–1838) required partial disassembly for loading and had no definitive provision for safely carrying the revolver with all chambers loaded. To load the revolver, the shooter would:

1. Draw the hammer to half-cock to free the cylinder for removal and rotation;
2. Push the barrel wedge from right to left until it stops against a retaining screw;
3. Pull the barrel and then the cylinder off the central arbor;
4. Fill the individual chambers with powder leaving enough room to seat a lead ball;
5. Using a special lever tool or the arbor, seat balls beneath the chamber mouths.
6. Replace the cylinder, barrel, and wedge and with the hammer at half cock, place percussion caps on each tube using the Colt-designed capping tool. The revolvers came with spare cylinders and the practice of the day was to carry spare cylinders loaded and capped for fast reloading. Period users had few qualms about this practice even though it presented a real hazard of accidental discharge if the caps were struck or the cylinder dropped.

Routine carry modes included leaving the hammer in the half-cock position, lowering the hammer to rest on a capped chamber, downloading by one cylinder, or lowering the hammer between the chambers of the cylinder. The first two options were (and are) extremely dangerous. Later Colt revolvers had a notched hammer that would fit over an intermediate safety pin located between cylinders on the back of the chamber when all cylinders were loaded, thereby obviating contact of the hammer with the percussion caps until the single-action hammer was intentionally cocked.

In 1839, a hinged loading lever and capping window became standard for new revolvers and was retrofitted to the older designs. So modified, the revolvers could be loaded without disassembly. When the Paterson revolvers with loading levers finally reached Texas in 1842, Texas Ranger Captain John Coffee Hays was very pleased that his ranging companies could now reload from horseback.