Ordered my 1851 .36 Navy today and ...

[Smokin_Gun]

RK I do believe I have already done that before you posted this morning as of my last post, didn't I. with all do respect. This has been done elsewhere to make a certain person think they look more knowledgable then they are on the subject..I wasn't arguing I was merely stating fact RK just has you have said to I believe it was Wayner... Let it rest I had already stopped it. More advice on the subject will only mean we are talkin about it more. Correct?

There are more than two people in this forum that have opinions on what is correct and what is not RK...remember this take one hand either hand and point your index finger at the screen. Look down at your hand and you'll see finger pointing at someone else and 3 fingers pointing back at you.
You all have a good mornin too...

[mec]

Pretty big chambers, Huh? The first time he shot it, he got a chain fire. The next time, he had studied up on it, used larger balls etc and turned in some pretty good performance:

[Smokin_Gun]

Mec has he slugged the barrel on that Rem? Just curious if it is closer t a .451 Pietta bore or a .460 Uberti bore... Have wanted to know what a first generation Rems measurements were.

[Old Dragoon]

I have slugged the bore on the 4 remington originals(conversions) and all were basically .451-452 nom. Never measured the chambers because they chambered 44 CF Cartridges (original UMC Metallic CF). These cylinders were original BP cyl.s cut off and a ring welded onto them, all had a thin recoil plate dovetailed into the frames. looked like the ones in mc Dowell's Book.

I talked to the Owner of Rapine Moulds, Buffalo Arms and the owner of Old West Moulds and all confirmed the .451-.452 original groove dimensions.

Hence the newly re-introduced 44 Rem. Cartridge for Rem. and Colt original conversion and the new 44 rem conversion cylinders from Kirst (Deja Vu??). These will work in original Rem conversions as well as original Colt 44 CF Conversions. Conversion cylinders could be made for Colt 44 BP, but as of today I do not believe that there are any being built, just for the "58 Rem.'s.

The new 44 Colt's as in the Open Top 1872's or 44-40's are not the same bore..

[Steve499]

Dragoon, I was looking at my son's original 1849 pocket Colt last night before I read up to date on this thread. If I had read up before I went to his place, I'd have brought it home with me and could have given the chamber/bore dimensions on it, for what they would be worth. The thing has both bore and chambers so corroded that you can't make out the lands and grooves. It might be a useless exercise to measure that particular original but the chambers have apparently corroded at the same rate so maybe the ratio would have been maintained.
I slugged the bore on my Uberti pocket navy, was going to check the published measurements, and had to admit defeat since I couldn't figure out how to get the two different measurements with calipers. On the ball, the valley from the land is opposite the ridge from the groove. I know Wayner talked about how to do that but my fuse didn't reach all the way to his powder. How do you really measure that?
About the getting along on here, I figure that between us all, we have several hundred years of first hand, hands on experience at what we are discussing. I learn something almost every day. I really think the sharing of our opinions, and we are almost all opinionated, is what it's all about. I would hate to see anyone get their feelings hurt to the point they stopped posting. I'm not just saying this, I really feel like you all are friends I've just not met yet! Please keep my education going, this old dog IS learning new tricks!

Steve

[Old Dragoon]

On a new Pietta "58 their are even lands and grooves and you can get just enough bite in the grooves on the ball(lands on the gun) to get a decent reading, then the lands on the ball(grooves on the gun) are the easiest to get a reading on because it is the outside Dia., This is the important one, because the bore(land to land( in the gun) should be close to .440 on a Pietta. and the originals. grooves (lands on the ball) should be .451-.452 on Pietta's and originals. I don't have any experience with Uberti '58's at all. Zip Nada. Don't have any idea what their bore or grooves are, or should be.

[mec]

I have several civil war period Colt dragoon bullets -240 plus grains with the healed base. These measure .443-4. I believe that this means nothing because of the oxidation that has taken place on the bullets. I would like to have a mould to throw thes2 bullets however. I would specify .451 -2" diameter with a heal of about .449.

