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If that thing could talk...
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Well, she can't talk, but she has revealed some things. First, I am the first person in 81 years to see her fire control parts. Every other part of this gun has been cleaned so much that the bluing has been rubbed off. The fire control parts, minus the exposed portion of the hammer, still have factory fresh bluing. Also, the main spring housing channel was packed with what I at first thought was dirt. It was actually leather dust. That means that ol girl here has spent decades riding around in a leather holster. Probably several generations of holsters.
Prior to WWII, COLT stamped the serial number on the frame and around the firing pin hole. The firing pin/extractor retaining plate rest against the firing pin hole. The hammer has stuck the retaining plate so many times that there is a reverse image of the serial number on the back side of the retaining plate. This correlates with the very worn rifling in the bore. The rifling is so faint that when I push a cleaning rod with a tight fitting patch though the bore that the rod doesn't even turn as it passes. She has had countless thousands of rounds fired through her. This ol girl has been ridden hard, but she wasn't ever put away wet.
I put the slide onto a new production COLT frame and the fit was almost perfect. Both the old and new barrels head spaced in the old slide. That is simply astonishing to me. COLT has a well earned reputation for quality.