New 1860 Army (Pietta)

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tpelle

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Today I received my new 1860 Army from Cabelas. Paid $199.99 for the pistol.

Here is my initial evaluation:

So far my impressions are very favorable. Stocks fit well with very nice figure in the wood. Metal finish looks great. The only place on the exterior of the pistol where any tool marks are visible is in the area where the barrel is relieved to permit insertion of a bullet under the loading ram, and those marks are very minor. Action works smoothly.

Here are some pics right out of the box:

DSCN0595.jpg

DSCN0594.jpg

DSCN0593.jpg


I checked arbor length and it's perfect. This is the area where my old 1860 Army, also a Pietta, came up short.

The barrel wedge fits pretty well. I did have to use a brass punch to knock it out the first time, but it only took a light tap with a brass hammer on the punch to do the job. I ran the wedge a few strokes across a file on each side. I can now remove it just with my fingers alone about 50% of the time, so I think this is going to be OK.

The loading ram seemed to work a little stiff, but all I had to do was loosen the screw holding the loading ram to the creeping lever - it was so tight that the ram must have been pinching the lever!

Preliminary measurements seem to indicate that the bolt may be just a little too tight for the stop notches on the cylinder. I detail-stripped the pistol so as to apply my calipers to the bolt and to the cylinder notches to see how much metal I have to remove.

(And that brings us to the only downer on the entire gun. Giuseppe the Gorilla, arm wrestling champion of all Italy, tightened the screws on this revolver. I can't break the screw in the bottom of the grip frame loose with a screwdriver - I thought I was going to bust a blood vessel in my forehead twisting on the screwdriver, and I'm 6'-1" and 270 lbs. I had to chuck my screwdriver bit in a socket wrench to bust that one loose! Turns out I gave Giuseppe a bad rap, though - the deal seems to be that the brass trigger guard strap is slightly sprung, which put a little bind on the screw. When I put it back together I had to start all three backstrap screws, then draw 'em down evenly a little at a time.)

Anyway, here are the measurements of the bolt and cylinder notches:

Bolt width = 0.157

Cylinder Notches
(Notch #, Middle, Front, Rear)
Notch 1, 0.149, 0.156, 0.159
Notch 2, 0.154, 0.154, 0.157
Notch 3, 0.152, 0.155, 0.159
Notch 4, 0.152, 0.156, 0.157
Notch 5, 0.151, 0.157, 0.157
Notch 6, 0.150, 0.158, 0.157

The narrowest notch measurement is 0.149, so I had to take the bolt down to that width. Managed to put a scratch on the cylinder testing the bolt fit! Grrrrrr!

Maybe Saturday I'll get a chance to go to the range and see how she shoots.

This is my second Pietta 1860 Army - my other one is about 30+ years old, and was made on Pietta's old pre-CNC machinery. The fit and finish of this one is quite a bit better, especially in terms of arbor fit. If you remove the barrel, and insert it on the arbor 90-degrees out of it's normal position, you can then rotate the barrel to see how the bottom of the barrel meets the frame. On the "old" pistol the bottom of the barrel overlapped the frame nearly 1/8"! I "fixed" this one years ago by inserting a couple of shim washers that I filed down for width until the bottom of the barrel just met the front surface of the frame. Then I Loc-Tited the shims in. When I did the same the test with this pistol, the bottom of the barrel just barely overlapped the frame - maybe by a thousandth or so. Shows to go ya what CNC machines will do!

I think I'm going to experiment with "antiquing" these two pistols - using the old one as a guinea pig. I understand that you can give them a wipe-down with a vinegar rag, and it will thin out the bluing, giving it that old finish-worn look. We'll see how it goes.
 
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Nice lookin shootin iron ya got there.
We wanna see pics after the antiquing job too.
Thanks pard.
--Dawg
 
Very nice looking gun, I would like to get one of those to go with my 1851 but they are $339 + tax up here in Canada.
I have a Pietta 1851 .44 "Yank" which I have been working on, I put a new set of nipples on it which don't work too good. The caps don't go off the first strike but will fire on the second hit, I am going to try backing them out a thread or so to see if this helps.
Enjoy your new gun.
 
Nice looking revolving pistol!

In the second photo, it looks like the bolt is already peening the edge of your locking slots. You might want to get that bolt to drop a bit sooner so it doesn't slam down on that edge like that. Peening that edge makes the usable slot width even narrower and you may still have trouble with the bolt fitting into it at some point.

