Trouble with my Remington!

[TheShadow]

Well, boys, here it is. I have a Remington Navy .36 cal revolver. It shoots well, but I can't shoot all 6 shots without the gun siezing up! After 1 shot, I have to work the cylander by hand to get to the next chamber.
Now this could NOT have been the problem for the old timers, or nobody would have wanted the gun!
Anybody have any ideas on how to fix this?

 

[mykeal]

It is not unheard of, and it happened to 'the old timers' also.

I do three things: I liberally apply Bore Butter to the base pin before shooting, I load lubed felt wads to help keep fouling soft, and I use patches soaked in a bp solvent (usually TC No. 13) to clean the base pin occasionally while shooting. Works for me.

 

[TANSTAAFL]

Problem lies with the Remington's small diameter cylinder pin. (as versus Colt's larger grooved one, all a matter of surface area)

When I shoot a cylinder, I pull pin out to the stop, clean it with a damp cloth, liberally relube it with Crisco and reinsert into cylinder.

 

[arquebus]

TheShadow said:

After 1 shot, I have to work the cylander by hand to get to the next chamber.

Seizing up after only one shot seems a bit extreme! Have you checked to see if the balls are creeping forward a bit under recoil & rubbing on the rear of the barrel? If so, you may have to go to .380" diameter balls rather than the more common .375". Lee makes a .380" RB mould.
Just a thought.

 

[Dave Rosenthal]

TheShadow said:

After 1 shot, I have to work the cylander by hand to get to the next chamber.

Seizing up after only one shot seems a bit extreme! Have you checked to see if the balls are creeping forward a bit under recoil & rubbing on the rear of the barrel? If so, you may have to go to .380" diameter balls rather than the more common .375". Lee makes a .380" RB mould.
Just a thought.

That's an excellant point :thumbsup: ! If lubrication (or lack thereof) isn't to blame, the next question to ask the shooter is: Do you get a small amount of lead being shaved-off of the balls as you're seating them in each chamber in the cylinder?? If not, the undersize balls could be jumping forward, even during the light recoil of a .36 cal!

Dave

 

[Zonie]

The ideas about lubrication are good and may solve your problem but your problem might be part of the guns design.

When Remington first offered their pistol to the Army, several things were objected to (although the Army bought quite a few guns).

One of the things the Army didn't like was the fact that the gun would lock up after only a few shots were made and a large part of this problem dealt with the way the frame and barrel were made.

Looking at this picture you can see the Old style and the New style.

The old style is on the right. Notice how close the frame is to the cylinder with almost none of the barrel threads showing? That caused fouling to lock up the cylinder.

Remington went back and redesigned that area to look like the picture on the left.
By exposing the rear of the barrel, it produced a "scraper" to scrape the fouling off of the front of the cylinder.

This redesign (which included several other fixes) was called the NEW ARMY (or NEW NAVY in the case of the .36 cal gun.)

If your gun looks like the OLD ARMY (or NAVY) then you will have to deal with the lock up problem as well as you can.

 

[John Taylor]

Good point about the different designs. If you look at the later cartridge guns they went to a small shroud sticking out of the cylinder about 1/8" to 1/4" that was around the cylinder pin. Colt used a replaceable bushing in their cylinders. The frame has a cut to allow the extra length. This keeps the powder fouling from going to the cylinder pin so the gun should be able to fire with several reloadings before having any trouble. I have done a few Remington conversions that seem to work quite well. The ROA has this .

 

[TheShadow]

Thank you all for the tips; I will try them out and see how it goes. My Remington has the barrel showing, "the new model", so that is good. I'll check the ball seating, and grease the heck out of the cylinder pin. I hope that will fix things!

 

[arquebus]

Report back with what you find.

 

[TheShadow]

Well, I guess it's a good idea to ask for help from people who know!
I went to the range yesterday, and what do you know, my Remington shot a full 6 shot cylander with no troubles at all. Shot really accurate as well!
The second cylander was a little tight, but with some assist I got through that one as well.
What really helped was some after market nipples. With the new nipples, caps split and fell off after each shot, like they should, and I found out that my problem was more caps getting stuck than fouling at the other end.
So thanks to all who helped, I'm back in business now.

 

[kgrohs]

here's somthing else, if your using full power loads it will cause the fouling to occur fast, cut back to 10 grains of 3fg, and instead of using low temp grease to lube your cylinder pin, such as crysco, or bure butter),use a high temp lube, after years of competion, i havent had too much trouble, with the cylinder locking up except when a stinking fired cap gets caught between rear of cylinder,or falls off into the hammer area and locks it up thats a pain in the tail, espescially in a good run at the targets in rapid fire moad. kjg