Interesting comment by seller. The grips due look out of place.
Anyone ever seen this before ? Not only the flared shape at base of grip frame and wood,
but the shape of back strap attachment point at frame.
http://www.gunbroker.com/item/655061324
Hewy, you always come up with interesting conundrums!
The flared shape at the base of the backstrap is not unusual for an 1851 Navy ('51 Colt Navies, Swayze), but I am not a student of 1861 Navies. The trigger guard appears to be a Colt factory item (.36 CAL and the "L" under it are well documented for the Colt Pocket Navy .36), but I don't know if this was the norm for an 1861 Navy, which used a larger TG.
Colt never produced 2-piece wood grips for an 1848/1849/1851/1860//1861 pistols like the Rem NMA, and I do not see any screw slots on either side of the grip panels.
As this is (according to the seller) a low serial numbered pistol (hidden by his tape blocker), I doubt that this came from the Colt factory. There are just too many things wrong with it.
The front sight is a brass blade. Wrong for an original pistol.
The wood repair on the left grip panel is very good, but someone else must have boogered up inletting.
I believe (maybe wrongly) that this is maybe something done by a Confederate gunsmith with the backstrap and the wood (highly unlikely) and the best of the Confederate gunsmiths (L&R, R&A, T&S, G&G, S&G, Dance, Augusta Machine Works, George Todd, Columbus FAMC, et al) had it pretty much down pat with copying pistols, especially copies of the 1851 Navy and variants.
My best guess is that when these pistols were worth hardly anything in the early 20th century some gunsmith created a backstrap such as this to allow the two-piece grip with a very small wrist behind the frame, and used modified Rem NMA wood to do so, or created his own grip panels based on this idea. The collector fraternity was getting started in the 1930's and there was an incentive for basement gunsmiths to create things for a new market where there was little knowledge about these pistols.
The guy that created this is probably dead but smiling in his grave at the price that the pistol is selling for, if he has internet access.
Just my speculative $.02 worth.
If I am wrong, fire back. I am always glad to be corrected when someone has better info than I do.
Regards,
Jim
