I am personally not a fan of the pocket pistols as far as tuning them goes. There is just no real estate to work with. I recently did a tune on an1862 pocket model that the owner was ready to throw in the nearest lake. It would not only suck caps but would also blow the hammer back to the half cock notch. A cap post and action shield cured it permanently. It is now one of his favorite pistols. So change nipples and such all you want you will still get cap jams. We don't have caps made the same as the ones from the 1860s. Modern caps are thinner materials and and fragment much easier. The cool thing about these modern replicas is there so much room for improvement and it can be done without hurting the value.
Cap Jam Fix On Colt Pocket Models
- Thread starter rodwha
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Sorry Dude
36 Cl.
I know Slixshot nipples are the favorite of the Cowboy crowd.
Doubling the main spring is a dumb idea. Trigger sear wear and full cock notch wear is crazy if you do that . . .
Pocket guns are just a piece of work!!!
Mike
I find with RWS 1075 caps I never get cap jams. One would be surprised at how many folks pinch #11 or #10 caps to get them to fit snug and wonder why they fly off and jam the action.
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Where did the last eleven years go? Holy smokes boys it left us behind! Here's what I say. I have a bunch of pocket pistolas!!! I have never bought one without also making sure I had some Treso nipples to fit it. Pretty much (NOT always) that fixed my problems. I also had a bunch of revolvers done by 45D and loved the smoothness and everything so I sent him one of my 2nd Gen 1862 Navies. It didn't cap jam when I sent it to him and it still doesn't! It's also a way better acting revolver now. I purchased an Uberti Walker from @jackrabbit57 a while back and it turned out to be a Fine Revolver that showed me his skill so I sent him a 2nd Gen 1862 Police I have and my favorite Pietta 1860 Sheriff to work over. They came back in fine shape and shoot wonderfully with no cap jams. Hmm, they didn't jam before they left either... BUT, now the actions are 1000% smoother and they have coil springs and are packed properly with Mobil 1!
I also have 2 1849s and an 1863 Remington in 31. The first 1849 Uberti was a bad jam always pos, until the Tresoes. The 3rd Gen Colt and the 1863 Remington weren't shot without tresoes and are close to jam free. I have a couple more Colts and Uberti 1962s but don't shoot them enough to know if there is a problem.
Finally we get to the moral of the story!
I've got 50 or 60 BP guns including a couple I built. I don't shoot as much as I did 10 years ago. One thing I learned, and I learned an Immense Lot on this forum, is that no one knows more than everyone else! I found out about Mike 45D on the Gunslinger's Gulch Forum and I wanted a gun that he did! Now, he's done a bunch for me. I met Dave on here and he's done great by me. Yes, you can be lucky and have an out of the box gun be good enough and I'm glad you're happy, but, believe me, if you try one of these tuner's guns out you will be hooked!
I also have 2 1849s and an 1863 Remington in 31. The first 1849 Uberti was a bad jam always pos, until the Tresoes. The 3rd Gen Colt and the 1863 Remington weren't shot without tresoes and are close to jam free. I have a couple more Colts and Uberti 1962s but don't shoot them enough to know if there is a problem.
Finally we get to the moral of the story!
I've got 50 or 60 BP guns including a couple I built. I don't shoot as much as I did 10 years ago. One thing I learned, and I learned an Immense Lot on this forum, is that no one knows more than everyone else! I found out about Mike 45D on the Gunslinger's Gulch Forum and I wanted a gun that he did! Now, he's done a bunch for me. I met Dave on here and he's done great by me. Yes, you can be lucky and have an out of the box gun be good enough and I'm glad you're happy, but, believe me, if you try one of these tuner's guns out you will be hooked!
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All of the Uberti "pocket" sized guns have this same issue. Some more than others. They also sometimes are more likely to have index issues were the cylinder will over rotate and get out of line. Here is how I fixed (for the most part) the cap jamming problems with my .31 Pocket Revolver.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE4Ihdxq9wc&t=9s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE4Ihdxq9wc&t=9s
Sorry Dude
36 Cl.
Can't get
Can't get link to work, not sure if it applies to a .36 Navy just wanted to check it out.