I always remove the top two backstrap screws before removing the bottom one. When assembling I loosely install the bottom one, line up and tighten the top two, and then finally tighten the bottom one to finish. For what it's worth.
 
Just Bought Same

Generally I'm pretty happy with mine.

One thing. The hammer doesn't fall as smoothly as I'd like... there is noticeable resistance as it approaches the cap.

I took it apart and looked at it piece by piece. By itself, the hammer fits fine in the frame... no undo friction or tightness.

So I installed the hand... everything still falls smoothly.

Then I installed the bolt... therein lies the hitch.

My other C&B pistols, the knob on the side of the hammer crosses over the split leg of the bolt with little resistance as the hammer falls... not so on this newest gun... quite a bit of resistance... Enough that I got a number of fail to fires the first time out.

So far all I've done is oil it up and work it manually a few hundred times to try to break it in... seems to have helped some, but it's still not as smooth as I'd like.

Anybody else had this problem?

I can do some polishing... if that doesn't satisfy me, take some sandpaper or a file and remove a little bit of metal to make things work smoother, but I'm hoping that it'll work itself out through a hundred rounds or so as the mechanism breaks in?
 
Anybody else had this problem?
Click to expand...

Sure enough.

You can file the cam down until it is about the same height as the bolt leg is thick. That's all it really needs to be, as long as the bolt takes up the full width between the frame and hammer. Best to leave it a little higher though, just to allow a little leeway. But, it doesn't have to be as high as it usually is from the factory as it flexes the bolt leg more than necessary, leading to premature bolt leg breakage.

You should also polish the ramp on the cam (not the circumferential edges), as well as the adjoining angle on the bolt leg. Clean off all the filings, add a bit more of your oil, and it should be slick as snot.
 
Update:

I notice that during the last little bit of hammer fall, the left side of the hammer is rubbing the frame at the very top of the recoil shield. I'll have to relieve this area a little.

Also I notice that I still have a little issue with the bolt.

After thinning down the bolt and hand-trying it in the locking notches, I still have a little bit of an issue on two chambers. When I hand cycle the pistol and watch the cylinder rotation, I notice that as the hammer falls on two of the chambers that the cylinder will "back up" - it will rotate a little in reverse, so to speak. I've figured out that the hand, at full cock, is holding the cylinder in position, but as the hammer falls (I'm controlling it with my thumb so that it doesn't peen the cones) and the hand retracts, on those two chambers the bolt must not quite be in the locking notch. I consulted my measurements, and when this happens the bolt is at the notches for chambers 1 and 6.

Note that these are the "tightest" two out of the six. I think I have to thin the bolt down just a little more.

I think that I may try putting the revolver together without the hand, then cycling it. I will hand-rotate the cylinder in to alignment, and I should be able to feel if the bolt is properly locked. The hand interferes with the feel of the bolt. Once I feel that I have the lock-up right, I put the hand back in and give it a try.

I'm learning that tuning one of these revolvers is a real art!
 
SAA said:
I always remove the top two backstrap screws before removing the bottom one. When assembling I loosely install the bottom one, line up and tighten the top two, and then finally tighten the bottom one to finish. For what it's worth.
Click to expand...
That's exactly the procedure that I use and I believe it is the proper way to do it.
 
OK, I got the bolt fitted to the cylinder, and this is what I learned:

First, I followed instructions posted elsewhere on the 'net (http://www.theopenrange.net/forum/index.php?topic=5659.0) regarding tuning revolvers for CAS. When thinning the bolt down, I only removed metal from the part of the bolt that extends above the frame, leaving the lower (internal) part full width to act as a guide for the bolt in the aperture in the cylinder.

I measured all of the cylinder notches, center, front, and rear of each notch, and recorded each measurement in a sort of table. Obviously the bolt must be fitted to the narrowest notch. I arbitrarily called the notch adjacent to the "Patent" rollmark on the cylinder as #1, and went right around the cylinder clockwise looking at the rear of the cylinder. As it happens, the one I called #1 turned out to be the narrowest.

With the pistol detail stripped, I filed away at the top part of the bolt as described above, and kept trying it in the narrowest slot (#1 in my case) until it fit. I then used my file to "break" the sharp corner at the top of the bolt. Also I only removed metal from the bolt on the "left" side of the bolt, not equally on both sides. This is per the how-to that I referred to earlier.

