Gunsmith to work on 1864-made Remington 1858?

[bczrx]

Hello,

I have an 1858 New Army Remington and want to remove/reinstall [or replace] the nipples on it. I've ruined 2 wrenches trying to remove them, and that is after letting it soak in Kroil for 3 weeks.

Is there a good gunsmith you'd recommend I reach out to and ask about this?

This is a 'shooter' quality revolver with no finish left, but in seemingly good operational condition. Everything works EXCEPT I can't remove the nipples and the cylinder base pin retention screw has a rounded off slot. The good news is the base pin slides forward/back properly- I just can't remove it for detail stripping.

I want to be able to remove/replace the nipples so I can clean it properly. I don't care if it has new nipples or the 'original' ones- I just want to be able to take them out and put them back in, and hold a CCI #11 cap properly.

Thanks for suggestions you can make. I have a thread that was more focused on the 'how to remove the nipple' issue, so any advice on that I'd appreciate it being placed there: Tips on removing nipples on REMINGTON 1858 This thread I'd prefer to keep for names of gunsmiths for our civil war era revolvers.

Thank in advance!

 

[RMFnLA]

Use a screw extractor to remove them.

 

[rchas]

Some out of the box thinking...

What about heating the cylinder up (not to the point of changing the temper), and then holding the point of an ice cube on a nipple?
It might contract the nipple enough to break the rust seal

 

[Uncle Miltie]

A fellow who restored many old original rifles often removed small screws frozen from rust by soaking the parts in water.

He would say "water put the rust there and water will remove it."

Doing this enabled him to disassemble original locks and re-use the original screws.

 

[French Colonial]

I am a big fan of Kroil and the acetone ATF mix. In extreme cases however heat and cold are your best friends.

Now, on an original piece when I say heat I am talking about using one of those charcoal lighters with the long stem, do NOT break out the torch!

The lighter will get it hot enough, heat the nipples, let cool, put it in the freezer for an hour or so, repeat 5-6 times and try again.

The different metals of the nipples and cylinder will expand and contract at different rates and will loosen up.