Shortround6
Major General
It's mystique of using that notch filed in the hammer nose as a back sight 
The Guns We Own
- Thread starter ccheese
- Start date
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Maybe that's why their shots wander all over the paper as the piece heats up. The New Model Army has a sight grooved into the top strap and doesn't do that. Any wandering that occurs is the shooter's fault.It's mystique of using that notch filed in the hammer nose as a back sight
Hello Drgondog,
I don't think you understand. These are not cartridge guns. They are nominally .54 cal black powder as in loose black powder fired by a cap. For a .54 cal muzzle loader, the typical projectile is a .535 diameter patched ball or a slightly larger diameter Minie ball.
The Sharps on top has a tight enough bore that a Minie ball cast of wheel weights works just fine. The wheel weight alloy is hard enough that it would not expand if it were used in a muzzle loader, but engraves just fine.
The Sharps on bottom has a larger diameter bore and needs a different sized Minie ball or a "cantilever" bullet that has a base with a ridge and has several diameters of rings. The last ring is so large that it WILL engage the rifling no matter what.
I have Cerrosafe, but have not bothered to do a chamber cast or a cast at the muzzle. Instead, I have slugged them with a soft lead projectile. Projectile measured fine.
I BELIEVE the problem is that there is a loose spot in the barrel or that the rifling may not be consistent. Once I bought the second BP Sharps, I didn't spend a lot of time trying to diagnose the problem.
Yeah I have been seeing anywhere from $225/350 some more with the case with the trimmings 5 and up
Here's one up for auction tomorrow prefer octagon barrel myself
CVA .44 CAL. 8" BLACK POWDER REVOLVER COLT REPLICA
Bid is low now $95 I see 200/225 +18% and shipping is it worth 275/300?
Hello Javlin,
I had no idea the Colt 1860 Army revolvers cost that much these days.
About 25 years ago, Colt had a short production run of 1860 Army revolvers (probably made in Italy of course) that were very very well finished and came in a Colt labeled box. I bought one. It is one of the few guns that I have not found some kind of manufacturing fault in. I didn't shoot it because I had plenty of other BP revolvers that I didn't mind if I put some wear on. Shooting black powder is pretty hard on a gun.
At one point I was considering buying a replica 1860 Army in stainless steel. I don't recall if I actually did or not.
- Ivan.
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
Sharps did manufacture a rifle that was chambered for .50-70 Gov. metallic cartridges and some BP Sharps were converted to accept that.
I just stumbled on this video of a guy shooting a replica New Model Army nonstop til it fails, no barrel swabbing or nipple picking or cleaning of any kind. Awesome! 108 consecutive rounds. I can't imagine subjecting mine to such abuse, but nice to know she can do it. Try that with your Colt!
drgondog
Major
IVAN - you are correct, I was obviously thinking metallic cartridge conversion.
Snautzer01
Honourably banned
- 43,327
- Mar 26, 2007
nipple picking??? Googled it. Now my eyes are one fire. What do you mean?
Hello XBe02Drvr,
I must have done at least that number of shots without ANY failures with a Ruger Old Army. He actually had plenty of failures during that run and 108 shots isn't that much. That is just over ONE box of bullets and when you are casting your own, it is really no big deal at all.
(With pistols, I usually take at least a couple hundred bullets and with rifles, I don't usually go out with less than 100 bullets and usually it is a lot more than that. You know cleaning will be a b*tch, so might as well make it worthwhile.)
The barrel on these revolvers doesn't need swabbing and I don't even own a nipple pick. The trick is to use a good lube OVER the bullet. I don't use a grease wad or any kind of wad at all. Sometimes a cap gets blown to pieces and the fragments need to get picked out before reloading but that is pretty obvious and not hard to do.
The lube I was using is a mixture of Crisco shortening and Beeswax mixed in proportions to stay soft but not melt too easily in the summer heat. You don't want oil getting into caps or the powder charge of course. I think I might have tried Vaseline instead of Crisco but don't recall how that turned out.
I believe that fellow needs a good inline brass capper.
- Ivan.
Hello GrauGeist,
I know these conversions were done, but you have to wonder a bit because the only parts that would be retained would be the operating lever, stock and receiver.
The barrel is way oversize and can't be rechambered. The hammer is shaped wrong for hitting the wacky firing pin on a Sharps. The breech block is a totally different configuration.
That is on the assumption that the Sharps isn't one of the "slant breech" guns at which point even the receiver won't work.
- Ivan.
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
My Stepdad had an 1863 Carbine which had been converted.
I don't recall much in the way of details, except that it was a falling-block and still had a patchbox on the stock.
I don't recall much in the way of details, except that it was a falling-block and still had a patchbox on the stock.
I'm sure your comment was tongue in cheek, but for the benefit of any uninitiated spectators, the nipple is the little protuberance that the percussion cap is pressed onto. After firing, sometimes fragments of the cap are lodged in the nipple's surrounding cavity, interfering with placing a cap for the next shot. A mechanic's pick or similar tool is handy for prying loose these fragments.
Snautzer01
Honourably banned
- 43,327
- Mar 26, 2007
No tonque in cheek intended. I realley did not know. Thank you for explaining.
Here is what I currently have.
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Thank you, I do still need a FAL in my life. I'll have to go back through this thread and catch up, it's been a few years since I last viewed it. A lot of nice guns in here.Nice Collection you have,Jayl .
