Uberti Remington 1875 Outlaw 1st firing

Hi All,

Wanted to report on the first firing of my Uberti 1875 Remington .45. I picked it up yesterday at Sportsman's Warehouse and took it out to the range today. I'm intending to use it with black powder cartridges, but I shot it today with Hornady 255 grain Cowboy loads. I don't have my reloading press up yet (or any saved brass) and the store only had smokeless rounds. I'm pretty happy with the gun overall. It had some drag lines on the cylinder when I bought it, which is annoying, but hopefully not an indication of messed up timing. Here are a couple specific items that I noticed.

The Good

• Accuracy of this gun is excellent. At 10 meters, the gun shoots perfectly with the rounds listed above. No front sight adjustment seems to be needed, which is nice. The front sight blade is nice and thin and the sight-picture through the frame channel is excellent. I'm looking forward to shooting the gun at longer distances.
• Fit and finish look very good. Bluing is even and the case hardening looks nice. Screws are all crisp and I see no signs of marring anywhere on the gun, except for the previously mentioned drag line on the cylinder.

The "Bad"

• Grips are "ok". They don't look bad, but they have sharp corners on the butt that dig into the heel of my palm every time I fire. I will probably spend some time smoothing them out to see if I can make them more comfortable. I may possibly make a new set to experiment with grip shape and sizes as well.
• The 1/4-cock-safety position is weird and takes some getting used to. I'm used to my 1858 C&B and am often dropping the hammer into the 1/4 cock position, instead of all the way down. I'd love to hear what other owners of this gun think of the feature. I was loading 5-round cylinders, so I'm not relying on it. Does seem to work though.

The Ugly

• I had a couple instances where it felt like the cylinder jammed. Am not 100% sure of this, but I know that in one case I had the gun loaded with the hammer down, pulled the hammer back into 1/2 cock and tried to rotate the cylinder and it felt stuck. Pulled the hammer all the way back and the cylinder rotated. I'm hoping there is nothing mechanically worn on the bolt or cam that's causing this.

I admit that I broke one of my rules by firing the gun today before completely stripping, cleaning and oiling and then putting it back together. I had the cylinder out last night and ran some patches down the barrel, but that's all. One thing I noticed today is that unfired cartridges are loose-as-a-goose in the cylinder. I actually wondered if one of the cases had backed out and was getting hung up on the rim somewhere on the recoil shield. Hopefully once I start using reloads, some of that looseness will be addressed by the cases having expanded a bit.

How are other owners of this gun liking it?

Here's a stock one from the Uberti site. I'll take some of my own when I clean it later today.

Thanks to all of you who have responded, really appreciate the feedback. I shot the gun again yesterday and then tore it completely apart to clean it and deburr moving parts. I used HSM cowboy loads this time, 200 grain bullets, and accuracy was still excellent. I did feel like there was higher recoil with these, so I'll probably stick to the 255 grain in the future. (If I can, I'd like to reload using Keith style SWCs that are pre-lubed for BP. If anyone can recommend where to buy them, I'd appreciate it.) I had one instance of the gun not dropping the bolt at half-cock, but going to full cock did the trick. I checked the bolt cam for wear later and it was fine, but I still suspect the hand was binding or sticking somehow. This is entirely possible given the condition of the gun's guts.

I left the ejector housing and load gate alone, but stripped the rest of the gun down to its bits and pieces. There were a couple items of note that are worth mentioning here. There was a small, but noticeable, burr on the lip of the hand, which I carefully stoned down. The sides of the hand were extremely rough with machine marks, which I carefully stoned and then lapped on some wet-dry paper. The hammer and sear notches were fine and I left them alone (the safety notch is a travesty though). The hand channel was rough, really rough. It actually felt like a parkerized finish at first. I used wet dry on a popsicle stick and a bit of WD-40 to polish it up a bit. I suspect it will take multiple iterations to make it as good as I'd like. @Dog Soldier nailed one of the problems on the head when he mentioned the trigger spring as a potential problem area. The spring on this Uberti is stamped out and frankly not of very good quality. It appears that the stamping process distorted the area of the spring that the screw passes though and prevented the spring from fully seating against the frame of the gun. I flattened the spring on a small anvil with a hammer and then faced it flat on a diamond stone. I suspect that it's going to break sometime in the future, but who knows, I've seen other pieces of crap last forever. Everything else seemed ok machanically, so I cleaned, oiled and greased it all and put it back together.

Which brings me to the rust, yes rust. I was shocked at how much rust I pulled out of the lands when I cleaned the bore. I must have bore-brushed at least 4 separate times, repeatedly, with Hoppes #9 and a brass bore brush and run at least a dozen tight, tight patches down the bore. Dry patches are coming out clean now, but I suspect if I run a tight greased patch down, I'll pull more crap out. This is the dirtiest bore I've ever seen and that includes seeing rifles and machine guns that have been out in the field and fired hundreds of times. I have a suspicion that the gun was bought, fired, and returned because of the sticking bolt and that the cylinder was scored at that time. Which means that it probably then sat for months afterwards with a dry and dirty bore. I do recall thinking that it had less grease on it when I pulled it out of the bag than the new Pietta I bought, but I didn't think much of it at the time. IN any case, it's relatively clean now and I've swabbed some Rem-oil through it which will hopefully arrest any further corrosion until I shoot it again next week. I suspect I'll be scrubbing that bore lout ike a maniac for a few months.

