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Encounters of the 3rd Kind or it all Started in 1974
What
is a Centaure, anyhow? This
aint no Colt Army you are shooting, pard, no naval scene on the cylinder what kind of a pistol
is it? demanded yours truly from the shooter at the Hofheim
Shooting range early Summer 1974. After careful aiming and hitting another
bulls eye he Well, thats a .44 caliber Centaure
C&B revolver from Belgium the most accurate and most expensive Colt Army
clone money can buyMy first exposure to the famous Belgian Colt but..I
didnt care less because then I did not know the difference and was totally
happy with my Uberti Army 1860.
Some 20 years later a completely different story: my interest in guns had shifted from merely pistol shooting to the historical aspects of firearms also, some affinity to Western shooting but more importantly gun collecting was the thrill and still is. In April 1993, at the International Stuttgart gun show, however, I was looking for a replica of a Colt 1860 as a shooter, ideally in stainless steel. And there she was in all her shiny silverish beauty:
S/N 14219 with 8 barrel
and fluted cylinder – at DM 400,00 my first Centaure revolver and a
steal. As I learned later
she had the stainless look all right but it was not
stainless steel but the high gloss polish/in the white finish of later Centaure
production. One of my many mistakes was to trade her two years later to my
shooting buddy Elwoody who is #1 a genius in
reloading and #2 still teases me about that deal..
I stumbled over my next Centaure checking the deals of Egun the German Internet auction house (http://www.egun.de/) in October 2005: one Centaure looked like an ordinary blued and case colored Army Model with the typical rebated plain cylinder but in addition with a second cylinder featuring some sort of naval scene resembling the Colt engraving.
S/N 4079 was a pistol assembled relatively early
during the 1960s I had learned in the meantime. Some demanding previous owner
had a knowledgeable gunsmith apply traditional Colt bluing and case colors to the gun, a job beautifully executed. Never shot
her, however.
Another
long barreled Centaure with fluted cylinder had my name written all over her at
Egun again in summer 2006. S/N 12307 turned out to be one of the few revolvers
made from stainless steel. I shot her once. She was printing approx 15 cm (6 in.)
high at 25 meters (light .36 load!) and a mite to the left. Attempts to correct
POI with my little file by adjusting the rear sight notch failed. I realized
for the first time the extraordinarily hard steel of the Belgian. The file
would not bite, file marks barely visible and I retired the pistol into my
cowboy gun
collection.
|
S/N
12307 (top) rare regular NMA with fluted cylinder in stainless steel; extra cylinder S/N 969 (center) with centaure
proprietary cylinder engraving; S/N 4079 (bottom) common regular NMA with rebated plain cylinder |
During that time I began to follow discussions in
various Internet forums dealing with cowboy guns, particularly the US
ones..and found a number of inquiries about Belgian Colts or 1860s Made in
Belgium or Centennial Armies
My last acquisition in December 2007 was a short-barrelled Marshal Model S/N 12067. The price was very good although the previous owner had ruined the lock-work and the front sight had gone missing.
She required some waynerizing (waynerizing is a secret process known to a few initiates of the gun smith trade. It brings back to shape run-down C&B pistols to function like the proverbial Swiss watch again) plus elbow grease and some polishing with steel wool for better looks. But thats why we have our
knowledgeable gunsmith friends.
I am too old to go soldiering
any more, too stiff in the joints to ride point and too damn fat to
wrestle drunks (Dutchie ODark 2008): discussions in the CAS-City (http://www.cascity.com/) STORM forum during
Spring and Summer of 2007 regarding the merits and history of the Belgian Colts
stirred my curiosity to what extent their reputed superiority over 1860 Army
clones from Italy could be qualified but there was one other issue: the rich
and fascinating body of rumor and myth, beginning with the story that they were
made by the same outfit in Belgium with whom Colonel Colt himself had signed a
contract in the 1850s for the manufacturing of his pistols. Once the project
was kicked-off it became obvious that it was necessary to measure each point of
the popular story against what can be shown through documentation of the
characteristics and features of specific examples of
the pistols: the sequencing of serial numbers, the appearance and
disappearance of variant models over time, and the reported fall-off of quality
until production of the 1960 NEW MODEL ARMY at Fabriques
dArmes Unies de Lige
(FAUL) finally ceased in the 1970s.
There are different
Ways to Skin a CatThe challenge was and still
is to reach the owners of Belgian Colts out there, to motivate them to get hold
of the questionnaire by mail, as a download from this website, as fax or
letter, and to return it completed with the specifics of their pistol and
possibly (digital) pictures. Gun magazines like Schweizer
Waffenmagazin, Waffenfreund,
DWJ, VISIER, the COWBOY CHRONICLE and THE SHOOTIST reported about my study.
Thanks to a couple of pards in the USA who advertised my activities quite a
number of questionnaires where returned. I still run regular Internet searches
on the subject, approach every identified Centaure owner I find in the various
discussion forums and ask him to submit the data of his pistol for the survey.
So the news is spreading and completed questionnaires continue to come in.
While the use of
Internet, email and digital cameras made the task a straightforward one once
the structure was fine-tuned I am fully aware of flaws in my method to approach
this research program. But again this is not supposed to be a scientific study
with the objective to satisfy a handful of collectors. Regarding the cheaters
out there I accept the data of the pards as submitted particularly if
supported by pictorial proof. If there appears to be need of further
clarification I go back to the respective owner to double-check. If a question
mark remains the specific pistol will not be included in the survey. Until now
this was not necessary which I attribute to our cowboy code. Consequently
physical inspection of individual guns is the exception rather than the rule.
This website is a
construction site rather and always will be because new information is added as
it becomes available.
WDN/September 1, 2008
2007 Wolf D. Niederastroth