questions and advice about colt clone BP revolvers

[Crawdad1]

You have to remember Ivan, you'll be tearing these things apart a whole lot more than a modern cartridge revolver. If you're going to shoot and hunt with these things like I do on a daily or weekly basis then get a good one, they'll hold up a lot better.

 

[ivankerley]

You have to remember Ivan, you'll be tearing these things apart a whole lot more than a modern cartridge revolver. If you're going to shoot and hunt with these things like I do on a daily or weekly basis then get a good one, they'll hold up a lot better.

fully aware of this, thanks for the advice, what separates me from my buddies who shoot all the modern guns, im the odd duck in my crowd, constantly get looks like "why" and i explain it to them but they just dont seem to get it
their loss i suppose
regards
Gene

 

[tpelle]

I have both Colt "open top" replicas and the Remington with the top strap. I've found that I much prefer the Colt design overall. Practical accuracy, ease of loading, etc. are pretty much equal between the two designs. Theoretically the Remington is stronger, but in the real world, the Colt is plenty strong enough, so no advantage either way. And it's already been noted several times that the Colt handles the inevitable accumulation of fouling better.

The telling feature that makes me prefer the Colt is that, when it comes time to clean, the Colt design is so much easier. The fact that you can easily remove the barrel and cylinder - the parts that get the most fouling - and immerse them in water for cleaning is what makes this so.

With the Remington you have to remove the wooden grip panels and detail-strip the action parts in order to give them a real cleaning.

And the Colts - especially the 1860 - just feel so much better in the hand.

 

[ivankerley]

thanks tpelle

for the comparison between the two, got my '60 last night, shes a peach, when work calms down i'll shoot some picts, be buying supplies for this and my hawkens next weekend at friendship
Thanks
Gene

 

[BCRider]

One thing to keep in mind.....

Out of the 6 various makers and dates of open tops I've had they ALL needed the cylinder arbor extended or shimmed to make the wedge work the way it is supposed to work. It amazes me that the Italian makers can't sort out this one little issue.

And Uberti isn't innocent on this count either. I recently got an older used Uberti 1860 and it too needed the shim.

 

[tpelle]

The last two Pietta 1860s I bought, date code CH and CI, had arbors that were perfect! Since Pietta upgraded to CNC machinery for their production, their quality has gone way up.

In the old days - I'm talking the 1860s - They would make the arbor intentionally too long, and the assembler would file and try until it fit. Nowadays they just tweak the numbers in the computer, and every part comes out perfect and may need only a little final polishing, if that.

 

[tpelle]

One more thing I thought of in favor of the Colt open top design:

For shorter barreled revolvers, where there's not enough length to fit a loading lever, the cylinder can be loaded by taking the cylinder off of the frame, and using the arbor itself to press the ball in. That's one of the reason Colt made the arbors so big.

 

[Noz]

The biggest advantage of Piettas over Ubertis is the arbor length. Pietas are the correct length, at least have been on all of mine.