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Replicas of the Colt Lightning are offered by at least two manufacturers and four importers. They go by various names and price levels. However, American Western Arms was the first to actually bring a Lightning to market. All of AWA's firearms are assembled and finished in this country using Pietta parts. This gives Russell Simpson, president and head gunsmith, total control over the quality of the assembly and final finish and the results are obvious.
The test Lightning furnished by AWA was one of their top grade Lightnings with special wood, custom finish, and custom chambering. This rifle belongs to Jim Martin and he graciously allowed me testing time before sending it on to him. Martin is a well-known six gunsmith and pistolero par excellence and in fact was the gunsmith who brought the pair of Great Western six guns featured on the cover of the first GUNS in January 1955 and written up by me in the 50th anniversary issue in January 2005 to shooting perfection. Being two of the first guns out of the Great Western plant in 1954, they never were right until Martin performed his magic. Now they are.
Martin's AWA Lightning features a buttstock of fancy walnut with a steel crescent buttplate, case-hardened receiver. and a chamber held to minimum dimensions for the .44-40 cartridge. In fact, the chamber is so tight, none of the factory cowboy loads would chamber without difficulty except one and the only factory loads usable were Winchester's 200-grain JHP and 240-grain Cowboy load. However, all of my reloads entered the chamber with no difficulty whatsoever. I always full-length resize every round I load even when starting with brand-new brass and the .44-40 is no exception. This is a good example of exactly why I do this--chambers come in all assorted sizes and factory-new brass is often oversized.
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This AWA Lightning in one of the most beautiful rifles to be found. Wood to metal fit is perfect, bluing is deep with metal properly prepared and polished before being finished. The action performed perfectly with no malfunctions whatsoever when using properly sized ammunition. The Lightning action is much simpler to work than a lever action.
With a lever action, the offhand holds the rifle into the shoulder while the shooting hand works both trigger and lever often requiring the trigger finger to move some distance away from the trigger. With the slide or pump action, it is the shooting hand holding it into the shoulder and the offhand working the action. The rifle never leaves the shoulder and the trigger finger is always in the right place. With pistol-length cartridges the forearm only moves 2" backwards and forward to eject the fired case and chamber a new round.
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Everything about the functioning of the AWA Lightning was smooth and it shot well for me with its buckhorn sights and 2-1/2-pound trigger pull. My most used .44-40 loading, which so happens to be Martin's also, is a roundnose, flatpoint bullet over 8.0 grains of Unique. In the 20" barrel of the Lightning, this load clocked out just under 1,200 fps with 9-shot groups at 30 yards and 5-shot groups at 50 yards both right at replica hublot watches 2".
The second lightning strike from AWA is an abbreviated version of the Lightning known as the Lightning Bolt. In the 1950s, a then unknown actor by the name of Steve McQueen was given the starring role of Josh Randall in the TV Western series Wanted Dead Or Alive. It may be difficult for the younger g
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