ARTESH
Chief Master Sergeant
Unfortunatly there is no good story behind this FAL. Rifle now rests in Captured Armaments Section of Army Museum at Saadabad, Tehran. When it reopens, I'll take lots of photos. there some cool pieces to show.
You can't blame bad caps on the gun.
Maybe mine's got bad rifling or something. I always get plenty of lead fouling in the bore during each shooting session, despite using crisco and beeswax pack over the ball to prevent flash over. I don't have a mold for conical pistol bullets, so shoot round balls. Tried a lubed .445 maxi once, but it only left room for about 20 grains of FFFG.
Roger, concur. That does make a difference.
I have always wanted one of the 1863 Sharps military rifles. Mine are both 1858 commercial types.
In my photograph, note that the gun on the bottom has a latch for the operating lever to keep it closed. That makes pretty good sense considering that if the chamber is opened, the powder charge dribbles out and the cap will probably get knocked off the nipple as well.
The other gun doesn't have such a latch but doesn't really need it because the lever has a spring detent that is quite strong; It won't open by accident. I wonder what would happen to such a latch on a conversion gun??? I know some conversions kept the tape primer feed and Quigley's Rifle still had the coffee grinder in the stock!
- Ivan.
I am not so convinced that the fellow had bad caps. Part of it might be that he wasn't seating the caps solid on the nipple which he figured out part way through and started using another tool to do this. If you use a brass capper instead of plastic, you don't have this problem and brass is a whole lot safer than steel when working with powder or caps.
If this was the cause, it is simply operator error.
Another possibility is that the gun has a light hammer strike and a cap that is seated too high absorbs enough energy so it doesn't set off the cap.... Or the hammer is so light as to be unreliable. My Redhawk .44 Mag has a great trigger pull but is simply unreliable with some brands of primers. The Ruger Old Army is basically an early Blackhawk action before the modern updates and is VERY precisely made. It can even be dry fired because without a cap in place, the hammer does not contact any of the nipples.
On the old model Blackhawks, you could hear three distinct clicks as you cocked the hammer. On the newer guns, you only hear two clicks. On the older guns, it was unsafe to carry the gun with the hammer down on a loaded round. I believe the newer guns have a transfer bar or something similar so it is perfectly safe that way. I can't recall it really is a transfer bar though I can probably pull mine out of the safe and look. I will not be taking it apart if that is necessary to find out though.
Please note that the fellow in the test ran 108 rounds through his Pietta gun and didn't get enough leading to comment about. There is something going on with your pistol.
.445 inch is WAY too small for these revolvers. The nominal diameter for lead balls recommended for these guns is .454 inch. The bullets I am casting normally get sized to .452 inch when loaded in a .45 ACP cartridge. They are probably about .453 inch as cast.
One possibility I am thinking is that your bullets are stripping when they engage the rifling.
Consider that a .454 inch lead ball has very little bearing surface to engage rifling. It is not quite as bad as it sounds because when it is loaded, a little ring is typically cut from the ball and there is now more bearing surface. No matter how big a lead bullet started as, it is only as big as your cylinder's bores after it is loaded. (THIS IS IMPORTANT!!!!)
Revolvers tend to be very hard on bullets.
Anecdotally, I used wheel weight for all the bullets I cast. If they can't be done properly with wheel weights and without things like gas checks, I don't cast for that caliber.
I first tried to cast for .357 Magnum because that was a caliber that I tended to shoot a lot. I tend to load the rounds to factory velocities or slightly higher. (160 grain bullet at 1250 FPS from a 4 inch barrel.) With most commercial cast bullets, that does not work. It did not work with my own cast bullets either though they worked just fine in .38 Special loads. The lead buildup was terrible in Magnum loads.
When I started shooting .45-70, I also started casting my own bullets out of wheel weights. Commercial .45 caliber lead rifle bullets were either too light or too soft or visually poor quality. The interesting thing is that even though my loads were pushing a 460 grain bullet to almost 1600 FPS which is a lot faster than the .357 Magnum, I wasn't getting any leading at all. Lube was the same Alox sticks I had been using. (????)
Seems to me that with a revolver, the bullet comes out of the cylinder with a fair amount of velocity before it reaches the forcing cone and engages rifling and instantly takes a spin. I believe this puts a lot of stress on a bullet and may strip it unless it is very strong alloy. This gets a whole lot worse if the bullet is undersize.
There is not this situation with a rifle and also not as much gas cutting of the bullet.
Now back to your gun.
If I were you, I would slug the barrel and see what the rifling groove diameter is. I would then measure the bores of each chamber in the cylinder to see what their diameters are. I suspect if there is nothing obviously wrong with the rifling in the barrel, then the bores of the cylinder are just a touch smaller than the rifling grooves which means the bullets are going to be undersize by the time they hit rifling and will strip more easily.
Hope this helps.
- Ivan.
The shop that sold me my gun sold me a .451 mold which they said was correct for it and I cast up a bunch of those. I found it took an inordinate amount of effort to force them into the chambers and they shaved off a veritable O ring of lead from the ball. I only fired two cylinders worth of those and they were all over the paper, so I started using .445s I had cast for the Numrich instant muzzle loader and the accuracy improved dramatically. From a bench I can keep all the shots in a six inch circle at fifty feet, but of course, nothing like that offhand. I'm convinced the gun can shoot way better than I can. My vision isn't all that great, which is why I had to give up flying.
