For several years, I have been trying to find a Colt New Service revolver with a 4-inch barrel in .38 Special. This model revolver, with a blue finish, was an early issue sidearm of the U.S. Border Patrol. As I was a Border Patrolman in the 1980s, I wanted to add one to my accumulation of Colt six-shooters. However, the only ones I’d seen were in the Border Patrol Museum in El Paso.
Finding a Colt New Service .38 Special Revolver
Having never seen one of these INS-marked sixguns for sale, I was looking for a representative sample. One day, almost two years ago, a friend alerted me to a Colt New Service he’d seen on GunBroker.com. So, I went to their website and found said revolver.
It was listed as a .38 Special and had a 4-inch barrel. It looked rather rough and had a Parkerized finish. In one of the photos, I could make out a rack number stamped on the butt and a hole where a lanyard loop used to be. At this point, I thought it was an ex-military issue.
Another photo showed the serial number. So, I went to the Colt Manufacturing website, under Customer Service, and clicked on the Serial Number Lookup function. My query indicated that the New Service was manufactured in 1937. I was really interested and thought that it could be one of the “Battle of Britain Guns” sent to England in 1940.
This New Service Was Mine, and the Quest Begins
I bid on it and ended up winning the old Colt in the GunBroker.com auction. My son Jordan is a talented photographer. So, I asked him to take some detailed photos of the New Service that I could use in my investigation.
I put out feelers on the Colt Forum and elsewhere but couldn’t get any definitive answers as to what entity this revolver belonged to. It was in good shape mechanically, and the checkered walnut grip panels didn’t have any undue wear. Likewise, the worn and ugly finish was the primary detraction. I went to the Numrich Gun Parts website, got a replacement lanyard ring, and installed it myself.
Weeks passed, and in October 2021, I attended the Colt Collectors Association (CCA) All Colt Show in Noblesville, Indiana. I had Jordan’s images of the New Service downloaded onto my iPhone, hoping to get the lowdown on my old Colt.
This was my first All Colts Show as a fairly new CCA member. After asking around, I was pointed in the direction of a Colt Archivist. So, I showed him the images and explained what I thought I might have.
He told me that no, it wasn’t a military gun and showed me an image of a New Service with the same style of rack number on the butt. It was, in fact, a New Service that had once belonged to the Texas Highway Patrol. I was ecstatic!
He also told me that the backstrap of the grip frame had once been stamped “Texas Public Safety Dept.” This had apparently been removed at some point.
Next, I talked with the Colt Historian, who was in attendance and ordered a Colt Letter.
Learning More About the Revolver
A few weeks later, my historic letter arrived, and I saw that the gun was shipped to the Texas Public Safety Department (TPSD) in Austin on 11 November 1937. The original finish on the sixgun was nickel. More digging on the Colt Forum turned up some photos of one of these TPSD New Service revolvers in original condition that a Texas Ranger had carried.
Now that I knew what the backstrap and butt markings looked like, I decided to have the gun restored with its original finish and markings. Before shipping it off, I took it to an indoor shooting range and punched some paper. At 30 feet, it did quite well with my .38 Special handloaded cartridges.
After a Google search, I decided to go with Ford’s Custom Gun Refinishing in Crystal River, Florida. I contacted them, told them what I wanted to do, and then sent them explicit directions and photos. I wanted to make it easy to replicate the original markings and clean up the ones that were clogged with the gray phosphate coating. Then, the waiting game began.
This company is well-known and rather busy, so I knew that the process would take a while. I was willing to wait as I wanted it done right. In the meantime, I did some more research.
Texas Highway Patrol History
The Highway Patrol was founded in 1929 and was called the Highway Motor Patrol. It was the first police force in Texas to be uniformed and regularly trained. It started with 50 officers, but the force was increased to 120 the next year. All traffic enforcement was done from the seat of Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
In 1935, the Texas Public Safety Department (TPSD) came into being. It incorporated the Texas Rangers and what was now called the Texas Highway Patrol (THP).
I couldn’t discover what the original issue handgun was, and I don’t know how long the Patrol used the Colt New Service. I obtained some photos of officers in uniform wearing the New Service but could find no history of THP-issue handguns.
A friend of a friend supplied me with some copied photos from his Texas DPS collection and two THP hat and shirt badges, circa 1937 to use as photo props.
The Colt New Service Restoration Completed
It took the better part of a year to get my THP New Service restored. At one point, Ford made an error, which required some rework and the application of a new nickel finish. However, when all was said and done, the finished revolver (except for the wood grips) looked like it had just rolled out of the Colt factory.
The stamping on the top and left side of the barrel had been renewed. Likewise, the “Rampant Colt” emblem on the side plate was again fully visible. The rack number on the butt of the grip frame looked like new. Best of all, the original “TEXAS PUBLIC SAFETY DEPT.” stamping on the backstrap looked just like it did in 1937.
It was a long and somewhat expensive journey. But I felt like, in the end, I had brought a historic revolver back to its former glory.
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