The Whitneyville-Walker Colt Dragoon Conversion

Just a little niche piece on a revolver I love

So… I grew up on, and read Jonah Hex comics in the 1980s and it was without a doubt my favourite comic book character. Mostly because the psychology of the character was very much similar to my own and he didn’t take prisoners when it came to dealing with bad guys. None of that “a hero never kills” nonsense. Jonah Hex blew bad guys away in every issue with grim efficiency and sometimes a touch of dark humour.

Jonah Hex had been gifted a rare pair of .44 Whitneyville-Walker Colt Dragoons with ivory handles early on in his story arc.

As a matter of historical fact, there were only about 1100 Colt Dragoons ever built, and the Whitneyville-Walker version was even rarer, with only about 240 being built.

But as it happens, these revolvers were also shown in the comic as using the standard cartridges that most associate with single action revolvers. The problem is that the colt dragoons were black-powder weapons, so this would have seemed to be an error on the part of the writer of the comic book (and in fairness, it probably was).

However… I was aware that the 1851 Navy, which is probably one of the prettiest revolvers ever made, which also was a black-powder revolver, did have conversions made to take cartridges. These were generally known as Richardson conversions.

What I have only recently become aware of however, is proof that not only did the original Colt Dragoons also have conversions applied to them, but so did at least some of the Whitneyville-Walker ones.

The extraction rod in this case (above) would have been a separate tool not integrated into the revolver.

A modern version of the conversion, from Uberti is shown above and below.

An original without conversion both above and below

Now… astute readers will be aware that we still have a problem concerning the Jonah Hex revolvers…

And it is… I don’t seem to recall if there was ever a panel showing him reloading his guns, but I also am sure I don’t recall him doing so with a separate little rod to extract the spent cartridges.

That said… the way the handguns were drawn, at least here below,

would seem to indicate that the original black powder lever had been left intact on the guns (as they are in the Uberti conversions). It’s a bit of a reach because the revolver is not drawn correctly anyway, it is drawn as a more modern colt with extraction lever integrated and not with the block of rectangular metal in which the black-powder tamping down lever was integrated, but… on the plus side, the “tube” under the barrel is clearly not an extraction lever either as it is just a metal rod without the lever or housing for the extraction rod, or related “nub” to “grab” it with a finger. See a regular colt army below.

Notice the housing with spring and “nub” on the lever to be able to pull the ejector rod into the chamber of the round being pushed out. All things absent from the gun on the cover of Jonah Hex number 76.

So… this would seem to indicate that Jonah must indeed have used a separate extraction rod not integral to the pistol in order to reload his guns. This in any case makes sense because the design of the Dragoon would make the extraction lever linked to the barrel impossible anyway, as can be seen in the difference of a colt single action army with integrated extraction lever below.

Notice that even from this side, you can still see the lever’s little “nub” that allows you to “grip” it with a finger and pull it towards the chamber so that the rod pushes out the spent cartridge in it. The fact this is not shown in the cover of JH 76 makes it just plausible that Jonah is in fact using a separate extraction rod, even if we never see it.

The later (apocryphal, bad, evil) reboots of Jonah Hex by Dark Horse comics do tend to draw his guns more accurately as colt dragoons for the most part, but we don’t really care about these vile caricatures of a favourite character. They may not be as vile as the Star Wars “prequels” but you know how it goes.

A last point is that these handguns weighed about 4.5lbs each (about 2kg) and Jonah always had the pair of them, plus his belt with cartridges in it and his bowie knife and usually a little satchel that may have held money, tobacco, or both. So he always had a pretty heavy weapons load on him, with at least a minimum of about 5kg to cart around pretty much everywhere just on handguns, holster and ammo. That’s 11lbs for you yankees. If you have not lived with a gun in your holster daily, you might not appreciate how heavy that is. Then again, he didn’t have to worry about carrying concealed, which helps make things a bit more comfortable, and having a pair of them would at least balance things out a little.

Anyway, here you now have just a HINT of the level of Nerdy Autism I can get into. You don’t want to know the background data I built for my SF series like Nazi Moon, that a reader will never see, just to make sure the stuff I wrote was physically plausible and possible. Trust me… even though I don’t present as such, there really is no doubt I have just a “tad” of aspieness.