there is the Colt Army Special.
I had one in .38 spl that was made in 1913, per the serial number.
The original blued finish was excellent. 4-inch barrel, fixed sights, square butt,
built on the ".41 caliber frame" as it was then known, which was later renamed the E frame it's the same frame and lock work as the colt Python, except that snake gun had the firing pin inside the frame not on the hammer, and they called that 1950's variation the I-frame. But E and I frame guns used many of the same parts including the same grips or stocks.
The gun was accurate and reliable when I owned it 2009 to 2016 or so.
Then I sold or traded it away.
It had an excellent single-action trigger and a "good" DA trigger pull, though A little heavier than it needed to be with some noticeable stacking near the end of its range of movement. I can see why so many Colt revolver shooters in the 1950's thru the 1980's would have a gunsmith do an action job on them.
The hard black rubber grips felt pretty good to me. I don't recall whether the stocks (well, particularly the top portion of the left side grip) had sufficient clearance for a speedloader. Many revolvers made before the 1960s have grips that do not allow clearance for a loaded speed loader to feed its cartridges easily into the cylinder holes.
The Colt Army Special this is the same speed loaders as the Python and other E / I frame guns.
These old Colts from the early 20th century were designed during the days of black powder metallic cartridges. There is a scalloped-out area, a divot, sometimes called a "thumbnail" machined into the topstrap of the frame just above the forcing cone of the barrel. This was built as a space for carbon fouling from black powder to collect harmlessly without jamming the gun's cylinder.
Despite this potential weak spot in the frame, due to this gun's size and thickness of the steel, I personally would not hesitate to load it with +P rounds for self-defense. But at the practice range I only used standard pressure .38 special loads.
As of a few years ago, the value of these old guns, made from 1908 through the late 1920s, would be about $400-$600 depending on condition and how soft the old gun
collectors market was that month.
Despite the weapon's name, the US Army never adopted this model while it had that name. Colt hoped it would, but that never happened. So Colt renamed it with a name more befitting law-enforcement which was their next choice for high volume sales--the Colt OFFICIAL POLICE. The Official Police version DID get by the US department of defense and issued to various military contractors and defense production facility guards during World War II. It was a model which Colt produced thru 1969.
