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Treso Nipples

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Got mine from the possible shop that has an ad here. They are in six of my pistols now.
 
Treso recommends #11 caps. Will Remington #10 caps fit properly on Treso revolver nipples for my Pietta 1858?

Fran
 
Probably not. I have them on my Rugers, and they seem to like Remington 11's best.
 
I just got a set today from Don at The Possible Shop for my Uberti 1860.

Remington #10s fit great...#11s are a bit loose and would probably fall off under recoil.
 
It could be a case of the Italian guns seem to use 10's, and the ROA uses 11's, so that could be the way they're made.
 
Most of the reproduction revolvers are made in Italy. They take a slightly smaller Nipple Wrench than you use on an American Percussion rifle nipple. I had a nipple wrench from Navy Arms years ago, when I owned a replica revolver. I also then bought a T/C nipple wrench to use on my rifle.

The pistols usually use the #10 caps. Guns made in America, like the Ruger Old Action Army- take the larger #11 caps. I always considered the #10 caps a royal pain in the butt, because they were so difficult to remove after firing. The didn't have enough back pressure to split the skirt on the nipple to aid in removing it from the nipple.
 
Fran said:
Do you need a special revolver nipple wrench for Treso nipples?

Fran

The same nipple wrench that worked for the factory nipples works on the Tresos. Yes, that is a revolver nipple wrench. The wrench you would use for a rifle will not work.
 
paulvallandigham said:
The pistols usually use the #10 caps. Guns made in America, like the Ruger Old Action Army- take the larger #11 caps.

Paul, I'm surprised at you. Surely you've seen this data before:
CapSizes.jpg
 
McKeal: My brother bought a ROA and to his shock, his #10 caps would not fit on the nipples. He bought #11 caps- Remington, I believe, and had been using them on a caplock rifle. They worked well on the ROA revolver, too. We both owned Italian Replica .36 Navy revolvers( model 1851). Both used #10 caps, and were, as I have already said, a Royal PITA to use. I had a pair of needle nose pliers dedicated to use for that revolver, only, just to remove those caps.

Obviously, Your experience has varied from my own. I asked about this both at my own club, and over at Friendship when I was shopping for caps for a new caplock rifle, and for that revolver. I got the same advice from the merchants at several different stalls, including Dixie Gun Works. Apparently their experiences were different from yours, too.

If I am incorrect, I will apologize for that. So far, I have seen nothing in your diameter statistics that lends me to believe that you don't need the larger cap for American Made replica revolvers. I also own some original Pepperbox pistols, made in the 1820s, and .30s and they seem to use the smaller, #10 caps. Perhaps that is how the mix-up occurred with the European imports.

Best wishes to you.
 
No apology needed, Paul. I have for a long time ranted about cap sizes being inconsistent from brand to brand and even withing brands and sizes. I just don't believe you can count on any given brand or 'size' being the same from batch to batch. Add to that what is also significant inconsistency in nipple dimensions from manufacturer to manufacturer, and even within a given brand and model, from year to year, and it's just a manure shoot.


My point in the above post was that No. 11 isn't necessarily a larger cap. Remington No. 10's are often larger than Remington No. 11's. I will admit that I've had people both confirm and refute that statement, both of which lead me back to my original thesis: you don't get 3 decimal place precision for 4 cents each.
 
mykeal said:
No. 11 isn't necessarily a larger cap. Remington No. 10's are often larger than Remington No. 11's. I will admit that I've had people both confirm and refute that statement, both of which lead me back to my original thesis: you don't get 3 decimal place precision for 4 cents each.

From what I can tell Remington #10s and #11s are the same diameter, but the #10s are significantly longer. This is backed up by your measurements, mykeal.

That's why the #10s fit better on alot of nipples...they seat farther onto the tapered nipple.
 
Part of the problem is that all these things have changed over the years. My early experience with caps and nipples was back in the late 1950s. In the early 1980s, I put together a CVA DB shotgun kit, and then bought 1,000 caps ( CCI #11) from a dealer over at Friendship. I had intended to do a lot of hunting and shooting, but professional commitments changed all that. I believe I sold or traded off about 300 caps to other members in my club, and shot the rest. I still have 3-400 left. I have not taken a caliper or micrometer to those caps. I know they fit on the stainless steel nipples on my shotgun. I opened the hairlip on the skirt of the hammer, to make sure that the caps broke off and split when fired, so that they can be easily removed without needlenose pliers. I also used a grinding stone bit to thin the skirt on the inside, so that the cap could expand easily. The earliest caps we bought came from Navy arms. It was much later, during the 1970s, that I bought some Remington caps at Friendship. I liked them, but often can't find them to buy. I have shot some of the RWS caps, and they are the trouble ones on my caplock revolver, and were much tighter( smaller in diameter) then, than the CCI caps I bought to get past the problem. I used to pinch the CCI caps before putting them on the nipples of that revolver, so they would stay on during recoil.

With your current data, I can't imagine what advice I would give to percussion shooters about choosing caps-- maybe, tell them to come over to the Dark Side, and shoot FLINT! :blah: :rotf: :thumbsup:

I think we are all stuck with using a micrometer to measure the necks of the nipples we buy, and then measure the diameter of the caps we think it will use. OR, take a nipple with you to test the caps before you spend your money. When I bought those 1,000 caps, they cost me less than 2 cents each.
 
Had to get mine from Australia via ebay. All the places I contacted in the US wouldn’t ship to UK. I now make my own musket nipples and working on ones for my ROA.
 
Ampco are the best and longest-lasting nipples made, and Jedediah-Starr has the best selection of them on hand.
https://www.jedediah-starr.com/closeup.asp?cid=76&pid=3032&offset=0
Once upon a time, both Uberti & Pietta appeared to have their nipples inspected and sorted by a troop of drunken monkeys. It wasn't unusual to get a revolver with several nipples that fit #10 caps just fine, and the rest needing #11's. At one point I bought several C&B revolvers in a year, plus a few spare cylinders. I quickly tired of the oddball sizing within any particular cylinder, so I removed them all and sorted them by size. While this eased the fit problem, I eventually got several sets of Treso/Ampco nipples and switched over to shooting #11 caps in my most frequently used revolvers. I found it easiest to sort to fit a couple of .36 cal pistols with #10 nipples because of those I already had on hand - someday when they're worn out, I'll switch over to Ampcos
 
I bought some Ampco nipples and my TC nipple wrench did't fit. The #11 CCI caps I have didn't fit and would fall easily the nipple just walking around. I decided to fix them and made a video.

 
Thanks Ron.
I think that AMPCO nipples are made from a copper/aluminum/iron mixture of bronze. As you found, it can be very hard and it is very resistant to hot gas corrosion.
AMPCO makes dozens of different alloys with many different hardnesses so I can't say exactly which alloy they used.

As for modifying the nipple to get the caps fitting better, you method is one that works.
Perhaps a better one is to carefully file off the end of the cone so it is a little shorter.

Because of the taper of the cone, if the end of the nipple is filed off, the bottom edge of the cap will move further down into a larger diameter on the cone. That will tighten up the fit so the caps won't fall off.
 
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