[Gaucho Gringo]

I have Dennis Addler's book on conversion guns and it states the Open Top was designed to be a cartridge gun from the beginning. The big giveaway is the integral loading gate in the recoil shield and a solid lug barrel with no holes or provisions for a rammer assembly. Colt, like everyone else tries to save money and reused or redesigned certain parts from percussion guns in building the Open Top but it was designed from the get go to fire the new fangled self contained metallic cartridge in .44 rimfire which is the same cartridge the Henry rifle used. The percussion revolvers converted to fire self contained metallic cartridges are center fire in the big .44 caliber and the .38 & .31 caliber could either be rimfire or centerfire depending on varying factors. Guns converted by independent gunsmiths do not necessarily fallow these rules, which is probably where some of the ambiguity comes in when researching these guns. It is also possible that the experimental or one off guns do not fallow the above facts.