[Smokin_Gun]

Old Dragoon I'll let ya know when my Uberti gets here. I knock a .490 ball thru it and take several measurements. From the Dixie Gun Works Tech manual(HeHe)it calls out the factory specs of .440 lands and .460 grooves. This is one of the reasons Wayne reamed the cylinders. I got accurate measurements from him on the Ubberti Rems. I believe not positive that the cylinders were reamed to .450 or .452 will have to ask him. Maybe it was more, and cast .464 round balls for it. And is very accurate. Then I saw that Ruger Old Army stly came out with a .50 Cal Rev... that's .490 ball. I may try it if I do in fact have a .460 bore...and it doesn't kill Coffee Creamer bottles the way it is. But first things first I want that Kirst 6 shot in .44 Rem Anybody out there try a conversion in .45LC or .44Rem in a Uberti?
Oldelm I think yours is a Uberti if I recallect.

[Oldelm]

Since I have an Uberti '58 Rem, I may as well chime in here with the specs on it, for the sake of comparison. The groove dia. of bore (slugged it) is .456. The chambers of the percussion cylinder are .448. The chambers on the R&D conversion cylinder I got for it are .452. I wish the groove dia. of the bore was more around .451-.452 like folks here say their Pietta groove dimensions are. I wonder if it's true that the Piettas tend to have a smaller groove dia. than the Ubertis. I'm leaning towards getting a Pietta '58 Rem next, and just compare.

[Smokin_Gun]

Oldelm that's been my findings in the Piettas I have had .451 swedged thru the barrels w/.447 chambers. Your Uberti is still accurate with cap & ball or the .45LC conversion correct?

[Oldelm]

Here's an older pic of when I was working up smokeless loads with the R&D. It was 5.4 gr Titegroup under a 200gr RNFP bullet in .45 Schofield case at 25 yds off a stool for a rest. I've been experimenting with BP loads in .45LC/Schofield, but haven't been out since the snows have come. I'm just really curious about how a smaller groove dia. Pietta would shoot groups,...especially with the Kirst .44 Rem cyl.like Old Dragoon's. Actually , the second "Shooters" from Dixie's just arrived and still in the box,....I'm hesitant to open the box and peer down the barrel with my flashlight,...LOL! But I've been told that the "Shooters" can't be fitted with the coversion cylinders,...just gotta shoot percussion with it.

[Smokin_Gun]

LoL Oldelm, go for it I'll wait ...I gots ta know...
Thanks Oldelm you just eased an old Pietta diehards mind...HeHe!
Oldelm I gotta step out for a bit... be back in a few...I know this shooter is a good one...There I just bessed it...LoL!

[Oldelm]

Thanks for the blessing, Smokin,..LOL!!
Well,....I opened the box with Shooter from Dixie's,...they just sent me another after I returned the first because of chamber/bore misalignment. This one has almost perfect chamber/bore alignment,...there's just a very tiny portion of the cylinder face showing in two grooves on the left side looking down,....just slight under-rotation of cylinder. Maybe I can correct it with Wayne's trick. There's a mild layer of rust in the barrel, and the bolt looks like it's cocked or something, it is higher on one side than the other. Looks like I gotta take the works down right away and look things over carefully. I really don't want to send this one back, and hope the problems are only minor and can be corrected or kitchen table gunsmithed. I can clean the rust out with J-B Bore Compound. It's got the real nice, deep bluing, and I checked to make sure it had the progressive rifling in the barrel, which it does. Wood in grips aren't as nicely grained as the other one, but that's ok. I take some pics of the details and show you all soon as I can.

[Smokin_Gun]

Sounds like if the bolt is straightend the chamber/bore alignment will be right on...if it'ds in the right direction. Is the hand a hair long and pushing the cylinder too far? Or too short and not pushing far enough. Hell you'll figure it out. My blessing only covered it for bein a good one...and good is relative to the kitchen table gunsmiths..HeHe! Let us know and see it when you're done playin with it...

