JSG SP in my 1860 Army Colt

[frontiergander]

I decided to fire her off after having it loaded for over a week.

Its my 1860 army colt .44cal I bought from Traditions around this time last year. Great shooting little revolver but today I got my best accuracy and consistency from it today!

I used 20gr Jim Shockeys Gold Super Powder, .451" round ball, Frontier's Anti rust & patch lube over the balls and Remington #10 percussion caps.

Distance of 11 yards measured.

Recoil was more noticeable but still very comfortable to shoot. HUGE amount of smoke! That cylinder was pouring white bluish white smoke for a while after each shot.



First 6 shots. The dead alone was #1


Went inside to reload and fired 6 more shots! I've never had this kind of accuracy out of this revolver! Its shooting a god 5" high and a bit to the right, but that's ok, I just use it for cheap shooting fun when I don't feel like shooting my .58cal hammer.


I'll do a whole lot more of shooting now that I know its accurate in this 1860! Maybe take it out to 20 or 25 yards next time and see how she does.

 

[Ephraim Kibbey]

Maybe, like a fine wine, aging adds something extra to a black powder load.

 

[Crawdad1]

That 1860 Army of yours does shoot good!!! And It likes that 451 round ball. In my experience that's unusual.

 

[Tommygunn]

That 1860 Army of yours does shoot good!!! And It likes that 451 round ball. In my experience that's unusual.

I have a Pietta 1860 that likes .451, and a Uberti that likes .454.
In fact my Remingtons also break down that way.

 

[Crawdad1]

I see in your load description you seat the ball right on top of the powder. That ball must sit deep in the chamber. Have you experimented on any wad combinations during your work up to this loading?

I've noticed on my 1860 Army it doesn't seem to matter where that ball sits in the chamber of course, I haven't really done exhaustive testing on it either.

 

[Hellgate]

If you are daring you can take a Dremel cutting wheel and carefully deepen and slightly widen the rear hammer notch and that will "lower" your rear sight and bring the POA closer to POI. I have ground down the hammer top to further lower the rear sight in guns that shot way high. I doubt yours needs that. Also there is a limit to how low you can go depending on whether there is clearance over the barrel to see the front sight.

 

[Crawdad1]

I agree there. I not only cut a deeper 'V' in my hammer sight but also slightly to the left to adjust for elevation and windage. I bought a spare hammer just in case. That's the thing about Colts you can make slight adjustments using the hammer sight.

 

[Crawdad1]

From these recent posts about target shooting, it looks like these Colt repros are starting to shoot as good as the old Second and Third Generation Colts. They're finally getting their act together, which is good for us as those Second and Third Generation Colts are getting more and more expensive.