Close Encounter of the Third Kind or It all Started in 1974 |
What is a Centaure, anyhow? “This ain’t 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, that’s a .44 caliber Centaure C&B revolver from Belgium the most accurate and most expensive Colt Army clone money can buy”…My first exposure to the famous Belgian Colt but…..I didn’t 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 (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 (6in.) 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. 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 was a short-barreled Marshal Model S/N 12067 in December 2007. The price was very good although the previous owner had ruined the lock-work; 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 that’s 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 O’Dark 2008): discussions in the CAS-City (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 d’Armes Unies de Liège (FAUL) finally ceased in the 1970s.
There are different Ways to Skin a Cat…The 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.
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S/N 14219: regular NMA with fluted cylinder "in the white" finish
S/N 4079: regular NMA with rebated plain cylinder
S/N 12307:regular NMA with fluted cylinder, stainless
S/N 12067 Marshal Model before "waynerizing"