To finally test the fit up, I partially assembled the action with only the following parts - Hammer WITHOUT THE HAND, trigger, bolt, and trigger and bolt spring. I also assembled the backstrap only to the pistol to act as a travel limit for the hammer and to give me something to hold on to. I installed the cylinder, barrel, and wedge. By omitting the hand, I could set the hammer at half-cock, manually rotate the cylinder to a point just short of being in battery for each chamber, bring the hammer back to full cock, then finish rotating the cylinder to feel the bolt drop into the locking notch.

By leaving the hand out, this made it possible to get a good feel for the lock up on each chamber. Also the hand, while the hammer is at full cock, holds the cylinder in battery even if the bolt is not fully engaged, which can be deceiving.

The issue I noticed with this revolver is that, after I initially fitted the bolt (I didn't take enough off that time, on the principle that it's easier to file more off than it is to put it back on.) and cycled the action, I noticed that on two of the chambers (the two narrowest ones) as the hammer began to drop, and of course as the hand started to retract, the cylinder would rotate a little backwards. This told me that the hand was providing 1/2 of the lock up when it was fully extended, and that the bolt was only doing part of the work. Also the "drag" of the hand seemed to impart enough force that it was actually rotating the cylinder backwards a little as the hand retracted.

Now I feel like I'm getting good lock up with the bolt in the cylinder notches on all six chambers.

Now as it happens, I've got an old Uberti Cattleman .45 LC revolver with a less-than-perfect bolt lock up. I may just have to order a Uberti bolt from VTI now and start wackin' on it. I keep messing around with these things and I'm gonna turn into a passable shootin' iron butcher yet!
 
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You now need to remove the peened edges on your locking slots and then buy a new bolt to fit to the slots again. Also, judging by the peening I am seeing in your photo I assume your bolt is dropping a bit late. Until you time the bolt drop to occur sooner, you will continue to have problems. Until these things are done, your gun will not be right. Sorry, but that's how it is. Bye.
 
Thanks for guidance, SAA.

Actually I think I might be OK now. The peening on the "back" side of the locking slot was due, I think, to the bolt being too wide for the slot, and it was being wedged into place by the bolt spring. I've carefully watched the bolt drop by peeking down into the space between the cylinder and the frame, and I see that the bolt drops just slightly before the cylinder rotates that final little bit into battery. But I'll keep an eye on it.

If I did want the bolt to drop a little earlier, then I could just slightly shorten the bolt leg that rides on the hammer cam, right?

Also, what's a good way to remove the little bit of peening that's already happened at the cylinder notches?
 
I suspect that article is what tpelle is already using. Unfortunately, the author of the article didn't address timing the bolt- the true cause of locking slot peening.

Many Piettas drop the bolt right onto the leading edge of the locking slot. It doesn't matter if the bolt is too wide or too narrow when it does that as the peening will occur either way. The bolt being too wide is anecdotal to the peened locking slot, not the cause of it.

Since the locking slots have already become peened, the proper procedure is to get rid of the peening first before fitting the width of the bolt's head. Otherwise, you are just adjusting the bolt head to fit the narrowest portion of the slot where it is peened. If the bolt had originally been timed to drop earlier in the lead, the edge of the slot would not have been subjected to the slamming of the bolt against it.

Also, the proper way to determine which side of the bolt to lap is by determining how the chambers align with the barrel. You can choose which side of the bolt to lap to help get the chambers centered on the bore as the case may be, or can lap both sides down to keep the chambers aligned with the bore if they already are.

So, on a gun that already has peened slots:

1) Fix the slots so they are nice and square and parallel.

2) Lap one side or the other, or both, to fit the bolt head to the locking slot while centering the chambers on the bore.

3) Highly polish the top of the bolt head. DO NOT ROUND the edges, but lightly break the sharp edges to reduce scratching the cylinder.

4) Time the bolt to drop in the lead, not on the edge of the slot.

-----------------

On a new gun that hasn't been peened yet:

1) If necessary, size the bolt head to fit the slots. This will likely not be needed on a new gun which has not had the slots narrowed by peening yet.