I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about this gun. I think that for $399 I got a pretty good deal. I would NOT pay the $549 list price that's being asked by some, that's for sure. It shoots good, which at the end of the day is what really matters, I suppose. I think that with use, and perseverance in maintenance and cleaning, the action will become very smooth and it will operate safely and reliably. At the moment, I wouldn't take this gun to the field with me, only to the range, because I don't fully trust it. Partially that's just because it's new to me. The main reason I purchased this gun was because I wanted to start reloading and shooting .45 BP cartridges. I debated buying a conversion cylinder for my Pietta 1858 (a gun which I absolutely LOVE), but paying $250 and not having a load gate or ejector just felt ridiculous. At the same time, I am VERY comfortable cleaning that Remington action and I know that with BP I'll want to strip and clean the gun after every shooting session. So I think it's a keeper, but it's a bit of a red-headed step child at the moment. One thing I know though, If I decide to buy an 1873 clone at some point in the future, it'll be a Pietta. I prefer the way my 1858 is machined and put together to this 1875 and I don't think that's just a function of the different models.

I'll report further once I have a couple hundred rounds fired through this one.

Cylinder chambers consistently slug out to .453.

Hi @Driftwood Johnson ,

Yes, the gun was sold as new. I purchased it with the score lines because it was the last one in the merchant's inventory across the entire country. It was actually special-ordered and transferred from another location for me. The scoring is something I can live with as the price was right, $399 instead of $599 (or more) elsewhere.

The $250 for an 1858 conversion cylinder is as much as I paid for the gun itself. I refuse to do that, sorry. I'm familiar with how easy it is to drop the cylinder to reload, as I do the same thing. Had not considered using the ramming lever to eject empties, but that's a good idea. If I see them on sale for around $150 sometime, I'll consider getting one - maybe.

I was screwing around with the 1875 a few minutes ago and realized that what's happening. I'm pulling the hammer back past 1/2 cock - sometimes - to the point where the 3rd click of the bolt engaging the cylinder happens. I let go of the hammer and it drops back to 1/2 cock, but the bolt stays engaged. I then think I'm at 1/2 cock and am surprised when I try to rotate the cylinder and find it locked.

I shoot a fair bit of Pyrodex, hence the anal-retentiveness about cleaning. I might be exagerating (a little) about dropping the hammer and other guts out after every shooting session, but not by alot.

Thanks for the reply.

Right, so try this. Slowly pull the hammer back until you hear the 3rd click, then let it go. It will drop into the 1/2 cock hammer notch, but the hand will have slipped off the cam and the bolt will be engaged in the cylinder. So you have a hammer at half cock and a locked cylinder. Somehow, I'm pulling too far past 1/2 cock to where the bolt engages. I'm pretty sure it's operator headspace and timing, not the gun's fault.

Been awhile since I updated this thread and this will likely be my last entry on it in the blackpowder area, since I've moved to shooting smokeless reloads exclusively in this gun. I've now shot around 500 rounds through it and I love it. I think the cylinder locking issues I reported earlier were due to operator headspace and timing. I haven't had any problems since firing the gun more often.

I've fired a box of Pyrodex reloads with 37 grains of powder and 200 grain Oregon Trail cast LRNFP bullets. I needed that much powder to have no air-gap with a thin card wad and that short bullet. Kicked hard, made a big boom and fouled the gun in about 15 rounds. I pressed on to 20 and then stopped because I could barely turn the cylinder. Did that once more and went out to Sportsmans Warehouse and bought some Trailboss powder. Haven't looked back since.

With Trailboss, I've found that 6.4 grains of TB and a 200 grain bullet work great. I've also shot this load with a 250 grain bullet and it seems to work even better. However, fair warning, that last load exceeds the recommended max of 5.8 grn TB for 250 grains. The gun shoots to point of aim at 10 meters with these both of these loads, but I get tighter groups with the heavier bullets.

I've also just recently tried some reloads using Accurate No. 5. I've shot a few rounds with 11 grns No. 5 with 200 grain bullets and also with 250 grain bullets. Again, this load with 250 grain bullets *probably* exceeds the recommended max. I say *probably* because the mfg doesn't have a load listed for 250 grain lead bullets, just 255 grain. 11 grns is the max for a 250 grain jacketed XTP, which means I'm probably getting slightly higher velocity and pressure with a cast lead bullet. That load is also listed by Taffin as being reasonable for SAA and clones though, (http://www.sixguns.com/tests/tt45lc.htm).

The 200 grain bullets with No. 5 are nothing special. For me, they are the least accurate in this gun. The 250 grain bullets are exciting to shoot and fairly accurate as well. I'm not a fan of No. 5 though. It's smoky, my cases are sooty black after they're ejected (although fine otherwise) and the gun is hot after firing. I will probably finish that powder up exclusively in a short barrel Blackhawk and stick with Trailboss in the Uberti.

Anyhow, back to the gun. It seems like it shoots where it's pointed no matter what I feed it. It's easy to clean and the sights work remarkably well. I did use a Sharpie to blacken the entire length of the hog trough, which helped eliminate some glare that I was getting from the case hardened finish and doesn't seem to detract from the overall appearance of the gun.

I highly recommend you have a look at this gun, if you're in the market for a well-made replica.