MONTANA MUSINGSPEACEMAKER SPECIALISTS Ultimate Weapons

18 GUNS MAGAZINE • AUGUST 2006

Eddie Janis, the fellow so many of ussingle-action revolver shootersknow as The Peacemaker Specialist

has devised a package for the ColtSingle Action Army he says turns theminto “the ultimate weapon.” In fact that’swhat he has named them.

After handling and firing them, Imust agree the brace he sent me tocheck out are exceptional specimens.These Peacemakers are perhaps themost altered ones I’ve ever handled andyet still retain their graceful traditionallook. They are built to be accurate,entirely reliable, and beautiful to lookupon whether their intended purpose iscowboy competition, protecting yourhome, or just plain shooting.

For Ultimate Weapon PeacemakersJanis starts out with an ordinary 3rdGeneration Colt SAA and installs hisAccuracy Package, Action Package andCosmetics Package.

Nuts & BoltsLet’s look at the accuracy thing

first. Colt SAAs, especially in .45 Coltcaliber don’t have a sterling reputationfor accuracy. This is mostly caused byColt mounting them with barrels of.451" groove diameter, but cutting the

cylinders with .456" (or larger) cham-ber throats. Janis’ remedy for this faultis to rechamber .357 Magnum cylin-ders so they indeed have proper cham-ber throats. His specs call for .452"chamber mouths matching .4515"-bar-rel-groove diameters. Furthermore, hecuts an 11-degree forcing cone; amove in my own experience almostalways enhances a 3rd Generation ColtSAA’s accuracy, especially with leadalloy bullets.

In the ActionPackage Janis does hiscomplete GunslingerDeluxe Action Job.This entails mating thebolt to the cylinder’slocking notches toremove both lateralwobble and end shake.Nothing irritates singleaction shooters morethan picking up a hand-gun and feeling it rattlewhen handled. The spe-cial bolt head is alsodesigned to prevent theannoying “skip-over”sometimes happeningwith single actionswhose actions havebeen lightened. At thesame time the handrotating the cylinder isalso adjusted so there isno over-travel when thesixgun is cocked. Whenthe hammer stops its

rearward travel is precisely when thebolt locks the cylinder.

No Bust-o-maticA commonly held belief is

Peacemaker’s “break” a lot. That is to say,their leaf springs are not as reliable as thecoil springs used in some “modern” sin-gle actions. In my life-long experience asa single action shooter, this has been anon-issue. About a half dozen boltsprings have broken in 38 years duringmy shooting literally scores of thousandsof rounds through hundreds of SAAs.Nevertheless, for the “Ultimate Weapon”Peacemakers, Janis installs custom mainsprings and sear and bolt springs. Theseare lighter in their strength, consequentlygiving less resistance when cycling therevolvers’ actions, and therefore having alonger life.

This is done to make the “UltimateWeapon” SAAs better shooters andmakes them more shoot-able. In my opin-ion one of the most important things ishaving your Peacemaker perfectlysighted in. Any experienced single-actionshooter can testify not many fixed-sightsingle actions of any make actually hitpoint-of-aim right out of the box. Sincethe type of ammo and especially theweight of the bullet heavily influence ahandgun’s point-of-impact, Janis has set-tled on Black Hills Ammunition’s .45Colt Cowboy Load as standard. It fea-tures a 250-grain .452" bullet at a nominal800 fps.

Now let’s look at the specifics of thebrace of Colt Peacemakers Janis sent

MIKE “DUKE” VENTURINOPHOTOS: YVONNE VENTURINO

The PeacemakerSpecialists “UltimateWeapon” Colt SAAshave their loading gatetroughs funneled forfaster loading andunloading.

These are the Peacemaker Specialist “Ultimate Weapon” Colt Single Action Army .45 Coltrevolvers. They are sighted in with Black Hills .45 Colt “Cowboy” factory loads.

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PEACEMAKER SPECIALISTS144 VIA FUCHSIA

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me. Simply stated they are beautifulhandguns, fully nickel-plated with one-piece elephant ivory stocks perfectly fit-ted to the grip frames. Barrel length is43⁄4", and barrel cylinder gaps on bothguns would accept a .003" feeler gaugebut not a .004" one. I averaged the trig-ger pull weights of both guns for fivetest pulls and they came out at 35ounces for one revolver and 36 ouncesfor the other. That’s about as close toidentical as one could expect.

Old West “Melt”One part of the Cosmetics Package is

instantly apparent on handling them.That is, all sharp edges have been“melted.” There is just no way to peelhide off your hands and fingers no mat-ter how fast you manipulate these singleactions. This even includes beveling theheel and toe of the grip frame. Anotherbevel that doesn’t affect shooting butsure looks nice to us traditionalists isthat the bevel of the cylinder flutes islike early 1900s Peacemakers instead ofthe abbreviated bevels on stock ColtSAAs today.

A modification unseen until the load-ing gate is opened is the “funneling” ofthe channel through which the empty car-tridge cases are ejected. No effort or timeneed be expended in lining up the cham-bers with the channel for fast case ejec-tion. Cases can be punched out as fast asthe cylinder can be rotated and the ejectorbutton pressed.

At my range from 25 yards, both of thesample guns Janis sent grouped BlackHills 250-grain load into about 2" for fiveshots. That is give or take a 1/2" once in awhile. They also printed extremely closeto point of aim. I won’t say perfectly topoint of aim because obviously Janissighted these guns in for himself, and weshoot very slightly differently. Both gunswere joys to handle. $

Duke found the Peacemaker Specialists“Ultimate Weapon” Colt SAAs indeed shotwell and to point of aim with Black Hills .45Colt “Cowboy” factory loads.

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