Colt 1851 "breveté"
In a nutshell, as the Gabonese say:
This revolver does indeed seem to be a "Colt Breveté",
but in my opinion "end of period".
All the parts are probably surplus or scrap from Colt,
except perhaps the trigger guard, which seems a little too big to me. It is
therefore an assembly of Colt parts, and not a copy.
The cylinder scene is original, it represents the Battle
of Chesapeake Bay and is affixed to the Navy 1851, Army 1860, Navy 1861.
On the other hand, the serial number of the cylinder
makes me wince: not the style of Colt numbers of the time, and much too marked
compared to the rest of the half-erased engraving.
The other serial numbers also seem strange to me: style
of numbers and Monday morning alignment...
BUT ABOVE ALL: it is a "square back" of the SECOND
version, with the key screw placed above the key, and if I remember correctly,
the serial numbers of the FIRST version with reverse key go from 1 to about
1100; so...
I think that the parts came to us without a number and
that the cylinder comes from another Colt Breveté (proof marks of the BE)
without or with a different serial number and reworked by the service jobastre,
but I could be wrong.
Marcel