2) Time the bolt to drop in the lead, not on the edge of the slot. This is done by shortening the leg of the bolt that rides on the hammer cam.
Lay the bolt down on a table orientated as it would be in the gun with the legs and head up, head to the left. The leg facing you (the left side of the bolt) is the one that must be shortened.
With the forward end of the bolt laying down flat on the table, take a square (anything that will be perpendicular to the table) and put it up near the leg of the bolt. That is the angle you want to maintain while filing the bolt leg. You must also keep the filed edge square (flat, or perpendicular to the side of the bolt) so it has full contact with the edge of the hammer cam (which should also be square) as it rides over it. Carefully file the leg until the bolt drops somewhere between the middle and beginning of the locking slot lead (the right side of the bolt head). If it drops any sooner than the beginning of the lead you will get scratches on the surface of the cylinder ahead of the lead. If it drops after about the middle of the lead the bolt will peen the edge of the slot.


I like that tuning article, but I feel the cause of the peening was not really addressed, and that as the slot continues to be peened due to a late bolt drop the slots will again become narrowed to the point the bolt will again be too wide, and so forth again and again until the person properly times the bolt drop.

Happy smithing.
 
Great write-up, SAA! That's exactly the information I was looking for. I have three books on gunsmithing and none of them explain the process so well.

I see your point now, and yes, my Pietta does drop the bolt too late then. And from your description I understand now how the peening occurs - it's not that the bolt is too wide to fit into the slot, it's that the bolt actually is hammering the edge of the slot!

Before taking my measurements, though, and before hand-testing the bolt in the locking slots, I did remove the curled-over edge of the slot (the peening) by dragging the point of a small Swiss rat-tail file in the edge of the slot.

The bolt was, however, certainly too wide and needed to be thinned.

I think that one more step needs to be discussed, and that is the actual amount that the cylinder is rotated by the hand to bring the chamber in alignment. It would be pointless, to my way of thinking, to match the bolt to the notch in such a was as to not only make it fit the notch but to hold the chamber in alignment to the bore if the hand is an incorrect length and over-rotates or under-rotates the cylinder.

It seems to me that the steps should be as follows:

With no bolt in the revolver, first adjust the length of the hand to perfectly center the chamber with the bore as the hammer comes to full-cock. I would think you would want to have the backstrap on the frame so as to set the limit that hammer could be drawn back, as that affects the amount that the hand moves.

Next you would have to fit the bolt, pretty much as I described in an earlier post. I'm a little hazy still as to how you figure out which side of the bolt you want to remove the metal from in order to maintain chamber timing, as on an 1851 Navy, 1860 Army, or 1861 Navy, the top of the frame beneath the cylinder is curved to match the cylinder, and thus it's difficult to actually see the bolt drop. The 1873 SAA is flat in that area.

Can you provide any guidance on that?
 
I bought one of these about 1 1/2 years ago. Same place, same price. Giuseppe was working for Pietta back then too.

Mine functioned fine right out of the box. I got some nice groups with very light loads but as I increased the charge amount the groups open up to where they were pretty bad. I slugged all the chambers and the barrel and found all the chambers to be undersized to the barrel and the diameter of the chambers wasn't consistent. I mentioned this as something you might want to check also.
 
Yeah, I'm aware of that chronic problem. Pretty much all of the Italian clones - both Pietta and Uberti - are that way as I understand, although I don't actually own a Uberti cap and ball pistol. That's pretty much out of my league to fix that, though, as the most sophisticated machine tool I own is a drill press.

I bet that if you really dug into it, though, you'd find that the bolt on your pistol was not fitted correctly as well. As I understand the way that they are manufactured, the thickness of the bolt is set by the gauge of the standard piece of steel that they stamp it from, which, as it happens, is slightly thicker that the dimension of the cylinder bolt notches. The evidence of this is that the cylinder notches will show marks on both sides of the notch where the bolt is slammed into the notch but can't actually enter the notch itself, although it's pressed hardest against the trailing edge of the notch because it's higher - the part opposite the lead-in grooves.

What actually holds the cylinder in alignment in this case is the friction of the bolt against the notch, as well as the hand, which at full cock is still bearing against the ratchet on the back of the cylinder. But as the hammer falls, in that instant before the hammer hits the cap, the hand retracts and 50% of what holds the cylinder "locked" is no longer effectual. As the hand withdraws, the hand spring is still pressing it against the ratchet, and as the hand drags across the ratchet it actually tries to turn the cylinder back counter-clockwise. It's possible for the cylinder to move far enough in that instant that you get misfires - the cap doesn't pop - because the hammer actually comes in contact with the recess for the nipple in the back of the cylinder.

