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Old September 1, 2011, 02:59 PM   #10
larryf1952
Senior Member
 
Join Date: July 17, 2004
Location: KCMO
Posts: 615
Thanks for the replies, everyone. I was looking through the manual today, and Pietta recommends 25 grains of black powder as a max load for this gun. I have to wrap my head around cleaning a gun with hot, soapy water, though, so that may take some time.

When I lived in Houston in the mid '90's, a guy that I got to know at the range would show up with a Ruger Old Army now and then. I used to like to just watch him load and shoot it. He'd fill up the whole firing line with big clouds of smoke, but nobody seemed to mind, and he did attract a lot of attention. I thought the gun looked great, and that sort of got me paying attention to the black powder revolvers. I took a special liking to the lines and workings of the 1851 Navy.

Tpelle, I know very little of the history of these revolvers. I had heard that the Confederacy used brass frames due to their shortage of steel, but I have no idea which guns (if any) were built that way. I also know that "Wild Bill" Hickock used a pair of .36 caliber 1851's while he was marshal of Abilene, KS. It would seem to me that if I had been a Confederate officer and had been issued a brass framed revolver, I'd have picked up a Union steel framed copy at the first opportunity.

madcrate, that is the gun that I bought. I almost freaked out today when I saw some discoloring on the left side of the frame that looked exactly like a crack. I took a magnifying glass to it and determined that it was just a stain from some leftover machining lube or something like that. A little Brasso removed it, and I sighed a sigh of relief. I wiped the oil off of it and put it in a pistol rug. A friend of mine came over this morning and saw it, and when he opened up the rug, his eyes widened, and he said, "Wow, cool! A Fistful of Dollars gun!"

That's the reaction that I was looking for.
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