The life of an 1858 repro

Kinda funny that you accidentally ended up with that finish. There are lot's of instructional videos on how to purposely give a c&b revolver that aged look. Personally, I like the look! I'd just do a little work on the wood grips to make them look equally aged.

Not bad looking at all.

+1 I like the look as well. This is a pick one I stripped and polished I applied Johnson's paste wax to protect metal this gun was shot not a safe Queen. Sorry about the pic I found it on Goggle by accident.

I like the way that the grips look.
Is it a Pietta or Uberti?

It is a Pietta.

Mike 56

Nice job with the refinishing; looks nicely aged!

I use alcohol or water based dye. Woodcraft is the supplier I’ve used most recently.

I am a retired Flooring installer I color-matched a lot of hardwood moldings. If you want to mix your own buy these dry Rit dye colors, yellow, dark brown, and red. These colors will make any color wood stain mixed with 91% isopropyl alcohol. This type of stain drys fast you can apply coats minutes apart and it will on even. A good over the counter stain dark brown leather dye drys fast goes on even. For a hand-rubbed oil finish, I like linseed oil that buy at a craft store in the area where they sell oil paints. It costs more hardware store linseed oil about ten dollars for a small bottle but it goes a long way. you put a few drops on the wood and rub it in with your fingers. When I use stain polyurethane I add 25% paint thinner to cut the gloss and thins it so you can rub it in with my fingers in thin coats. The box in the pic is one coat dark brown leather dye with four coats of hand-rubbed linseed oil.

CAP JAMS !!!!

That's not possible with a Remington according to some folks around here!!! Lol!!!

Mike

With Piettas it's kind of a crap shoot that depends on when they were made and other factors.

My Pietta Remington only required that the mainspring be thinned a bit to get the hammer draw down.
Otherwise it's great. The sights are close enough for twenty yard point of aim shooting, timing is great, cap jams are not a problem, and the machining is smooth. With natural over-ball lubes, fouling no longer troubles me. It's satisfyingly messy but clean-up is easy enough.

I also owned a Euroarms Remington back in the 1970s which also needed the mainspring thinned to reduce the hammer draw. The front sight was too low and I made a replacement that worked out very well, which looks much like the Pietta front sight today. That gun had few problems with cap jamming as well.
The base pin was not as smooth as the Pietta and I did not understand about natural over-ball lubricant concoctions, so fouling and dragging was more of a problem back then. It was a very nice gun though.

I also own a .44 caliber 1851 Navy that isn't so good. The upper half seems fine but the grip straps are fubar. Misaligned placement of screw holes, no fitting of the hammer and trigger sears resulting in a very light trigger pull, wrong grip angle. I will need to replace the grip straps and the grip as well no doubt. I already did some grinding and stoning of the back of the trigger to deepen the engagement of the sears. It's safer now with a bit of a creepy trigger pull, but not ideal. The angles are still not right and I am not going to mess with that. I have a spare parts kit though, so maybe in future I may attempt more.
The revolver performed okay at the range, though it shot 8" low at 10 yards! With the hammer notch rear sight, apparently this was a common (and authentic) characteristic of open-top Colts, according to "duelist1954" on his You-Tube channel.
Cap jams were an issue with some 45 year old German caps that found nasty ways to latch on to the nipples. But CCI were about par, and cleared the action okay, though not as well or as smoothly as with the Remington revolvers. Slix Shot vented nipples do help a lot though, reportedly.
All in all it seems worth replacing and fitting some brass grip straps, and maybe the grips, because the upper half of the revolver is well-made and works well and accuracy is good. And I got it new in the box cheap as a mail order gun.
(I think that I know why.)

The point is that, in general, Remington revolvers do have less problems with cap jamming than open-top Colts do, and this is agreed upon by those that use C&B revolvers a lot and and write professionally about them.
And, if you buy a nice Uberti Remington or open-top Colt, this is still true.
But if you buy either a Pietta Remington or Colt replica, you may get a good one or you might not.
Quality varies from excellent in some cases, such as my Remington, and in particular my 1873 Colt SAA, to partially abysmal in other cases such as this open-top Colt.
It has nothing to do with whether it is a Colt or a Remington or a Spiller & Burr or whatever.
It's just about Pietta and perhaps other lower-priced replica makers.

I suggest that you peruse the many knowledgeable C&B revolver and BP gun videos by Mike Beliveau on his You-Tube channel "duelist 1954".
His views are impartial and practical, and you will learn a lot about buying, tuning, cleaning, shooting, and modifying C&B revolvers and BP guns in general.

I just checked Slix Shot vented nipples:



https://www.slixprings.com/proddetail.php?prod=SliXshot-Black-Powder-Nipples

What is the purpose of those side holes? Wouldn't they increase possibility of chain fire? A number of sources specify that chain fire mostly starts from the back through caps and nipples, very seldom from the front side.

45 Dragoon said:

CAP JAMS !!!!

That's not possible with a Remington according to some folks around here!!! Lol!!!

Mike

Click to expand...

That is the reason I like this system:



Article http://www.targetshooter.co.uk/?p=3220 . Westlake http://www.westlakeengineering.com/products/ .

I contacted Howell Arms if they could make such cylinder (with back plate and firing pins) for Ruger Old Army. Minimum is 50...

