Possibly unsafe?

You had me at the "Taylor" reference. But a quick google tells me that these are Uberti replica guns sold by Taylor.

The open top style replaces the top strap of the usual frame with a very stout cylinder arbor. The barrel is then held to the gun by a wedge that passes thru this arbor and a support pad on the lower portion of the frame. The design showed up in the early Colt single action revolvers such as the 1851 and 1860. They were later converted to handle the then new cartridges and were sold as cartridge conversions. So your Taylor/Uberti 1871 is actually a more or less faithful rendition of the old original.

You have nothing to worry about if you stick to normal spec .45Colt loads that do not exceed 16K of pressure.

Even then I suspect that the guns will shoot loose with full pressure loads of smokeless over not a lot of time. It won't blow up. But you'll likely find that it's not as tight as it used to be. But if you reduce the loads a little or shoot black powder loads then the gun will be highly reliable and durable.

The arbor is threaded and lock pinned into the recoil shield. It ain't goin' no where without a stick of Dynamite or a zip disc cutter....

You can see the small end of the barrel wedge sticking out a little just below the rear of the ejector housing in your picture. The way to remove it is to use a hardwood or brass punch and tap it out. It'll come partway out the other side. At that point you can wiggle the barrel a little and pull forward at the same time and the barrel and ejector will slide or pop off depending on how clean or sticky the gun is. At that point the cylinder can slide forward off the arbor for cleaning.

When you put the cylinder and barrel back on resist the urge to hammer the wedge back in with a big mallet. They do just fine with a firm finger push or at most a light tap with a small block of hardwood such as maple.

Don't sweat the strength. They are fine with the sort of loads I suggested in my last post. A lot of us enjoy shooting the old Colt open top designs in both "proper" cap and ball black powder versions and the "Johnny come lately" conversions like yours Just do NOT stick any hot loads such as a lot of folks would use from a Ruger for hunting into the gun. It's not made for that sort of stuff. Stick with cowboy action or moderate loads that peak at around 12K to 13K and the gun will last and endure in fine condition for YEARS to come.

And I can vouch that there is nothing "mouse fart" like about a 12 to 13K .45Colt load. Unless you're a Magnum recoil junky such loads will give your hand a solid but friendly kick to let you know you're shooting something quite serious.

Show this gun off in the Black Powder forum and the guys will chuckle to themselves at your concern before writing you a reply that says much the same as I've posted.

You're a very lucky sort of guy to have one of these. For some reason they charge a pretty premium price for them. They are often VERY nice shooters. As I said, Uberti makes a nice gun and the bore and muzzle recieve all the right sort of attention to ensure a very good level of accuracy for the gun.

You'll likely find that it shoots best with cast lead bullets. Something reasonably soft so it can obturate and bite into the rifling with the fairly low pressure levels. And if you don't already reload in .45 Colt then you sure want to start. Not many of us are willing to pay for factory ammo for anything that starts with a ".4" other than .40S&W. With reloading your own you can easily keep the cost down to around 20 cents a round. That's $10/50. Compare that to what factory .45Colt costs.


EDIT- Oops I see that you're still considering buying the gun. For some reason I jumped to the assumption that you already had it.

The gun is a modern replica of the cartridge conversions done in the mid 1800's to percussion Colts. These where converted by various gunsmiths of that time and not by Colt as Smith and Wesson held the patents for the self contained cartridge. They are primarily marketed to Cowboy Action shooters who want a less common historical type revolver.

The gun appeals to those who want an unusual piece and want to enjoy shooting it for its uniqueness and historical nostalgia. If you want a shooter there a lots of better modern single action revolvers choices made by Ruger.

They worked fine in 1870 and still work just fine now. And back then for a buck 50 colt would convert one for you too. In fact Colt used to sell them new till about 1875 or so.

Here is one of mine, a Richards conversion of the 1860. This is chambered for the historically correct 44 Colt. The only cartridge the 1860 was converted to handle.



The 1851 and 1861 were chambered for a 38 caliber cartridge as were the 36 caliber pocket revolvers. They were a very good revolver in the time frame and still are. I like mine a lot.

The gun is a modern replica of the cartridge conversions done in the mid 1800's to percussion Colts. These where converted by various gunsmiths of that time and not by Colt as Smith and Wesson held the patents for the self contained cartridge. They are primarily marketed to Cowboy Action shooters who want a less common historical type revolver.

