Pietta 1851 Navy--Getting ready to shoot

[DaveJ]

The gun got here from Cabella's today, shipped the 19th and delivered the 22nd, regular shipping.

I just got the gun without the started kit so I went to the local Scheels sporting goods store to get the rest of the neccesaries. I was in a hurry so didn't check out the balls, just told the salesman that I needed 36 caliber round balls. I thought that 36 cal balls were actually .375. I get the stuff home and look it over, the box is marked .360 so I tried to fit one loose. It rolled right into the chamber in the cylinder but is plenty big when sat atop the muzzle. I don't think a bigger ball would make it out the barrel. I'm guessing that the patch adds the other .015 in diameter that keeps the load tight in the cylinder and snug to the powder. Is that right? As they say, it might be an obvious answer but not to me, yet.

Next thing is to get the wedge out so I can clean off the packing grease and get ready to shoot tomorrow.

Thanks,
DaveJ

 

[bezoar]

The balls for your .36 NAVY should be .375 in diamater. The .360s you were given are for a single shot muzzleloader that uses patches. DO NOT USE PATCHES in your percussion revolver, as the revolver is NOT DESIGNED to use patches, and the use of patches can easily cause you to loose body parts when the patched roundball causes an obstruction in the forcing cone and explodes that chamber.

 

[Kiehlroy]

I'm no expert but from what I understand you don't want to use
patches for a revolver. BTW I just got my 1858 New Army from Cabela's today also and like it very much. Mine is a .44 and from everything I've read the past few months I need a .451 to .457 ball so when you ram it you get that ring of shaved lead at the mouth of the chamber to prevent chain-fires and to prevent jaming the gun with a rolling ball, it also helps the ball bite into the rifling. The Pietta manual that came with mine seemed to jive with most operating procedures that I've seen on different Cap & Ball revolver forums. Hope this helps.

 

[Kiehlroy]

What he said! :hatsoff:
I type sloooooowww.

 

[graybeard]

Dave: Go back to the store and get some .375 pistol balls that have to be jammed into the chamber and leave a lead ring. Put a bit of grease, crisco, or commercial black powder lube such as T/C offers, over the ball. Never load more than five chambers :shake:. Leave the hammer down on the empty sixth. When you are through shooting take it home, tap the wedge out, take the wooden handle off and you have three parts, the barrel, the cylinder and the frame. run a patch with solvent through the barrel a few times, and into each chamber a few times. then put the three parts in your wife's dishwasher with the barrel and cylinder verticle. run it through a regular cycle, with dishes if you like, and while the metal still is hot, but dry, spray everything down with rem oil or somesuch. grease the arbor and the hand and put it back together. Do not use patches in a revolver. :nono: Do not use balls that drop into the chambers, they must be oversize. enjoy. graybeard :blue:

 

[DaveJ]

Thank you all very much for saving me from a real mess. The manufacturer's manual says to use a wad, not a patch. That's what I get for being in a hurry. Now I'll have to find a .36 single to use up the balls and patches. Any suggestions?

I'll get back there tomorrow morning and make sure I get the right balls this time. Do I need to get wads or is it okay to seat the ball on the powder and grease it in with borebutter? What about making paper cartriges? There's no wad in them and they seem like a good way to get ready to shoot.

I'll do some more searches of the forum to try and figure out what else I don't know. Thanks again, I learned something tonight.

DaveJ

 

[DaveJ]

Graybeard,

No dishwasher, we're still doing them by hand but the water gets plenty hot. Is there a difference between black powder solvent and the Breakfree or Gunscrubber? As long as I'm driving back down there I might as well try and get everything I'll need.

DaveJ

 

[graybeard]

Dave: I've shot an 1860 Colt replica for many years and never used the wads, just borebutter or somesuch over the chamber. Howver, the wads might be a better idea. when it's hot the borebutter runs and when it's cold it's hard to get out of the tube. Whatever, shooting BP revolvers is almost as much fun as shooting flintlocks. :haha: You are likely to find your pistol shoots very high, so don't be discouraged :cry: if you can't seem to hit the target the first few rounds. graybeard :blue:

 

[graybeard]

Dave: probably not.I use them on locks from flinters. If you are going to wash the pistol by hand, take a toothbrush and scrub all the nooks and crannies that a dishwasher would get clean with a hard spray. Dry it in the oven at low heat and then grease and spray with remoil. graybeard :blue:

 

[DaveJ]

I got it washed, dried, oiled and greased. I can't get the wedge back through quite as far as it was out of the box but can feel the end of the retainer clip (?) that rides on top of the wedge. Otherwise I think I did okay. Thanks for taking the time to educate me tonight. I'll let you all know how it goes when I shoot tomorrow.

