1860 Colt Army revolver

[Uncle Charlie]

I did a search and didn't come up with anything that seemed relevant, so forgive me if I missed a previous thread on the same topic.

I've acquired a pietta replica of the revolver mentioned in title. It's the engraved version. It's actually a beautiful firearm. Unfortunately it has mechanical issues. Sometimes it works fine. Sometimes the cylinder will not turn freely with the hammer at half cock, and when that happens the hammer will not hold full cock. When this happens, I have to fumble with the hammer and the trigger to get the action to move as it should.

As an experiment, I pulled mechanics out of it as well as the mechanics out of a pietta 1851 revolver that is known to work well and swapped in the mechanics known to be good. The same problem occurs meaning the problem is the frame and not the mechanics. The bolt appeared to be rubbing against the square hole it passes through and would not fall with the hammer at half cock(that would explain the cylinder not spinning). The hole certainly wasn't square as it should have been. I used a small file to square the hole a bit. After reassembling the action minus the cylinder and barrel, the bolt behaved exactly as it should. I figured the problem was licked. Once the pistol was fully assembled, the problem came back as if nothing was done. The action works usually, but not predictably. It is again hanging up internally. :cursing:

Any thoughts?

 

[pargent]

Barrel wedge too tight ? :hmm:

 

[Zonie]

One of the things you can try is to flip the trigger/cylinder bolt spring over and reinstall it.
Then, put the trigger guard/mainspring back on the frame and try it.

The trigger/cylinder bolt spring has two legs on it.

They are not of equal length and if the spring is installed upside down it will look OK but it won't function OK.
Installed backwards, the spring may cause the cylinder bolt to refuse to work like it should.

 

[crockett]

Well, there are just a few parts but each part often does double duty and they are all inter-related, you cannot just start working on one part to fix one problem without the chance that changing one part may then impact other aspects- if that makes sense.
Fortunately the design was carried over to the more modern 1873 Colt Peacemaker and there are quite a few books around on gunsmithing a Colt Peacemaker. The only big difference is on a Colt Peacemaker there is a gap between cylinder and frame and you can physically see the bolt drop and pop up as the hammer is drawn back. On the percussion you can hear the bolt pop back and use sheets of paper between frame and cylinder to determine when the bolt drops.
I'm not quite sure I understand the trouble you are having as the net probably isn't a good substitute to actually seeing something. One thing you could do is mark the cylinder and find if it only jams on a certain chamber or chambers. If that is the situation then a tooth on the ratchet may have a bur.
My experience is that a lot of replicas have the bolt pop up too soon, that can score a cylinder if the bolt is rough. The hammer is some cases can be moved to full cock BEFORE the bolt locks up the cylinder- a lot of shooters never realize this as they pull the hammer all the way back past the actual full lock position, thereby letting the cylinder move far enough to lock up and then lower the hammer to full cock.
A sloppy fit of the hand in its slot is another pretty common problem.
But, as I said, spend A LOT OF TIME in diagnosis. Determining the problem is 99% of the job. The actual repair is then pretty easy in many instances.

 

[davidmc62]

Let me start by saying I'm no gunsmith. But when I had to replace the hand and spring in my 60 army, I researched it online. the problem you describe could be a result of a worn down or broken hand and spring. If the cylinder will not rotate to next chamber and lock in when cocked the tip of the hand may be worn down, or the spring may be broken.
You can buy replacements pretty cheap, get two cause the replacements are usually too long and need to be filed to correct length and you may go too far with the filing and need to start over on a new one. It will also not work right if the hand is too long. It will usually jam up and not cock at all. So there is a balance that needs to be reached with the length of that part. I found a website with some basic black powder gunsmithing that was pretty helpful when I fixed mine. Hope this may help??
Good Luck