Big issue with the 5 shot pocket pistols is throw by or over rotation of the cylinder. You need a .002 barrel/cylinder gap and a good spring behind the hand to act as a brake slowing down the cylinder. Bolt drop timing is real touchy as there is very little wiggle room to work with. A cap post and action shield is also a real good idea. Hammer spring tension seems to work best at 4 pounds pull at the hammer spur, anything more is overkill. Other than the correcting the arbor , tuning, and solving the cap jam problems these are fun little pistols.
As I recall Colt made more Pocket Model revolvers than any other C&B revolvers. Folks musta liked them. In my experience, and has been reported in this thread they tend to be unreliable "as issued". The 3 I had were 2 &3 shooters if I was lucky. The cure I found in PERCUSSION REVOLVERS A GUIDE TO THEIR HISTORY PERFORMANCE AND USE by Mike Cumptson and Johnny Bates. 2014. The cure is to relieve the cap channel in the standing breech and to use nipples that fit the caps. Factory nipples never had in any of my C&B revolvers.
Use a steel burr and run your Dremel tool at top speed. At top speed you can control it. At low speed it bounces and will mess up your revolver. This is a cut and try operation. Also use both hands on the Dremel with gun frame held in your vice. I wore eye, ear and breathing protection.
The target was 25 shots without a jam using the enlarged cap channel. Other photos are before and after.
Use a steel burr and run your Dremel tool at top speed. At top speed you can control it. At low speed it bounces and will mess up your revolver. This is a cut and try operation. Also use both hands on the Dremel with gun frame held in your vice. I wore eye, ear and breathing protection.
The target was 25 shots without a jam using the enlarged cap channel. Other photos are before and after.
Sorry Dude
36 Cl.
So did it go 25 shots?
Yep. This was done 10 years ago so don't recall why I stopped at 25 shots. Probably fouling was inhibiting rotation of the cylinder and I just stopped.
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Yeah, that's how I fixed my 60 hammer face.Its kind of hard to see in the shadow but I milled out a cylindrical pocket where the pin notch was and installed a piece of hardend O-1 tool steel flush with the hammer face.
I haven't tried it yet but perhaps if one removes the pins between chambers the hammer face may still drop low enough to act as a safety and allow six chamber loading. The pins are superfluous any way once the hammer notch is filled.
This picture is actually one showing the insertion of a neoprene block of rubber that allows safely dry firing and cycling the action. It allows the hammer to drop low enough to reset and keeps the hammer face off the nipples. It covers the web area of the hammer mortise in the frame and is held in by it's own width friction. One must remember to tweezer pick it before firing or nothing will happen.
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justinoldguy
32 Cal
My Uberti pocket guns, a 1849 and 1862 Police, jammed every shot from the factory, even with the lightest loads. Put some Treso nipples in them, that helped some, but still had 2 to 3 cap jams per 5 shot cylinder. Ready to throw both of them down a well, and then had a moment of inspiration. I replaced the Uberti mainsprings with ones of of a 1851 Pietta Navy, only had to file a little bit to make them fit. Cap jams went away, or at least as much as they will on any Colt repro. Now I really enjoy these small guns. That is the solution that worked for me. No problems many thousands of shots later with regular full loads.
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Lets just think about this thing for a moment. The hand engages the ratchet tooth at the bottom of the stroke from it's exterior (out side) and as it raises the hand/ratchet contact passes across the hands center to inside ratchet tooth contact at the top of the stroke.
This means the beginning of the cylinder rotation has more leverage but less travel and thus speed. As the hand raises and passes the hands contact to the inside then it transfers more travel and thus rotation speed but less leverage. This means that in a normal cycling the cylinder rotation speed is only ever mechanically increasing even if the hammer movement remains constant which it doesn't. The hammer will increase movement speed in normal cycling which increases rotation speed above what the mechanical advantage already is doing.
The spring tension of the hand has no braking function on cylinder rotation even if it did incrase tension as it travels up chimney. It only ever pushes and transfers more rotation speed in the stroke never loosing cotact through out the full cycle. Actually I have tested this and if there is any spring tension increase on the hand at the top of the stroke I have been unable to detect it.