DaveJ

 

[Zonie]

" I can't get the wedge back through quite as far as it was out of the box but can feel the end of the retainer clip (?) that rides on top of the wedge. "

Dave, don't worry too much about it.
When reassembling your gun, do as you did and align the pins in the front of the frame with the holes in the lower area of the barrel and tben drive the barrel back to seat it on the frame with a light blow from your hand on the muzzle.
Slide the barrel wedge thru the cylinder pin and push it in as far as you can.
Now use a block of wood or a small non metallic mallet and just tap the wedge in a little more.
It should be tight, and the end of it should be at least flush with, or sticking thru the right side of the barrel a little. Ideally, the end will be just far enough for you to see the nose of the little top spring bearly sticking thru.

Cock the hammer to the first click and test the cylinder to make sure it rotates freely. If it does, you good to go!

One of the things people unfimiliar with the Colt want to do is to install the wedge until the left side bottoms out on the side of the barrel.
This is, as I mentioned above, not needed. In fact, if it is done, it often pushes the barrel back so far that the cylinder will be pinched and it will not rotate.
If the gun is cocked in this condition, it will usually break the cylinder "hand" who's job it is, to rotate the cylinder.
That is why I suggested testing the freedom of the cylinder to rotate up above.

By the way, how do you like the "pointability" of the Colt.
They are, to my way of thinking, the most naturally pointing pistol ever made.

 

[DaveJ]

The cylinder rotates freely so I'm going to leave things alone until after I shoot. With enough repetition I'll get a feel for what is right when I put it back together.

The pistol feels good and points naturally, I don't know where it will hit yet since I got the wrong balls last night. I'm going to get it out today even if to just shoot a couple dozen rounds. I was cautioned that I will likely shoot high until I get used to the gun.

I saw a thread about makng paper cartriges and am going to try that to cut down on reloading time when I'm out shooting. I don't have a bench where I shoot, it's out in the back yard. I'm lucky enough to live where I can do that. In wet years when water is standing in the corn stubble I can walk 5 minutes behind the house and shoot at geese.

DaveJ

 

[jbarclay]

I just won a match with a 58 Pietta, loaded with 30 grs. of 3f black, an 44 cal bore button, and a .454 Hornady RB. No overball lube. Shot 160 out of 200 at 25 yds one handed.

 

[DaveJ]

The mud finally dried up enough out back for me to make some noise. I took the 51 Navy and Ruger 22/45. I only got one cylinder out of the Navy. I was shooting at a .22 spinner target at 25 paces. I warmed up with the Ruger and was hitting almost every shot. I had loaded the BP before leaving the house and had measured another 6 powder charges of 15 gr. Pyrodex P and wrapped them in cig papers but didn't get to shoot them. The revolver fired the first chamber and I hit the top rail of the spinner frame. I saw the spark from where I was standing and there is a nice ding in it now. The second shot was just the cap, the charge in the chamber didn't catch. I put the gun down off to the side for a few minutes in case I had a spark in there somewhere. Back to the .22 for one magazine, then poked a nipple pick in the misfired chamber, capped it and fired the rest of the cylinder. They all fired this time but I didn't see any sign that I even got close to the spinners. That target only sits a few inches off the ground, it's supposed to be for varmint practice and most varmints sit pretty close to the dirt. About that time the mosquitoes found me. It's hard to load the BP and kill skeeters at the same time so I gave up until tomorrow. I'll get good and juiced up with bug spray and put in a couple hours with the BP and see what I can do. I'm also taking a bigger target and stand with me so I have a chance to see where the ball is going.

I'm also going to start playing with different charges to see how that effects the performance. Hopefully I'll be back on tomorrow night talking about the nice groups I got. Or at least be able to say I hit the paper a few times.

While I was cleaning the revolver this evening I started wondering what the average soldier, sailor or cowboy did about cleaning. I had cleaning rods, solvent, oil, toothbrushes, a sink of hot water and dish soap and it took me about 2 hours to go from dirty gun to clean, oiled and put back together. In camp I figure they probably had boiling water, maybe a rod and brush and some oil. Probably took all of 30 minutes at the end of the day. Could be that I'll get faster as I work at it.

DaveJ

 

[Zonie]

Before trying your Colt on your spinners, try it on a paper plate. I think you will find that it is shooting high.
Out of many different reproduction guns, I only have three that actually shoot to the point of aim.

This seems to be historically accurate. Most of the Civil War pistols shot high, and I've heard many reasonable and some not so reasonable storys as to why they do this.
Some say they were designed to be used at ranges of 50+ yards on a man sized target. Some say the troops were trained to aim at the belt buckle (that being the largest part of the target).