[Wayner]

I'm tired from attending a funeral but I gotta say hello to my cap&baller shooters extraordinaires. Howdy Pards. Old Dragoon I wish we could get together to test some stuff too. Where in the world would someone get a Ransom Rest anyhows? I think I know how the test may come out as far as chambers and grooves are concerned if tested in a tight gun. I think as long as there was some back pressure or resistance enough from a ball engraving some lands the powder blast would obsturate(obstuate) the lead to fill the grooves and the gun would shoot good as you guys say your guns do. Your guns must not be too far from close enough comparing the chambers and grooves so the guns shoot good. I must have run into some guns that were too small in the chambers to let the balls obstuate consistantly so reaming them made them more accurate.I always thought that although the powder blast could probably obstuate a ball even if it was in mid air(like a bat hitting a baseball on a pedestal) if there wasn't enough back resistance by the ball by a little more than it's own weight but also by enough "land" to help give the ball resistance to over coming inertia and to the powder blast the obstuation would happen inconsistantly and not uniformly. That would mean a gun with chambers undersized by .013 would do as George mentioned up above and not obstuate well or consistantly. I think if the ball gets engraved by the lands by at least .003 on each side of the ball and the chambers are undersized by not much more than .003-.004 then the lead must obstuate enough and consistantly enough. Know what I mean? I guess the Italians figure to leave a little space for fouling "and" figure the lead will fill any gap with being obstuated enough. Best of both worlds. Right. Some guns must have equal chambers to grooves or chambers .002-.003 over barrel grooves to be ultimately consistant and fouling be damned. Wipe it out by cleaning or use a good lube or a "wayner" lube pill . I guess maybe the guns with closer tolerances with the chambers and grooves aren't for the majority of the consumer market because that includes the casual shooter just wanting to shoot the hell out of the gun and doesn't want or need ultimate accuracy because that would entail all kinds of specialized proceedures for the most serious target shooters or competition shooters. The ones that used the Pietta "Shooters Model" to win the World target Shoot or the ones that pay big money for a Pedersoli to compete with. You know like very rigorous cleaning proceedures and loading with some sort of apparatus to measure exactly the same compression on the ball and powder each chamber and re-sifting the powder to remove any dust and measuring the charges by scales and by practicing a shooting stance for hours and hours a week and exercising the shooting muscles with weights and practicing breathing exercises and wearing a diopter on the shooting glasses and wearing special shooting gloves and by a person that is like an olympic contender that becomes one with a specialized very efficient load chain and the revolver to be a human Ransom Rest. ha ha ha The average shooter ain't got the time for that so I guess most of the guns are manufactured with the chambers a little small to account for fouling and let obstuation do the rest. When a person encounters a gun that shoots crappy and measures the chambers and the grooves and finds the chambers are a reject from the quality control dept. and are "too" small he or she can ream the chambers or get a new cylinder ect. ect. I would hope that a person would be cautious about reaming though so they didn't get carried away and ream "too" much "too" deep. I only ream so many .001's and do so only as deep in the chamber as the ball will go with an average load like 20-22gr. in a 36cal. and 25-28 in a 44cal. I do it at my own risk and advise others that I've done it for that it's "their" call. When a shooter gets good accuracy with chambers a few .001's under groove size then I guess it's best to leave it alone. If a guy wants chambers and grooves closer in tolerances then it's good to know the guns can come from the box that way. The Pietta "distressed finish" guns come that way. The Pietta "Shooters" Model does too. There is the Pedersoli Rodgers and Spencer with chambers at .450 and grooves at .451 and the Pedersoli Remington with chambers .454 and grooves at .451. There's the Uberti 1862 Pocket Police and Pocket Navy with equal chambers and grooves. The guns are out there so a person doesn't have to ream to get closer tolerances if they want them. The Pietta 1851's and 1861's Colts have about .003 under sized chambers and people say they have the accuracy. The Pietta Remingtons 1858 Standard Models have chambers about .447 and grooves about .451. They seem to have more than aceptable accuracy. Anywhooo..... I like my chambers and grooves equal. Some people may not want that or figure the difference isn't worth the trouble. I think it is but then again I'm just a Hillbilly Cowboy that never had a horse and wears his chaps to ward off briars when rabbit hunting and likes my cap&ballers and the way of life it renders me. Like a Harley owner says his bike "is" a life style. My cap&ball revolvers are a life style. To each his own. When I strap on the leather and flip the ole 1860 Colt Army into the holster and head out into the woods and the fields and meadows with my dogs Curly and Moe I am one happy hombre and I leave the world and all it's stife behind reamed chambers or not.

