Jim is no longer accepting custom grip or refinishing work but if you are interested having him tune or repair your genuine or replica Colt single action gun contact him at coltfrontiersixshooter@frontiernet.net

Click the thumbnails to enlarge the pictures. Photographs taken by Rick Talacek.

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By Jim Martin

Back in the mid 1950s when fast draw first started we just shot the guns the way they were until they broke and then took them to a gunsmith and had them fixed. I was luckier than the others because I had met Bob Howard during WW II when I was his paperboy and he let me hang around the gun shop and didn’t run me off.

Bob did about 70% of Elmer Keiths work and had actually built several guns for William S Hart when Hart was making his silent movies back in the 20s,he also did a lot of work for James Serven.

He finally took pity on me and told me he would teach me how to tune a single action and then he said he would teach me things about a Colt that Colt didn’t know and he wasn’t bragging. Back then most of us were shooting Great Westerns because they were cheaper than Colts and had an advantage that the Colts didn’t have and that was the great western had deeper lock slots in the cylinder than Colt. later on we would put a great western cylinder in our Colts to take advantage of that difference. Then somebody came up with the idea to deepen the Colt lock slots and lengthen the approach so the bolt could be timed to fall sooner and that was a big improvement.

Then I started buying the Great Western kits directly from the factory in LA. and building a gun from the ground up. That’s when I really started learning to understand what it took to make a gun work because every one was a little different. In 1959 I went up to Las Vegas to shoot in the first national fast draw contest co-sponsored by the Hotel Sahara and Colt. I met Fred Roff, then President of Colt and Jim Devine western state rep for Colt, and showed Devine the action on my Colt. He said it was nice but he didn’t like actions with piano wire springs in them and when I told him that it had been done with all genuine Colt parts he asked when can you do mine?

Over the years since I started shooting I have won the California state championship 4 times, twice with live ammo and twice with wax bullets,the western state championship and the world champ fancy gun handling twice and quite a few regional wax contests.

The fancy gun handling got me in with Rodd Redwing who was a technical advisor and gun coach at Paramount Studio and we would work on actors guns as well as doing shows all over California sometimes with Jock Mahoney, Jay Silverheels, Iron eyes Cody and others. When a part time gun coach was needed at MGM, Rodd recommended me and I worked there and also out at Corriganville and later at the old Paramount movie ranch. During this time I built Alfonsos first gun, Ray Park one of “Ojalas 4 aces” was using my guns to compete in fast draw and is still using them today.

If you are interested in having Jim Martin tune or repair your genuine or replica Colt single action gun contact him at coltfrontiersixshooter@frontiernet.net