Once you find out where it's hitting and adjust for it, you should start having success.
The round balls are a bit heavier than the .22's so don't be suprised when it blows your spinner apart. ::

 

[DaveJ]

I shot 24 shots yesterday before the mosquitoes got to me again. The first couple were high and left from 25 paces and with 20gr. Pyrodex with a wad. I tried to adjust and found that holding about 2 inches lower put them on the plane with the black area but still to the left. Next, I dropped the charge to about 18 gr and had 2 of 6 in the black, one in the red. Another cylinder of the same load went mostly left and a little high. That was probably my fault since I shot half two handed and half bullseye style. I decided to see what happened at 12 paces from the target and was hitting 6/6 in the red. That's what makes me think the longer range misses are due to my poor technique. One more cylinder from 25 paces and with careful attention to sight picture, such as it is on that gun, and slow fire I put 3/6 in the black but not really grouped at all. I think with more practice I can get to where I hit pretty close to what I'm aiming at.

After a few hundred rounds I'll try longer range shooting and see what happens.

I tried making some paper cartriges but that didn't go too well so I'll practice that this winter when I have some dead time. It wasn't too bad loading from the flask to the measure to the cylinder but I don't have a loading stand and it takes longer to pick the gun up, load, put it down, measure another charge, pick it up, etc. I've got a couple hundred .38 special empties and I'm going to load a single powder charge in each, close it with a wad and carry powder that way to try and cut down on the loading time.

Anyway, I'm having a great time with the gun, definitely a lot of entertainment for the money. Thanks to everyone on the forum who gave me all the input last week. Now I'm thinking of getting a pocket revolver too. This could be habit forming. :thanks:

DaveJ

 

[Kettleman]

Dave,

I shoot both a 51 and 61 Navy. The easist way to load with out a stand is to buy a flask with funnel sized to the charge you want. I use a 20gr funnel, and have loaded with and without a wad. Once you get used to using the flask method, the paper cartridges will not seem efficient. I shoot cowboy action with several guys who have more experience with cap n ball and non of them use the paper method. With the flask you can hold the pistol in one hand and with your off hand handle everything else. The way I load is as follows, half cock, pour poweder, place wad, ball or both, move under rammer and ram home. While ram is in down position, repeat process for the next spot. Repeat until 5 are loaded. The cap the loaded cylinders.

For cleanup, I have found a mixture of Murphey's oil soap, Windex with vinegar and water mixed equally and despensed with a spray bottle works wonders for cleanup. I have found that I can clean each pistol in about 15 minutes start to finish. I soak everything pretty good after disassembly and then clean up with patches. Most of the time the cylinder and barrel come clean after a few patches. After cleaning I blow the mosture out with compressed air and oil.

Another hint, learned the hard way. Remove the nipples and clean the threads real good and put automotive anit-sieze on the threads when reinstalling. It helps when you have to remove the nipples for cleaning.

Have fun with that '51

Kettleman

 

[DaveJ]

Kettleman,

I've been having a great time with it. I've been putting my powder charge in .38 spl. casings and then sealing those with a wonderwad. When I'm out shooting I just pop the wad out with my knife, pour in the powder and seat the wad and ball. Takes about a minute to load outside and I can load the cartriges in the evening at the kitchen table.

Cleaning has gotten a lot easier as I get practice with it. Solvent or soapy water, scrub it all real good, rinse, bake, butter it up and ready to go.

I'm still not shooting real tight groups consistently but I don't mind practicing. These BP pistols are a lot more fun than modern firearms.

DaveJ

 

[ValleyForge]

Hey, Kettlman -
I also shoot a '61 Colt, and I've been loading it from a powder measure - my measure has one of those funnels on the end of it which is supposed to make life easier, but doesn't (like most things that are supposed to make life easier....). I keep spilling powder, and it makes it difficult to get a consistent load in the chambers. I've thought of loading with a flask, but it seems to me that I've read many different places that loading directly from the flask is inviting trouble and is a distinct no-no. But it sure is tempting. What do the rest of you guys think of this? Do you load directly from the flask?

-- ValleyForge

 

[Kettleman]

Vallyforge,

If you load from a flask get one of the period reproductions that are available. They have a cutoff valve that allow you to despense powder safer than the horn or other types of flasks. I was at Cabela's on Sunday looking at a new Colt style flask, I think it was around $27. You can put different size funnels for different charges, I think the one I use is 20 grains. I use the type of measure you mentioned when I shoot my Bess and 62 caliber smoothie pistol. They work great for single shots, but for revolvers its too close quarters to pour reliably.

If you are not familar with how they work, it is simple. You cover the end of the funnel with your finger and turn upside down. Press the valve button and release. Turn right side up and the funnel is filled with the charge and can be poured into the cylinder. Repeat as necessary. Almost everyone I know who shoots Cap n Ball in Cowboy Action, uses a Colt or Remington style flask. You can see what they look like on the Dixie Gun Works or Cabela's websites. They have them for different calibers and manufacturers.

Kettleman