[Wayner]

I may as well mention this to you here or at the other forum. The bolt head of a Remington is slanted on the top so it will engage the notch consistantly. Don't file it level. See the Remington instead of having ramps like Colt does to put the bolt on a lower plane than the off side of the notch to ensure locking into battery especially when cocked fast it (Remington) has the leading edge of the bolt head higher in relation to the rest of it so as it slides into the notch it is ensured to get to the deepest part of the notch so it can't skip past it. Know what I mean??? It is made to be slanted on the top of the bolt head. If the alignment is off a hair and the cylinder has to turn a hair more you can get your cylinder to turn a tiny bit more by moving the bolt over a hair with shim if the bolt window lets the bolt move a little. If not you may need to file the bolt window a tiny hair of a hair. There should be enough space between the bolt and the trigger. Wait till you break it in some though since that could change for the better when you have watched the movie "Pale Rider" while working the action of the gun through the whole movie.

[Old Dragoon]

Wayner,
I saw something on the outdoor channel the other night called a "Lead Sled" for shooting large cal. rifles and they piled sandbags on it had a 7 Mil. mag. in the rig and the guy put an egg between his shoulder and the butt of the rifle and touched the trigger off and didn't break the egg. Close As I could come to a Ransom Rest. Didn't hear how much it cost though. looked like it could move parts to accept Pistols too. Don't know but that is a start.

[Oldelm]

Wayne,........hey Bud,.... most often when you post I learn something new about these revolvers, and in this case it's the detail about the slanted bolt head in the Rems which I wasn't aware of before. Maybe there's other folks here like MEC or RK or Ole Dragoon that knew 'bout that, but I sure am glad I didn't go ahead and try to level off the bolt head on my new Shooters. Darn!,...I would'a messed it up,..LOL!

Here's a pic of it lookin in from the loading-capping side/front....



I mentioned the rusty bore,...well,...here's lookin down the muzzle.....



and here's a close-up of an area in the nipple housing that has some surface rust......



I can clean the rust up, but want get the cylinder to rotate into battery just a schosh more to get rid of that telltale shiny cylinder face smilin at me in the groves, just a bit, but enough to be niggling at me that the chamber / bore alignment is a tad off. So I'll be trying your trick of filing a bit off the side of the bolt window, and shiming the other side to move it a hair over so as the cylinder will rotate a hair more. I think I know why these "reduced" Shooters are reduced. If you check their website out carefully you'll notice they have two different priced Shooters,....just like you said, Wayne. Well I got the cheaper one for $350. Now I know why they're reduced,...Lol!

just want to add this pic of the bolt head on my Uberti '58.......interesting, it hardly has a slant,if any.......

[Wayner]

Old Dragoon, when I measured a land from a lead slug put thru the bore of a Pietta 1851 Colt Navy with my Starrett calipers as carefully as was possible I got .3655 lands. Since the grooves were .369 and the chambers .366 I thought,"sompthin ain't rite". The land measurement taken from the ball had to be too high. I think because the caliper jaws are flat and the lands grooved into the ball are round the measurement was high. I had some pilots from a piloted reamer I had made with removable pilots and I tried the pilots in the bore of the revolver and luckily one pilot at .360 was a real good snug(stuck) fit in the barrel. That means that it would be maybe .001 smaller than the land measurement because nothing exactly the same size of a hole will go into the hole. The pilot would be a tiny smidgin smaller than the lands at .360. That means the measurement with the calipers in the grooves of the lead driven thru the barrel was about .0055 too big. I bet the measurement you got doing the same thing would be .004-.005 too big too.