Next time you clean your revolver, reassemble it without the hand. Bring the hammer to half-cock, then rotate the cylinder to a point just short of alignment (you can see this by lining up the nipple recesses with the hammer cut in the recoil shield), bring the hammer to full cock, then manually rotate the cylinder the rest of the way. The bolt should come out of the lead-in groove and snap into the locking notch, and you should not be able to rotate the cylinder in either direction. If you can, then the bolt isn't in the notch.
 
The hand:

Once the bolt is fit to the locking slots, you now have a fixed point of reference for the cylinder at lock up.

The hammer's point of reference for lock up is determined by the sear engagement. As you don't want to mess with the sear engagement, it also is a fixed point of reference. If you do have any sear work to do, do it before messing with the hand.

The two points of lock up reference (cylinder and hammer) should coincide. In other words, the bolt should snap into the locking slot at the exact same time the sear engages. Due to variations in ratchet teeth, perfection is unobtainable. Therefore, each chamber should lock up at or fractionally before sear engagement. Ideally, no sear engagement should take place before the cylinder is locked. Unfortunately, most reproduction cap-and-ball and single action army revolvers are timed from the factory with the sear engaging first, with further hammer movement needed to lock the cylinder. The hand is too short.

If the hand is too short, the sear will engage before the cylinder is locked. This is usually fine as at normal cocking speeds you would never notice it, but it isn't right. The potential exists to fire the gun out of battery.

If the hand is too long, the locked cylinder will prevent further hand travel, and the hammer sear will not be able to engage the trigger sear, or will just barely engage and potentially slip out of engagement causing an accidental discharge.

Long hands and short hands can cause potentially dangerous conditions.

The hand should be just long enough to bring the cylinder to lock up at the same time, or very slightly before, sear engagement.
 
Wow !!!

I feel like I just took an advanced course at a top knotch gun smithing school !!! I learned so VERY MUCH from this one thread !!!

Thanks Guys !!! Amazing post this !!!

Sincerely,

ElvinWarrior... aka... David, "EW"
 
Well, to kind of wrap this post up, I took the pistol out to my club's "Plinking Range" yesterday afternoon - they have a range where you fire across a little creek into the side of a steep bluff, and basically are allowed to shoot at anything except glass or things like that. Good old fashioned tin can plinking is wholeheartedly endorsed.

I had a selection of caps to include Remington #11's and CCI #10's. I found that the gun liked the Remington #11's, but the long skirt on the CCI's prevented the caps from being fully seated. Anyway, loading with 24 grains of Pyrodex P topped up with cream of wheat under a Hornady .454 round ball, and the gun worked great. Seemed to be pretty accurate, but as I was not shooting a paper target I can't really say what sort of group I was getting. I was hitting all around the can I was shooting at, at about 10 or 15 yards, but have to say that I never actually hit it.

There happened to be a pretty young lady there with her dad, who was doing a pretty creditable job shooting a little .22 LR semi-auto of some sort. After I went through two cylinders on the revolver I asked her if she'd like to try something a little bit retro. She enthusiastically consented. I showed her the revolver - she had never handled any sort of revolver before - and explained a little of the history, and showed her how it was loaded. I went ahead and loaded and capped six chambers and let her loose with it.

I think she was a little surprised by the weight, because as she picked it up she had her support hand under the loading ram! I cautioned her to keep her hand behind the cylinder, and to cock the hammer and have a go. Her first shot, she drilled the can right through! Impressive hole, too! She went ahead and fired the rest of the cylinder, and actually hit the can a second time, and scared it for sure the other times. She thanked me and said that it was a lot of fun.

Honestly, I get as much pleasure out of letting other folks enjoy my guns as I do shooting them myself!
 
I have recently bought two cap and ballers with 1860 frames. The hammer springs were too long on both of them. The springs were so long would bind up on the hammer just before the hammer falls all the way. The only place the hammer should touch the spring is the roller on the hammer. I filed mine enough so i can loosen the hammer spring screw and swing the spring to the side for disassembly.
51
 
Mike 56 said:
I have recently bought two cap and ballers with 1860 frames. The hammer springs were too long on both of them. The springs were so long would bind up on the hammer just before the hammer falls all the way. The only place the hammer should touch the spring is the roller on the hammer. I filed mine enough so i can loosen the hammer spring screw and swing the spring to the side for disassembly.
51
Click to expand...
Yep! That's another place I'm going to check. I notice that it's difficult to assemble and disassemble the hammer spring because, as you said, the spring is so long you can't swing it to the side to relieve the pressure on the spring.
 
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