Howdy
Not sure if this is what you want to know, but there is quite a lot of history concerning conversions of Cap & Ball revolvers to cartridges. A great deal of this has to do with licensing issues, rather than cost.
Starting in 1857, shortly before the Civil War, Smith and Wesson began producing small cartridge revolvers. Previous to this, the chambers of Cap & Ball revolvers were not bored all the way through the cylinder. Instead nipples were screwed to the rear of the cylinder to receive percussion caps. In addition to that, the chambers of most C&B revolvers were only bored full size for the ball partway down, an intermediate section of smaller diameter was bored further down for the powder. In 1856, Daniel Wesson had a brilliant idea. Self contained metal cartridges were in their infancy at this time, and a Frenchman named Flobert had just developed a small, 22 caliber Rimfire cartridge. Wesson reasoned that if the chambers of a revolver were bored all the way through the cylinder, it would be possible to load these little rimfire cartridges into the rear of the cylinder, saving time over loading separate Cap & Ball. Being a good businessman, Wesson had a patent search done, and found out that a man named Rollin White, a former Colt employee, had beaten him to the punch and already patented the idea. Smith and Wesson attempted to buy the patent rights outright from White, but he refused to sell them. He did agree however to license Smith and Wesson to produce revolvers using the idea set out in his patent. S&W agreed to pay White a royalty of 50 cents on every revolver they produced.
Here is an example of one of the early revolvers S&W produced. This one chambered the tiny 22 Rimfire cartridge, that we would today call the 22 Short. This style of revolver was called a Tip Up because to load it you released the catch at the bottom of the barrel and rotated the barrel up. Then you pulled the cylinder off it's center pin, poked the empties out with the rod under the barrel, reloaded and reversed the process.
By the time of the Civil War, S&W was producing a larger 32 Rimfire version, but never made any Tip Ups larger or more powerful than 32 Rimfire.
But the Rollin White patent remained in force until it expired in 1869. A critical year, because the White patent prevented Colt or any other revolver manufacturers from producing cartridge revolvers for the entire Civil War. S&W was the only company producing cartridge revolvers during the Civil War. Because of the relative weakness of the Tip Up design, S&W never made any more powerful than 32 Rimfire. These revolvers found favor with officers in the Union Army, but they were nowhere near as powerful as the 36 and 44 caliber Cap & Ball revolvers being produced by Colt, Remington, and a few other makers.
There are some notable exceptions though. Remington reached an agreement in 1868 with S&W to convert some of their 1858 Army percussion revolvers (the same model as my 32-20 conversion) to 46 Rimfire. The contract was signed with S&W since they still controlled the rights to the White patent. The revolvers were all converted at the Remington factory, with S&W performing the final inspection. A total of 4,574 Remington revolvers were converted, and S&W charged Remington a royalty of $10 on every revolver converted.
The White patent expired in 1869, and one would think a forward thinking firearms manufacturer would have already developed a new model, ready to hit the market as soon as the patent expired.
However Colt did not unveil the Single Action Army, designed specifically for cartridges, until 1873.
Colt did market some Cartridge Conversion models before the Single Action Army was produced.
The first of these was the Thuer Conversion. The Thuer Conversion was an attempt to circumvent the White patent, before it expired. F. Alexander Thuer was a Colt employee who came up with the idea of using a tapered cartridge. The cartridge was tapered from front to rear. It was felt that since the White patent specified 'bored through' chambers, a chamber that was bored through but not all one diameter would skirt around the patent. Here is a photo or a Thuer cartridge.
Because of the front to rear taper of the cartridge, the Thuer Conversion revolvers had to be loaded from the front of the cylinder. It was an interesting idea, but it never took hold with the public and the Thuer conversion was not commercially successful.
Colt then produced three more Conversion Revolvers; the Richards Conversion, the Richards-Mason Conversion, and the Open Top.
Here is a photo of a Richards Conversion.
The Richards conversion was patented in 1871, after the expiration of the White patent, so boring chambers completely through the cylinder was not longer a legal issue. The first Richards Conversions used Cap & Ball cylinders that had been cut down at the rear, removing the section where the threaded nipples attached. A new ratchet star was cut onto the cylinder for the hand to engage.
Here is a photo of a replica Colt 1860 Army cylinder next to the Richards Conversion cylinder, showing how much of the cylinder was cut off.
A Conversion Ring was screwed onto the frame to take up the the extra space behind the cylinder. The Conversion Ring incorporated a loading gate.
The hammer was cut down and a spring loaded firing pin was incorporated in the Conversion Ring.
An ejector assembly was fabricated and screwed into the hole formerly occupied by the loading lever.
A new cartridge was developed for the Richards Conversion. A 45 caliber heeled bullet was seated in a cartridge case and the case was filled with powder. I forget how much right now, but I can look it up. The round third from the right is a 44 Colt round. Yes, it was called 44 because the C&B revolvers were called 44s, but the rifling groove diameter was actually about .452.
After the Richards Conversion, Colt came up with the Richards-Mason Conversion, principally designed by William Mason, also the principal designer of the Single Action Army. The Richards-Mason design was an improvement and simplification of the Richards design. It incorporated a simpler and easier to produce extractor mechanism, as well as getting rid of the frame mounted firing pin.
The last of the Colt Conversions was the Open Top model of 1871-1872. This model was actually designed from the ground up as a cartridge gun. Gone were the conversion rings of the earlier models, the cylinder was full length for metallic cartridges.
During this same time period, cartridge conversion revolvers were also produced by several other companies.
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Part of the reason for Cartridge Conversions was they were often cheaper to produce than cartridge guns. With the advent of the Single Action Army, the US Army found itself in possession of thousands of obsolete Cap & Ball revolvers. Many of these were surplussed out at bargain basement prices. An inexpensive C&B revolver could be converted to cartridges relativity inexpensively, costing less in total than a brand new cartridge revolver. Here is a photo of a Remington converted to fire cartridges by an independent gunsmith.
Regarding the conversion of my Remington, I can make a few educated guesses. The 32-20 cartridge was not developed until 1882, so clearly this gun was not converted before that. I suspect it was converted much later. Back before the current interest in old guns, original Cap & Ball revolvers from the Civil War era could be purchased very cheap. I remember talking with a re-enactor a number of years ago and he told me he had picked up an original Remington for $12. There just was not any interest in these old guns, so they did not have much collector value. Interest in these guns did not start picking up until the 100th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. I seem to remember that Navy Arms started importing their first replicas of the Navy Colt in 1959 or so. After that, values of the old guns started going up.
I suspect mine was converted simply as a special project. Perhaps the gunsmith did it on his own, perhaps he was paid to do it by an interested party. Perhaps he started with a very inexpensive old Remington. I have not looked up the serial number yet to determine when it was made, but perhaps somebody purchased it for a song. There are always guys who are interested in creating unusual firearms, and there are always guys like me who are interested in buying them when they find them. Particularly if they don't cost too much. I can tell you I paid less for this one than I probably would have had to pay if it had not been converted. Not as much collector interest.
