Colt New Line
The revolver is undoubtedly an original Colt New Line .30, also known as "The Pony Colt". It should be noted that the blued variant is much scarcer than the nickel-plated one.
At first glance, the extractor rod head is not an original Colt pattern.
Unfortunately, determining by whom and when it was made is impossible. However, I think the following scenario could be considered without big risks of error:
It is known that Fauré-Lepage, one of the leading gunmakers and dealers of Paris, also imported good quality weapons on which he engraved his own logo.
This implicates that the weapon - or at least the part on which the logo had to be engraved - had to be "in the white" and thus needed to be reblued or renickelled once the job was done.
I doubt that the Colt company would have accepted to ship unfinished guns "in the white" to Fauré-Lepage, so I think that the man has simply
customed an original and stamped his own label on it, as if he was an official agent for Colt.
Remarkable is the fact that he managed to keep intact the etched panel "Colt New 30" on the left side of the barrel while treating it. This etched panel is a very light acid engraving, that can be wiped off by the slightest repolishing.
Of course, the Fauré-Lepage workers were no amateurs either...
I think - this might be only an impression - that the extractor head is a worked-over original. It looks like it has been shortened and reshaped.
The checkering is handmade, but looks a little crude to me compared to the other works of that gunmaker. Maybe it has been worked over later by someone else. That question will be answered when we will fall across another Colt 30 or 32 sold by Fauré-Lepage. Until then, nothing keeps us from considering that the extractor has also been transformed by FL.
A scarce and interesting variant of a relatively scarce Colt model anyway.
Marcel
