An Ugly girl that kisses good..
Well, the other day I picked up a 1999 dated steel framed ASM 1861 navy imported by CVA, for next to nothing.
It was beat up, the barrel was rusted to the arbor, it cocked, and rotated, but that was about it.
The seller said it had been in his safe for years, he took it out, saw it was rusted, and took it to a local gun shop, they got it freed up, and suggested he sell it..
They apparently, didn’t know much about them, just enough to make it work.
Well, after a lot of penetrating oil and some wood popsicle sticks under the loading lever, the barrel came off.
The nipples were stuck, but finally got them freed.
Internally, it is not rusted, and worked.
I should have passed on it, but since it was steel framed I just had to get it as I have another .36 caliber ASM 1851 brass frame I could swap parts on if need be..
It has everything going against it,
The barrel face is not cut square to the cylinder
It is off by .0165 of an inch left to right.
The cylinder shows marks where the local gun shop put the cylinder in a vice or vice grips and rotated the action to get the cylinder to rotate free on the arbor.
And the cylinder has a buggered chamber thanks to the local gun shops attempt to free up the gun.
the inside of the barrel is slightly pitted.
And the timing was somewhat off.
I fixed the timing issue, and decided to see how it shot.
All that being said, she is a shooter!!!
6 shots, 25 yds off hand.
The other guys were shooting their muzzle loading rifles at 50 yards.
I tried one of their targets (a bowling pin) to my surprise, it fell over, I took aim at a second one, and it too fell over. (I quit while I was ahead)
I fired off 48 rounds (8 cylinders)
Using 25gr pyrodex RS (I don’t have any P or 3f at the moment)
Covered by a home made felt wad lubed with bore butter mixed with beeswax and olive oil. And a .375 round ball.
The only issue was a few cap jams from the caps sticking to the hammer.
I was going to Square off the barrel, and a few other things, but after shooting this, I am not going to change a thing.
Oh, I shot some high speed to see if the bad gap would shoot more gas out to the left than the right, but it seem to be about equal.
(It is being fired ghetto style to get a top down view of the gas pattern)
As one of my shooting buddies said today, she is like an ugly girl that kisses good.
She may look a little rough, but man does she shoot.
See ya.
45 Bravo