Onty said:

What is the purpose of those side holes? Wouldn't they increase possibility of chain fire? A number of sources specify that chain fire mostly starts from the back through caps and nipples, very seldom from the front side.

Click to expand...

Caps on a C&B revolver split, flatten, and shred, and often fall off the nipple when the hammer is cocked for the next shot.
In my experience with a Remington however, this usually only results in the cap remaining confined inside the clearance area around the nipple in the cylinder, thanks to the small slot that the hammer passes through in the frame.
Also, thanks to the flat and smooth face on the hammer the cap does not stick to the hammer face.
As a result, fired caps usually just fall off onto the ground as the cylinder revolves to the right when the hammer is cocked. There is a clearance cut in the recoil shield to permit this.
On a Colt open-top revolver, however, the cap is able to fall off and into the action in front of the hammer, thanks to the full-width opening that the hammer passes through.
Also, the safety pin notch cut into the hammer face encourages what has been described as cap-sucking.
Fired caps are sometimes pushed into this slot by back pressure and stick to the hammer.
They can then fall off into the action.
As a result, cap jams are more of a problem with the Colt open-top design.

Slix Shot nipples help to eliminate the problems in the Colts by venting the back pressure gas through the side vent holes in a controlled and safe manner, rather than out the nipple hole itself.
As a result the fired cap remains less damaged and usually stays on the nipple and out of the action.
It just falls off at the side like it is supposed to, or gets picked off when the revolver is reloaded.
I have not heard of any chain fires caused by this.
The internal bore of Slix Shot nipples is larger than standard nipples which helps to reduce the back pressure as gas emerges from the nipple flash hole.

A couple of videos from duelist1954 about this.
You can learn a lot from this guy (and others).

Used motor oil can make a nice darker stain that is hard to replicate (in my experience)
The wood needs to be in a condition to "accept" the oil

Malachi Leviticus Blue said:

Used motor oil can make a nice darker stain that is hard to replicate (in my experience)
The wood needs to be in a condition to "accept" the oil

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The only oil that should be used on any gun stock is boiled linseed oil with dryers, obtained from the home center. Tru-Oil or Linspeed can also be used if you don't mind a half-varnish finish.

Motor oil or gun oil will soften and damage the wood as many owners have discovered when they repeatedly over-oiled a pet long gun and left it standing in a corner.

Fiebings leather dyes are aniline dyes which work equally well on wood and come in different shades of brown. Available from leathercraft stores. They work great on knife handle projects.

Old Stumpy said:

...Motor oil or gun oil will soften and damage the wood...

Click to expand...

I'll keep an open mind, but do you have any evidence of this?
Willing to share a link to documentation?
I've not seen this first hand.
Not "over oiling" but just oiling.
Thank you for sharing.

Malachi Leviticus Blue said:

I'll keep an open mind, but do you have any evidence of this?
Willing to share a link to documentation?
I've not seen this first hand.
Not "over oiling" but just oiling.
Thank you for sharing.

Click to expand...

I certainly don’t have proof but I do know that waste oil is chock full of nasty carcinogens and metals that I prefer not to be in intimate contact with. Also that color with a bit of experimentation with dyes can be replicated easily. Not that a quality set of walnut stocks need much in the way of augmentation. The best thing about dye is that the figure or grain of the wood comes through clearly, it’s not muddied up by the stain.

Malachi Leviticus Blue said:

I'll keep an open mind, but do you have any evidence of this?
Willing to share a link to documentation?
I've not seen this first hand.
Not "over oiling" but just oiling.
Thank you for sharing.

Click to expand...

Any good book on gun care or gunsmithing written in the last century will confirm that petroleum based oils soaking into stocks is to be avoided.
Though it should be obvious.
But if you wish to do it, knock yourself out.

Old Stumpy said:

...Though it should be obvious..

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It's only obvious to someone who is unwilling to consider that their assumptions might not be correct.
There are lots of folks who have utilized new and used motor oil on wood.
I'm sure there are much better treatment against weather etc., but...
The OPs stated goal was "to try and made it look old and weathered"
I've seen pistol grips, furniture and flooring where used motor oil was utilized to help give it an old "antiqued" look.

Malachi Leviticus Blue said:

It's only obvious to someone who is unwilling to consider that their assumptions might not be correct.
There are lots of folks who have utilized new and used motor oil on wood.
I'm sure there are much better treatment against weather etc., but...
The OPs stated goal was "to try and made it look old and weathered"
I've seen pistol grips, furniture and flooring where used motor oil was utilized to help give it an old "antiqued" look.

Click to expand...

The only oil that should be used on a gunstock is boiled linseed oil with dryers, or a similar product.
Common sense dictates that a wood finish is used that will actually dry, harden, and protect the wood, and not fill the pores with anything that will cause it to become soft and punky.
I'm sure that some people have used dirty motor oil to darken gun stocks over the years. But it is definitely not recommended.
Farmers have used dirty motor oil and diesel fuel to treat and stain fence posts and rails for generations, and I'm sure that for this purpose it works okay.
But a gun stock or hardwood woodworking project is a far cry from a fence.
Over the years people have tried all sorts of home-brewed concoctions that often did more harm than good.

And there are so many other stains that can be used that won't harm the wood:

- Fiebings leather aniline dyes.
- Commercial wood stains.
- Vinegar and steel wool (iron acetate) to darken it or ebonize it.
- India ink.

Just to name a few.