Remington 1858 questions

On thinking about it, in the 44 years that I've been using it I've never fired my Remmie more than 48 rounds without a wipedown, so I've never had it jam up from fouling. My usual lube is Crisco in cool weather and Crisco blended with pure white beeswax in warmer weather.
-And if you can boil eggs and wash pots then you can clean a Remington.

Howdy Again

The 'safety notches' for want of a better word, on my R&D cylinders are useless. The hammer nose of my old EuroArms Remmie is too fat to fit into them. I could always grind down the hammer nose cheeks a bit if I really wanted to, but since I only use it in CAS, where only loading five rounds, not six, is mandatory, I simply only load five rounds and let the hammer down on an empty chamber.






You will notice there are 'viewing windows' cut into the sides of my cylinder. When I bought it, it would not accept the wider rims of Schofield shells. Schofield rims run about .520 in diameter, 45 Colt rims run about .512 in diameter. The cylinder is chambjered for 45 Colt, but as I said earlier, I prefer to shoot the lighter 45 Schofield round in it. So I took the cylinder to my favorite gunsmith and had him open up the counterbores for the rims enough to accept 45 Schofield rims. While he was at it I had him cut through to the outside diameter of the cylinder to create 'viewing windows'. We decided to do this because the steel would have been very thin there anyway. This allows me to see which chamber is empty from the outside, unlike a Colt, you cannot tell where the empty chamber is by looking at the side. I don't know if they took the hint from me or not, but I understand the six chamber 45 Colt cylinders that Taylors sells now include this feature, and can chamber 45 Schofield as well as 45 Colt.








This is actually another cylinder for an Uberti 1858, but you get the idea.






Some of the original conversion revolvers made by Colt did in fact have 12 locking notches on the cylinder rather than six. This was so the cylinder could be locked with the hammer down between chambers.

Back to the OP...It's no problem to pull the cylinder and wipe the pin down every dozen shots or so. And the back of the cylinder every 25 shots or so. This will keep you running fine.

I've been using Black MZ in my revolvers, it's 2fg. Works ok, not real energetic.

x_wrench said:

Driftwood Johnson, W O W ! ! ! ! ! THANKS !!! those both awesome posts! it appears to me that there is plenty of material in the cylinder to machine it for a small bushing, and an o-ring would all but seal the shaft so nothing would get into it. and a new pin with spiral grooves would be easy enough to make. / i am a little thrown by using 2F powder in a revolver. i thought 3 F was what you had to use. what are the bullets shown in the pics? i knew you could use conical bullets, but i have not seen those before.

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Howdy Again

Yes, there is room in the cylinder to machine a counterbore and install a bushing. Then a corresponding amount of metal has to be removed from the frame to accommodate the bushing. I have seen it done. Forget O-Rings, they will not stand up to the heat. Remember the Challenger?

The old standard for FFg vs FFFg used to be FFg was used in everything over 45 caliber, FFFg was used in everything under 45 caliber. In point of fact, it does not make much difference. I used to use FFFg in all my revolver rounds and FFg in my shotgun rounds. But after a while I got tired of stocking two different granulations. Now I use FFg in everything. You can expect somewhere between 60 fps and 100 fps more velocity when using FFFg instead of FFg, all other things being equal.

If you look carefully, I actually did cut some grooves around the pin on my old EuroArms Remmie. I tried packing the grooves with bore butter. It did not help much. Cutting a helical (not spiral, spirals are a two dimensional figure) groove on the pin would require a lathe that can cut screw threads. The grooves would be square shaped. It does not work too well on a 1/4" diameter pin, cut too deep and you weaken the pin.

The bullets in the photo are Big Lube bullets, meant for Black Powder cartridges. The Big Lube bullets were developed specifically for Black Powder cartridges. They have huge lube grooves to carry lots of soft, BP compatible bullet lube. You can read more about them in the link I provided. The ones shown will not work in a percussion revolver, they are too big to seat. The problem with conical bullets is seating them without the bullets tipping over. There is a specific Big Lube design that is designed for Cap & Ball revolvers. They have a rebate at the rear to allow them to seat without tipping.

http://www.biglube.com/BulletMolds.aspx?ItemID=09d6fdda-c105-4c87-b269-68ebfdaba982

Lee makes a mold as well that casts a rebated base. It was originally designed for the Ruger old army and Walker. The mold is a lot less expensive and they work well if you take proper care of them. Use pure lead and its not hard to seat in the chamber.

Or create your own designs at Accurate Molds as a few of us have.

I can go 100's of shots and many months without a complete clean even just shooting real black powder.


and how its done with the 1858

Driftwood, I went the other way and just stock 3F. With my shotguns - 12ga 1oz of shot, 70grs 3F. Even my 10ga uses 1 1/8oz and 80grs of 3F. Oh, good post, thanks.

Damoc

I gotta tell you I cringed every time you dropped an empty cylinder on the ground. At around $200 or more each, I hope you had a blanket spread out to catch them. Or I hope the ground was soft and you did not drop then on each other.

Driftwood Johnson said:

Damoc

I gotta tell you I cringed every time you dropped an empty cylinder on the ground. At around $200 or more each, I hope you had a blanket spread out to catch them. Or I hope the ground was soft and you did not drop then on each other.

Click to expand...

Yes I had a mattress spread out beneath me for safety and to protect my investment.

damoc,

Why lard instead of tallow with beeswax? I've always rendered deer tallow for my own use. Does the lard you use not contain a lot of salt? I would have concerns leaving guns loaded with that over time.

Cowhide Cliff said:

damoc,

Why lard instead of tallow with beeswax? I've always rendered deer tallow for my own use. Does the lard you use not contain a lot of salt? I would have concerns leaving guns loaded with that over time.

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Tallow is good enough/firm enough on its own lard is very soft and needs a bit of firming up and to prevent melting at reasonable outdoor temperatures.
if you hunt or raise your own beef or mutton you probably have plenty of tallow but Ive found it hard to find in the stores I shop in so I mix up lard and
beeswax.It does contain some salt but not like leftover bacon grease if you need to get the salt out of bacon grease to use in bullet lube you can do this.

The Snow Cap lard sold at Safeway has zero sodium. Also has preservatives in it (BHT and BHA - antioxidants) that should prolong the time before it goes rancid and perhaps retard oxidation. I rub a bit on all my parts before reassembling. I use wonder wads for shooting though.

Dang!!

I'd just pack the frame (totally) with Mobile1 and clean it yearly (if needed!). Just clean the barrel and cyl and wipe down the frame and cleaning is done. (Parts are protected the whole time)

Mike

I'll never forget Hildo's post showing the accumulated gunk inside of his Walker.
But no rust do to his practice of saturating it with peanut or olive oil until it was time to clean it out.
See post #16:--->>> https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/serious-do-do-h-e-l-p.366903/#post-4568639

A friend of mine helped put himself through college doing western shows (with two replica Colt 1851s) and he said he packed them with axel grease. I asked about rust, he said never. He did this back in the days before the internet, so he never heard about it reacting to BP.

Hey!! I'm telling ya, that's from the racing bunch. Mobile1 plays well with bp so pack it and forget it!!

Clean it when ya think about it!!

Mike