Cap and Ball Cylinder Mod

[kwilfong]

FWIW;
I recently picked up a used Cabella's Remington 1858 Target Model 44.
The bore is slightly pitted, so I am not concerned about doing some serious tinkering with it.
The bore slugs .451". The chambers measured .444" with pin guages. This seems kind of dumb to me. I got a .453" reamer and opened up the chambers. With a slight countersink on the chamber mouths, it loads .457" balls with no shaving and moderate pressure on the loading rod.
It shoots real nice. I haven't done any serious paper punching yet, but after verifying that the zero was still good, I spun a 3" swinger at 25 yards with no more misses than I make with my big bore cartridge handguns.

 

[Dave Rosenthal]

Sounds like you've got it down real good! Further testing is needed, till that itch on the pointer is scratched enough :haha: .

Did you have a specific question or were you just posting what you've done?

Inquiring minds need to know :haha: :idunno:

Dave

 

[kwilfong]

Just thought some might find it interesting. I don't understand why they would build a revolver with chambers that were .007" under groove diameter. :hmm: I've studied cartidge revolvers some and the best setup seems to be having the chamber throats at groove diameter or +.001".

 

[Dave Rosenthal]

I wonder if it was a Pietta second that was sold to Cabela's? I'm not sure that Uberti even makes a target model (adjustable sights). I'd have to check on that and right now I have the big game on Tivo .

Dave

 

[kwilfong]

It is a Pietta. Don't know if it is out of spec. Has anyone else here checked the chamber diameters on a Pietta .44?

 

[Dave Rosenthal]

mykeal is a member here. He knows about such things and has written at length about them. If he doesn't appear here soon, you could check the older posts in the search section.

Dave

 

[CoyoteJoe]

Grossly undersize chambers use to be very common on the Italian percussion revolvers, perhaps not so much now. I first encountered this on a Remington replica in about '72. The gun was very tight and I thought it should be a shooter but my first outing with it was very disappointing, it just shot all over the place. After cleaning it I got an idea. I rammed a ball into an empty chamber and knocked it back out with a rod through the nipple hole. That slug would actually fall through the bore! I then reamed the chambers to .452", .001" over groove diameter, and it would then shoot honest 1 1/2" five shot groups at 25 yards. Since then I always check each individual chamber of any C&B revolver and generally find they can stand to be reamed at least a bit.
I think the issue was that they recommended .451" balls and made the chambers small enough to be sure a .451 ball would be a tight fit. I like my chambers .451-.452" and shoot .457" balls.
The .36's are a bit more troublesome because they have .375" groove diameter, some a bit larger, and it is very hard to find .380" balls.
The .31's are the worst. The bores run .325-.327" and the chambers are cut for a .315" ball. I guess they just don't even hope for accuracy with a .31.

 

[Leatherbark]

I have a Pietta "Shooters model" Remington. It uses a .457 ball and probably really needs a .460 as the .457 enters the chambers really easy. Too easy I think........But it shoots like a houseafire. I also have a standard Pietta that uses a .451 ball and it will not shoot very well uless I use 35 grains of 3f. Must be bumping up with all that powder? Anything less just doesnt shoot well in my Standard Pietta but the shooters model does very well with any powder charge I'm sure because the chamber/bore relationship is correct(or close).

 

[Arrowhead]

I bought a Pietta 1860 Army late last year. I found the same thing you did. Chambers undersized by about 5-6 thousands. Where did you find the .453 reamer? The only one I found was from Brownell's and with shipping it was half the cost of the gun.

 

[kwilfong]

I bought a 29/64"(.4531") reamer online from Wholesale Tool; part #1151-0110, $8.25. I would rather have had a .452", but they were much more expensive.

 

[mykeal]

Dave,

sorry I didn't check in before - been busy trying to chisel off the leavings from the holiday meals.

I can draw no conclusions about manufacturers or manufacturing date being a discriminant when it comes to chamber/groove size matching. They all do and have done both a good job and a poor job in this area. There's no way in my experience to generalize about a given brand or model.

1) Piettas. I own 4. The worst one is a .44 Colt 1860 Army, dates from 1982 and has chambers .005 under groove diameter. The best one is a .36 Colt 1851 Navy from 1977 with chambers .001 over groove diameter.

2) Ubertis. I own 6. The worst one is a Colt 2nd Dragoon from 1981 with chambers .01 under groove diameter. That's not a typo: one onehundreth undersize. The best one is an 1861 Navy from 2006 that has chambers the same size as the groove diameter. Most have oversize chambers from .003 to .006.