Click to expand...

Howdy

Slight correction. The patent in question is the Rollin White patent on bored through chambers in a revolver cylinder. This patent did not cover self contained cartridges, there were plenty of early cartridges in use at the time. What it covered was the idea of boring the chamber holes straight through a revolver cylinder so cartridges could be loaded. Previously all revolvers had been percussion, with stepped chambers and nipples at the rear. When Smith and Wesson formed their revolver company in 1857, they tried to patent the idea of bored through chambers, only to find out that a former Colt employee named Rollin White had beat them to the punch. White refused to sell his patent out right to S&W so instead he entered into a licensing agreement with them where they paid him a royalty of fifty cents on every revolver they produced. The White patent was in force until about 1869 or 1870, sources vary. S&W were very aggressive about policing the White patent, as a matter of fact it was written into the agreement that it was White's responsibility to police the patent. Lawsuits were filed and most of them were successful, but a few companies managed to get around the White patent because of the need for revolvers during the Civil War. But for the most part, because they had the exclusive arrangement with White, no other American manufacturer could legally produce a cartridge revolver. That is why the only cartridge revolvers used during the Civil War were S&Ws, despite the fact that the technology had been available since 1857.

Cartridge conversions were very popular until the White patent expired. It was difficult to prevent individual gunsmiths from converting percussion revolvers to cartridges. S&W did reach an agreement with Remington to convert percussion revolvers to cartridge, but that was the only instance of factory conversions while the White patent was still in force. When the White patent expired around 1870 Colt introduced several conversion models, some being converted from percussion guns, others designed from the ground up as cartridge guns. It was not until 1873 that Colt finally introduced the Single Action Army with its topstrap, designed from the ground up for cartridges.

Regarding the current crop of conversion revolvers, none of them were ever originally chambered for 45 Colt, the largest were the 44 caliber revolvers. The idea of putting 45 Colt into a conversion revolver is a completely new idea. Because of the relatively thinner cylinder walls with the 45, chamber pressure should be restricted to SAAMI max pressure of 14,000 psi.

besides the one in the pic has no rear sight,

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It has a rear sight.

A notch in the hammer you can only see when it is cocked is the rear sight on a Colt.

rc

They are great firearms with alot of historical appeal. I doubt I'd pay $500 for one even though they are very high on my list of handguns to buy.

There are four on Gun Broker right now by Cimarron. Between $417 and $499

Actually, the rear sight on the one in my photo is mounted on the conversion ring between the cylinder and the frame. It can be seen, faintly, just in front of the hammer.

Earlier, the C&B revolves had the rear sight on the hammer as mentioned by rcmodel, and later conversions by Colt, had the rear sight either mounted on the rear of the barrel or on the hammer.

A lot of folks think the hammer mounted sight is a poor choice but a lot of good scores have been turned in by those willing to practice.

Just keep Cowboy loads in it and it will shot just fine, no jacketed ammo, I have conversion cylinders for my Remington 1858 I shoot mild reloads using Trail Boss powder and lead cast bullets its 45 Colt, and a 1851 Colt that I shoot 38 Special hollow base wad cutters in.

Granted that modern steel is a whole lot better than the wrought iron used in the original frames, but it is worth noting that Colt, faced with the desire of the Army for a more powerful round than the .44 Colt, scrapped the open top design and went to a top strap in the SAA.

Jim

JimK, the first revolver Colts submitted to the trials was an open top. It was only at the Army's insistance that Colts incorporated a topstrap into the design. It is thought that the first revovler of the Model P pattern submitted was cut for a 44 caliber of some sort and returned by the Army to be chambered for a 45 caliber cartridge.

The gun shown in the pic from the Original Poster is a replica of a 1872 Open Top, which wasn't a conversion. Those were built from the ground up as a cartridge gun. The rear sight on this model is at the rear of the barrel. Tough to see in the O.P.'s pic, but it's there.

These are a bit different than various conversions on the 1860 cap & ball frame like Straw Hats.

Yes, they look very similar, but if you look close they aren't the same.


Here's a link with some info and pics of an orginal 1872 Open Top.

http://www.rockislandauction.com/viewitem/aid/56/lid/1216