.45 Schofield

The .45 Schofield, also sold as the .45 Smith & Wesson, is the revolver cartridge Smith & Wesson developed for the Schofield, the Model 3 top-break revolver it modified at the suggestion of Major George Schofield so that a cavalryman could reload it more quickly on horseback. It is a .45 Colt with a shorter case and a larger rim, and United States government arsenals supplied it for both the Schofield and the Colt Single Action Army, of which the Army had bought 8,285 Schofields by 1879.

The two rounds did not interchange cleanly. The shorter Schofield cartridge fired in the Colt, but the longer .45 Colt would not fit the Schofield’s cylinder, and by the late 1880s the Army settled on a single round for both revolvers: the M1887 Military Ball Cartridge, made at Frankford Arsenal, which combined the Schofield’s short case with the Colt’s smaller rim so that it would fire in the Schofield and still eject from the rod-ejector Colt. In the early 1880s the internal Benét primer of the first cartridges gave way to the external Boxer primer for all later military revolver ammunition. Because the modern .454 Casull and .460 S&W Magnum are lengthened descendants of the .45 Colt, revolvers chambered for them usually accept the .45 Schofield as well.

The dimensions and the notably low pressure ceiling on this page come from the C.I.P. datasheet for “45 S&W Schofield”. The one load recorded is the 230-grain lead factory loading, taken from a book and so estimated; no source pairs a velocity for it with a test barrel, and the other figures the encyclopedia lists are handloading data, so this entry records no velocity.