[Wayner]

Oldelm, I think you got a good deal. You'll do well pilgrim. You'll do well. The groups you showed with the conversion were not bad attol. Not bad attol.

[Old Dragoon]

Old Elm,
My bolts have the same shape on the top of the bolt(ingagement) but the olt sides are vertical (like your Uberti), it looks like your sides are tilted. take the bolt out and look to see if some yahoo tightened the hand screw too far in and deformed the forks of the bolt. That was messed up with my last pistol I had to get the forks back parallel and closed up some. If the hand screw is too far into the hammer it will mess up the bolt forks(spread them, and possibly bend them. Don't know if this would force the bolt out of line (twisted) or not, but it could.

Wayner,
I'm looking at one of the slugged .451 bullets I slugged the bore with, so yes there is a radius on the lands but it is LARGE. Appears to be the .451 Dia. I just put the bullet in the jaws of the caliper and tightened them on the highest point(which happened to be the Lands on the bullet(grooves in the bbl.) every time on each set of lands the measurement was .451. May not be the scientific way to measure it, but it's the only way I have since i don't own groove or land mics. Measuring the bore(grooves on the bullet (lands in the bbl.) is a little harder.

[Wayner]

Smokin, Old Dragoon, Oldelm, curse you all. After reading the posts about the "Avenging Angel Rem" and the 44 Rem. conversion and all that now I'm starting to want another gun. Another gun on my list of "must haves". I never thought I'd want a short barreled Remington or the hassle of shortening it either. I figured the conversions I have with the Rems and the 45LC would be satisfying enough. Now I want a 44 Rem cuz they are authentic and if I want that then I may as well get the 38LC with the heeled bullet and the percussion barrel. Now I'll have to save money for Kirst conversions and bullet moulds and special modified crimping dies and probably hollow based bullets. That brings up the fact that I thought the heeled bullet in the 44 Rem and the 44Colt conversions was changed over to the hollow based bullet before it was all over so would a hollow based bullet be authentic in a 44 Rem conversion or a 44 Colt conversion? Curse you guys.

[Wayner]

Mec, the pics of the old Remington are cool. Was FFg powder used because of the age of the revolver? Are you pointing out that maybe the originals had chambers close to or a little over the groove diameters in the barrels? I've wanted to know what originals had in the grooves and chambers for a long time. Especially the Colts.

[Old Dragoon]

Wayner,
Got no idea about the chambers of old C & B Colts, but I know anything that shot or was converted to shoot 44 CF had .451 grooves, across the board. Which means the 44 CF and the 44 Rem was one and the same. Remington just called theirs 44 Remington for Remington and Colt conversions All of the 44 Cal C & B pistols had .451 grooves as I understand it. I have seen several different 44 C & B conversions to 44 CF, Star, Colt, Rem. Rogers and Spencer, etc.(none had bbl liners) if they were chambered for 44 CF then the 44 Rem. would interchange.
As for the hollow based 44's. All I know is that Remington made this 44 Rem. heeled base bullet and load until 1895 then discontinued it. The 44 Rem. shoots pretty well.

[Oldelm]

Yea, Mec,...those pics of that ole Remington are way too cool!
Plus the fact that some guy is testing different loads in it. If I had an old one, I'd probably be tempted to shoot it, too.

Old Dragoon,....thanks for your input on the bolt. When you say "lock" you mean bolt, right? I'm somewhat confused cause you use both terms "lock" and "bolt".

look to see if some yahoo tightened the hand screw too far in and deformed the forks of the bolt.

When you mention the "hand screw" do you mean the Trigger/Bolt Spring Screw? The Trigger/Bolt spring is forked , one side for tensioning the trigger, the other for tensioning the bolt. I know we all can have different terms for the various parts,.....lol.... I tend to refer to the part names such as used by VTI gunparts. I hope I don't come off as a "Term Snob" or somthin like that,...LOL!! I think I know what you're trying to describe, though,....but want to make sure cause you're probably right about some guy overtightening something. I notice the trigger/bolt screw is sticking out a little far on the right side of the frame too,..from overtightening.