Original Colt 1851 Navy .36 vs Reproductions

[Skinny 1950]

Has anyone worked on original Colts and the Italian clones and if so how are the internal parts different?

 

[mooncoon]

It depends on the year of production and the maker for the reproductions. I believe that the very early repros were exact copies of the originals. Within a short time, changes were made in order to distinguish forgeries. I do have a barrel for a repro Colt plus and original Colt navy and there are differences in the size of the cylinder pin and dimensions of the barrels. At the same time I also suspect that some parts like springs and hands and perhaps the hammer may be very close to the originals and probably interchangeable

cheers mooncoon

 

[rgbai]

I used a Italian colt hand(bottom) on my original 1851 colt i just had to grind off the bit of metal on the bottom of the shaft that slides onto the trigger.i believe all the small parts interchange with a bit of fitting work.
what i found interesting was the piece of wire(piano wire?)that someone in the past 100 plus years used to make a hand spring on the original.It was a lot longer i burnt the tip of it off while restoring it with weld I'm going to put the original one back in when finished.

 

[H Wally]

I was kindof hoping that repro parts could be bought as well. Would make life far more convenient.