Posted on 11/13/2016 10:52:14 AM PST by Texas Fossil
Good article TF.
Very interesting indeed. You are right, I did not really know of this inventor. A fascinating period when it appears that the USofA had a great many super machinists, We see the results from these guns, to automobiles, trains and airplanes.
After the ‘star ejector’ came the ‘speedloader’ which made some of the revolvers a bit quicker than their automatic cousins in the reload.
My friend Tom is always finding Western history trivia that is amazing. I really like his blog.
I read his site pretty often. Have had some email exchanges with him and really appreciate what he does.
Beautiful pistol
Thanks
My suspicion is that the barrel twist is good for round ball, but not fast enough for a bullet, thus causing poor accuracy for the bullets from the .38 cartridges.
An associate has one, and we are trying to make cartridges work.
Any suggestions?
Thanks, fun to shoot too! Mine is a replica of course, but some historians believe that this was the type of revolver that Doc Holiday used during the gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone.
I'm still kicking myself for trading it away for a mint 1873 Winchester Military Rifle with bayonet. . . but then I remind myself, how many times do you run across an absolutely mint condition Winchester 1873 military rifle with the cleaning rod still in the butt plate hole, still wrapped in the original brown paper and the rifle still covered with its original shipping grease??? I'd say, never. Right?
It was like this one but in better shape:
Now I'm kicking myself for buying a house and selling a lot of my guns to upgrade and furnish it when I got married. Someone waved too much money at me for that Winchester. . . it paid for my patio and backyard landscaping 40 years ago. LOL!
The author could use an editor, but a really interesting article.
That 1851 conversion is what's called a "half-conversion" which was done at a lower-cost" than the full conversion. The Full conversion would remove the loading lever and mount a spring-loaded cartridge ejector rod which filled in the loading lever hole at an additional cost. Most owners went back and had the full conversion done when they got tired of using a separate rod to drive out the fired cartridges.
It looks as if some amateur has done a reblue job on it and had a very heavy hand on the polishing wheel. There is lot of cupping and all the markings have been polished out.
Good heavens those are beautiful.
One problem with a .36 to .38 conversion is that a .38 cal bullet is actually smaller than the .36, thus a .38 doesn't fill the bore completely. I solved this by having a .38 cal barrel liner installed. Another way would be to use heeled bullets (as did the originals) that expand in the bore.
Yes, it is a half conversion. You could be right about the reblue and polishing, it was that way when I obtained it back in the late ‘90s from a law enforcement officer.
“My suspicion is that the barrel twist is good for round ball, but not fast enough for a bullet, thus causing poor accuracy for the bullets from the .38 cartridges.”
“An associate has one, and we are trying to make cartridges work.”
“Any suggestions?”
Yes, first off, I hope you are using real black powder to load those cartridges. You should cast your bullets from pure lead, or at most not more than 20:1 lead/tin. Lube must be natural, no petroleum products, they don’t mix with black powder. I use 50/50 beeswax/Crisco.
I have several of the reproduction conversions, they all should as good as their sights allow. BTW, they shoot high up close, the front sight was meant for use at 75 yards or more. The old-timers apparently didn’t believe in using sights up close!
Grizzle Bear
founder of the Kansas Vigilance Committee,
a posse of the National Congress of Old West Shootists (NCOWS)
ping
The original Colts used gain twist rifling which increased the twist as you got closer to the bore end of the barrel. This allowed the soft lead to deform more easily to fit the lands and groves with out building a gap and slop in the bullet which would allow gas to escape and the bullet to, shall we say, rattle around and not fit the rifling as well. Perhaps using a softer alloy lead might help?
The percussion cap guns were also generally used with a lube of some kind on top of the ball or bullet after the bullet was loaded, usually to prevent flash over, but it also tended to seal the cylinder from weather but it also lubed the bullet as it accelerated through the barrel as a side benefit.
Modern replica versions of these guns do not have the gain twist rifling as far as I have heard. Too bad.
I do have a replica 1858 Remington .44 with gain twist rifling, but most replicas don't. Mine is a target model.
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