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New Pietta Remington .36 review

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TreeMan

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The UPS guy delivered this new Pietta Remington .36 6.5 inch barrel today. I’ve had/have half a dozen old (pre CNC) Pietta revolvers. Never had much luck with “out of the box” accuracy with any of them. I shoot competition with a Ruger old army and I’m a very frequent winner. A couple years ago I bought a new CNC .36 Pietta Colt navy. It shot so well I play with it a lot. A gunsmith friend has it now to dovetail a new higher front sight on it for me. I decided to get this .36 remington to go along with the Colt.
A few notes about this new Pietta. It has a very high DOVETAILED front sight!! I actually had to file it down to get the correct point of aim! Never had that happen with an Italian repro. They normally shoot very high. Windage was dead on so I didn’t need to drift it any. The trigger on this Remington is not near as nice on the Colt navy but after shooting about ten cylinders it smoothed up a lot. Lockup is nice and tight and everything lines up as it should. There is zero cylinder drag. I tried to shoot low powder (3F Goex) loads from 15-20 grains like I do in the Pietta navy and my old army. Both of those are deadly accurate with those loads. This .36 Remington was all over the place using small powder loads with wonder wads over powder. I was getting frustrated and the gun was so fouled the cylinder would barely turn. I decided to go a bit heavier and put 25 grains of 3F and wonder wad and ball in the next two cylinders. Boom! Perfect! I’d never imagined that the little .36 would need more powder than the 44s I have to shoot accurately. This is the last cylinder I shot at 25 yards with a heavily fouled gun. I highly recommend these new piettas. I’ll clean her up and shoot some more tomorrow. The two flyers at 1 o’clock and 6 o’clock were my fault trying to get the right sight picture. The last four shots are the ones dead center. These shots were from a sandbag btw.
 

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Hey wasn't it 45D who said he had a cylinder pin treatment for the
Rem NMA that retards binding with fouling--or did I miss his photos?
In all honesty I shot at least 60 rounds today. Maybe more. I know I knocked out almost a full tin of caps. It was getting tight but it was still running. I don’t use any lube on top of the ball. If I had I could have went many more.
 
Excellent write-up and good shooting. Thanks. I don't have the 36 caliber New Army but my recently made 44 caliber Pietta New Army and Colt 1860 were both well made and nicely accurate.

Do I need a 36 caliber version? Nope!
Will I keep an eye out for one? Oh yeah.

Jeff
 
Actually the .36 gets the nod today as the preferred line pistol caliber, revolver, percussion or flintlock.
My Ruger OA is unbelievably accurate. It has an almost dangerous trigger job on it. But……I really like the crack of a .36, the ease of cleaning, simplicity and takedown of the Remington. I just finished up polishing the internals of this Remington. Between that and the shooting session today the trigger is feeling pretty good now. I’m gonna continue tinkering with it in hopes I can retire the Ruger for a match season. I use cream of wheat as a filler in the Ruger so I’m gonna try that out next.
 
TreeMan thanks for the detailed review. It's nice to hear something really positive about an Italian revolver. I'm very surprised you had to go up to 25 grains to get a group as it goes against all my experience with a .36. I expect it may have a different twist rate than the .36s I've dealt with in the past. If possible could you measure it for us.

The front sights on all my Pietta Remingtons have always been of more than adequate height.

I extensively reworked a .36 Pietta Remington back in the early 90s for my wife but never could get consistent results. I finally gave up and bought her a Uberti .44.

For all it's worth our loads have always been GOEX 3f, Cream of Wheat filler, Remington caps and lube over the ball.
 
no mention if you measured the chambers for concentricity or equal size. My last Pietta had one chamber about 2 thou over the others and another 2 chambers were slightly out of round.
 
no mention if you measured the chambers for concentricity or equal size. My last Pietta had one chamber about 2 thou over the others and another 2 chambers were slightly out of round.
No I didn’t do any measuring. I don’t have anything except a mic and I don’t have success getting any consistent readings doing chambers on a revolver. Was your Pietta a recent manufacturer or pre CNC?
 
Hey wasn't it 45D who said he had a cylinder pin treatment for the
Rem NMA that retards binding with fouling--or did I miss his photos?
That might help with your Rem binding.
Thanks for the mention William!
For those interested, here's a pic.
20211130_121124.jpg

It's a combination of Colts "fouling groove " (found on the originals but not the reproductions) joining the reduced section of the base pin found on the ROA.

Mike
 
Is this something that requires a custom instalation? Are the base pins available for sale?
This could be a definite advance because rem NMA(1858) do bind up pretty bad.

No, it's a straight forward type deal. Never thought about it as a separate item for sale. It seems to be a good answer for the cowboy crowd ( it's "race proven !!"). If you have one you'd like to send me, that would be fine.

Mike
 
Mike, with that mod would it be possible to wiggle the base pin out of a Pietta 5 1/2" Remington? That's something that can't be done in a factory gun and I don't like the idea of cutting the pin and hinging it in the middle. Asking for a friend. :D
 
No I didn’t do any measuring. I don’t have anything except a mic and I don’t have success getting any consistent readings doing chambers on a revolver. Was your Pietta a recent manufacturer or pre CNC?
Got mine 6 yrs ago, new from Cabelas back when they still had sales on such items. It shot fair out of the box. Some one decided they needed it more than I did.
 
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