Now the bolt spring will brake cylinder rotation inertia which is why I don't get all excited about early bolt drop. It has far more leverage to brake cylinder inertia than the hand ever could because it is as far awary from axis center as possible.
I realize the ratchet star is traveling in an arch and the hand in a linear plane but if one views a ratchet tooth it can readily be observed that the contact of the hand on the tooth is moving from out side to the inside which is a mechanical transfer of travel to leverage and thus rotational speed. The hand does not and could not brake the rotation speed even if it did increase it's spring tension.
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You are sooooo wrong!!!!
I guess you've outsmarted Colt's engineers again sir (they must have been so stupid !!
)!! Jerry Kuhnhausen was just perpetuating the "lie" in his books I suppose? And I'm sure Jim Martin wasn't lying to me when he explained the braking action of the hand . . . and how to adjust and test it !!! I even test it myself on every customers revolver (so, I reckon they DIDN'T lie !!)!!For you folks at home, when you put your revolver on half cock and rotate the cylinder, that "clicking" sound you hear is the hand falling onto the next ratchet tooth. The resistance you feel leading up to the "click" is the "braking force" and it IS adjustable!!! The less you have of it, the more likely "throw-by" (over rotation) will be a problem.
It's been understood now close to 200 yrs, some folks just just have a tough time with SA revolver design.
I'll put up some pictures that will easily explain it to most of you!!
Mike
Lee44ShooterCnB
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Up early Mike…bring on the thunder…
Well bless your heart., you have it all under control! I really think you should work on something other than single actions as you don't seem to understand them. You're quite the enigma. Some days you actually make sense although it's rare and other times you go completely off the rails. All the pocket pistols and I mean all of them that I have worked on had throw by issues. It was solved by increasing the hand tension. Increasing the bolt tension against the cylinder adds a little braking as well but too much leads to gouging the cylinder. Also the 5 shot cylinders have a very narrow area to get bolt drop timed properly. Most of them drop the bolt almost immediately after the half cock notch. Ideally this should give a bolt head width before the cylinder drops into the locking notch. So in conclusion both the hand spring tension and getting the bolt drop in the right place gives enough braking action to control throw by.
Hey!!! Had a couple of "Yahoos" (grandkidos) spend the night at "Honey and Papa's" last night (!!) yep, early start (5:50 this morning!
). After church and a stop at "Waffles' House" (what the youngest calls it) I'm back in the shop for the afternoon (no rest for the weary!).So, the hand movement through cylinder rotation as it moves through a cycle is basically the same from start to finish. The hand is "trapped" and held in position, under the tooth it's pushing and the "ramp" of the next one as the action cycles. With the angle of the hand slot continuously increasing the spring pressure as the hand moves up, it is more and more "influenced" to maintain position. At the same time the plane of the ratchet remains vertical. So, the hand is moving forward under increasing pressure against a surface that is staying vertical . . . if the cylinder is influenced to rotate faster (by inertia say) than the cycle is dictating, the spring pressure discourages that and the hand won't let that happen. If the spring pressure isn't sufficient though, the cyl could bypass the hand and mis the timing for lockup. Resulting in Throw-by.
Therefore, hand spring tension is critical to keeping Throw-by from happening.
Since CORRECT bolt drop happens within the approach ( 1-2 bolt widths before the notch) that is not enough influence to negate Throw-by.
Of course someone will say dropping the bolt EARLY will supply the braking !! SURE IT WILL but that's like driving you car with your foot on the brakes . . . it's not designed or set up for that, which leads to worn / broken parts.
If you're not going to follow the design and what the designers say, then "rules don't apply". You can have ugly "Beauty Rings" on your cylinder and parts that wear/break, horrific timing and such . . . or you can maintain a SA that runs perfectly and keeps it's beauty ( and value!!).
Mike
So, here's the hand engagement through the cycle -
At rest.
Half cock.
Bolt drop.
Full cock.
Notice that the hand maintains its position from "engagement" all the way to full cock. The cylinder can't "pass" the hand because the hand spring tension won't allow it.
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