3) Euroarms. I own 3. The Rogers & Spencers are .003 (1979) and .001 (1994) undersize while the 1860 Army (1998) is .002 oversize.

4) Rugers. I own 3. All are .001 oversize. I think you can generalize about this one.

5) Armi San Marco. I own 1, a Walker made in 1997. It's the worst gun I own, considering just this characteristic, at .014 undersize.

6) Colt BP Arms (3rd Gen). Again, just 1 in harness. It's .001 oversize, like the Rugers.

So, what does all that tell me? If accuracy is really important, get a set of good reamers and learn how to use them. With the possible exceptions of Colt's Manufacturing or Colt BP and Ruger, you can't count on either the manufacturer or the manufacturing date to get you good chamber/groove matches. If you're as good a shot as I am with bp revolvers, spend the money on some good leather.

 

[arcticap]

I wonder how some of the chamber to bore dimensions used to be manufactured on the originals. I'm sure that someone really knows but no one really ever talks about that.
Is it possible that some of the manufacturers of reproductions are trying to copy the lose dimensions of the orignals too closely?
I also wonder how much projectile obturation can affect the performance.
I've seen a lot of photos of good accurate targets fired with all sorts of stock revolvers and commercial projectiles. That's not to say that there's not any room for improvement but all in all, many of the reproduction guns seem to shoot rather well right out of the box.
Maybe some projectiles don't require very much spin or RPM's to be imparted to them in order for them to fly relatively accurately.
How can their performance be roughly measured besides by firing sample pistols from a ransom rest and then comparing the results to determine how many inches of accuracy difference might be involved?
I think that it can be surmised that smaller chambers would be slightly more forgiving with respect to cylinder/bore alignment issues resulting from their factory mass production and in keeping with their relatively affordable price.
And lastly, once the chambers are reamed could it also become just as important to improve the dimensions and/or angle of the barrel throat and forcing cone to better accomodate the larger size balls?

 

[Dave Rosenthal]

Thanks for checking-in! I knew you'd have some enlightening info :thumbsup: . Sorta makes you wonder if Salvatore and Luigi "hit a bit of the grape" during lunch before the reamer did its' job :haha: . Man, those numbers are all over the place!

One thing about leather, and don't confuse this one: I like the smell of leather and the feel of boots, not the other way around :rotf: :haha: . Continued success with the work-outs!

Dave

 

[Blizzard of '93]

I haven't reamed the chambers of or re-done the forceing cones of my BP revolvers but it's just as important as it is to modern revolver accuracy - from what I understand. I defer to Mykeal's post in regard of.
I have with careful fitting of Lee mold conicals achieved more than adequate hunting accuracy from a ground blind at 30'. with the slugs.
next project is gonna be chamber reaming for both better slug fit and increased powder capacity this for my '58 Rem and ROA.

 

[kwilfong]

Really good, interesting info!
I don't think I ever measured my Old Army, but I remember it shot very well as long as it was swabbed every cylinder or two.
I hadn't considered that the Italians may be building faithful replicas and the origonals were all over the place too??

 

[Arrowhead]

Thanks. I'll be ordering one of those.

My Ruger measures .001 over also and it is an early one. Looks like Ruger's quality control is pretty good.

 

[CoyoteJoe]

Yep, there is probably good reason why the Italian replicas cost half as much as a Ruger but I think those replicas are still a lot of gun for the money, especially if you don't mind doing a little refinement work on them.

 

[qualibra]

Hello everybody.

I have got an original Rem.NMA.
I have been waiting for this topic
for as long as i have had this old gun
in my possesion.
This one is produced in the year 1863,
in the middle of the civilwar.

And now to the subject:

My old guns chambers mikes .452"
and compared to grooves at .465",
it does'nt really leave you with
much hope for accuracy.
But even though the dimentions
are so far of, it is capable
of some decent shooting.
I have managed to put a cylinderfull
in to one jagged hole of about 2,5"
at 25 meters.
This was from a rest, but the gun did
it never the less.
I am using .465 RB's in order to get as
much contact wth the rifling as possible.
I have been concidering to ream the chambers,
but the feeling of hurting the guns originality
has so far kept me from doing this.
Do any of you have comments on this?

Regards

Eldar from Norway.

 

[qualibra]

I just have to confess that one jagged hole is not happening everytime i try, but it shoots
much better than one might think, taking the
conditional circomstances of the gun in to consideration.

Eldar from Norway.

 

[R.M.]

Myself, I wouldn't. For what you'll gain in accuracy, you'll loose much more in value.