I fired the 2nd gen. Colt 1860 today.

[jphendren]

Loaded it up with Traditions .451 lead balls and 25gr of Swiss FFFg. Tried both CCI #10 and Remington #11 caps; the #10's fit perfectly. The #11's fit okay but did fall off after firing, but stayed on until fired. Very little recoil and pleasant to shoot. I noticed that windage was dead on, but elevation was about 8-12" high at 25 paces. Once I figured out how low to aim I put two in a row through a Similac bottle at about 25 paces, I was pretty excited.

After 4 cylinders full the cylinder still turned nice and easy, and the hammer pull is very smooth on this Colt. Trigger pull was very good as well with no creep.

Black powder cleans up very easy compared to smokeless, hot soapy water and it just melts away.

Can you use felt wads in place of the lube over the ball? That is my only complaint about shooting this Colt. I am using Ayers lube and it is dang messy, flew all over my pants and shoes when firing.

Jared

 

[Son of Sam]

Sure, you can use felt wads. I use non-lubed wads under the balls in my 1858 all the time. I go for the non-lubed wads because I generally like to load up a few cylinders at a time and may only shoot one or two cylinders and leave the others sit for a month or so (but I still clean the pistol after shooting). I don't want any lube affecting the powder if a cylinder were to sit loaded, that's all.

You might even try lube pills under the ball... A quick search for that within this forum will tell you plenty of good things about them, and how easy to make at home, too.

Glad you had a good time shooting her!

 

[sixgun MAK]

Colt 2nd generation guns are very well made!

 

[English Bob]

Black powder cleans up very easy compared to smokeless, hot soapy water and it just melts away.

Very well said indeed Sir! It's so true, it's far easier to clean up than that new fangled smokeless stuff.

 

[scrat]

Can you use felt wads in place of the lube over the ball? That is my only complaint about shooting this Colt. I am using Ayers lube and it is dang messy, flew all over my pants and shoes when firing.

Jared

totally agree thats why i am either going to try and buy a big bulk bag of them or start to make them.

 

[fineredmist]

Most BP revolvers of the Colt type will shoot high at 25 yards as they were regulated to engage targets out to 50 yards. They were (the early large Colts) were intended for mounted use which required they be effective at 50 yards not only for accuracy but also for bullet performance. If you do some research into the performance of .44 caliber round ball fired from on of these hand canons you will be suprised at how effective they were. One of the reasons for these large heavy and powerful revolvers was to shoot the horses out from under the enemy and they did this very well. The conical ball gave increased velocity, flatter trajectory but excessive penatration whereas the lighter round ball dumped it's energy in the target. Slow moving soft lead bullets are deadly in a handgun or in a rifle but are severly limited by their rainbow trajectories.