Brammers
Member
Good evening The High Road,
I deeply apologize for the wall of text about to ensue, and would like to thank you in advance for as helpful as these forums have already been!
I am new to these forums, and the black powder section is what made me want to sign up. I am a firearms enthusiast, though one with a college student budget. I have had many guns in the past, but the only two (smokeless) firearms I have right now are a HK P7M8, and an Enfield No. 4 Mk. 1. The Enfield has me convinced that guns with fewer moving parts are more accurate, and it has caused me to love older firearms.
I decided to head to my local Cabela's and look at some firearms to see if they had anything that caught my eye a few days ago. As I finished looking at all of the smokeless firearms I wandered by the black powder firearms section. The display of Pietta revolvers caught my eye. I have never been much of one for revolvers, and have always thought that modern revolvers are kind of ugly. However these black powder revolvers demanded that I stop and look. These replica revolvers that Pietta makes are beautiful, and what I think a revolver SHOULD look like. The balance and weight of these revolvers are beautiful things to see and hold.
Anyways, this caused me to want to purchase one on the spot, especially at the attractive sale price of $249. I have never purchased a handgun for less than $700, however, I held out and went home to do some research. Time and again, THR seemed to pop up no matter what I was searching for. So I read through as much of the black powder essentials sticky post that I could, then went back and purchased my first black powder firearm; a Pietta 1860 Army. It came with a free starter kit that included a flask, nipple wrench, capper, powder measure, and 30 .45 balls, and 30 patches. Not a bad deal I thought. I also purchased a pound of Pyrodeg P (FFFg equivalent). However Cabella's was all out of percussion caps. After arriving at home I unboxed it and held it like a child clutches at his new toy. Again I was in love with the balance, the feel, and the beauty of this revolver.
The next day was all about getting percussion caps, I tried many places. All of the local gun stores, Walmart since they have them listed on their site, Bass Pro (an employee there said they have been out of them for months and there is a big backorder at the warehouse so they don't know when they would get them in again), and finally started browsing online. The only place that I found that had some to sell were Dixie Gun Works. I ordered 1 tin of 100 #11 caps (still waiting on these to show up), and ended up paying a $25.75 dollar HazMat fee (oh well, it is all for the love of shooting).
I got enough tools together to try and disassemble my new revolver for cleaning. The resource I used for this was a two part video on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qtMkLGdZA4
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=057mS44KLCA
I made my way through removing the barrel assembly and sliding the cylinder off removing the nipples and cleaning all the parts disassembled so far. I found I did not have a good enough screw driver to proceed in taking apart the grip to continue cleaning further. After some thought I decided to put it back together, I didn't want to damage or strip any screws. After I put it back together I noticed that there was some cylinder play after cocking the hammer and slowly releasing it down to the nipple so as to not damage it through dry firing. What i noticed after 10 cycles or so it looked something like this: http://i613.photobucket.com/albums/tt214/shutupandjump/view-2.jpg (not my gun, a picture of one from somewhere on the internet. But I do not want it to progress so the black cylinder is all marred up with silvery areas on the stops.
So now I have a few questions:
How do I get rid of the play that is in the cylinder, it has a very tiny bit of play from back to front, and a very tiny bit as well on its rotation axis. I did a search for how to fix it, and a post from THR did come up about replacing the Cylinder Stop. Is this an avenue that needs to be pursued?
Who makes a good gunsmith tool kit that would be able to handle this revolver's screws at a decent price?
What is a good resource on the complete disassembly of the 1860, or was the one that I was using good enough?
What is a good container to carry all of my black powder paraphernalia?
What will make a good gun case for this revolver? It seems to be a tad too long for most pistol cases. Or should I just get a pistol bag or nice belt and holster and store it in the holster?
If you have any other tips, anything I should know, it would be greatly appreciated.
If you read through the whole post, thank you for reading, and your patience!
Brammers
I deeply apologize for the wall of text about to ensue, and would like to thank you in advance for as helpful as these forums have already been!
I am new to these forums, and the black powder section is what made me want to sign up. I am a firearms enthusiast, though one with a college student budget. I have had many guns in the past, but the only two (smokeless) firearms I have right now are a HK P7M8, and an Enfield No. 4 Mk. 1. The Enfield has me convinced that guns with fewer moving parts are more accurate, and it has caused me to love older firearms.
I decided to head to my local Cabela's and look at some firearms to see if they had anything that caught my eye a few days ago. As I finished looking at all of the smokeless firearms I wandered by the black powder firearms section. The display of Pietta revolvers caught my eye. I have never been much of one for revolvers, and have always thought that modern revolvers are kind of ugly. However these black powder revolvers demanded that I stop and look. These replica revolvers that Pietta makes are beautiful, and what I think a revolver SHOULD look like. The balance and weight of these revolvers are beautiful things to see and hold.
Anyways, this caused me to want to purchase one on the spot, especially at the attractive sale price of $249. I have never purchased a handgun for less than $700, however, I held out and went home to do some research. Time and again, THR seemed to pop up no matter what I was searching for. So I read through as much of the black powder essentials sticky post that I could, then went back and purchased my first black powder firearm; a Pietta 1860 Army. It came with a free starter kit that included a flask, nipple wrench, capper, powder measure, and 30 .45 balls, and 30 patches. Not a bad deal I thought. I also purchased a pound of Pyrodeg P (FFFg equivalent). However Cabella's was all out of percussion caps. After arriving at home I unboxed it and held it like a child clutches at his new toy. Again I was in love with the balance, the feel, and the beauty of this revolver.
The next day was all about getting percussion caps, I tried many places. All of the local gun stores, Walmart since they have them listed on their site, Bass Pro (an employee there said they have been out of them for months and there is a big backorder at the warehouse so they don't know when they would get them in again), and finally started browsing online. The only place that I found that had some to sell were Dixie Gun Works. I ordered 1 tin of 100 #11 caps (still waiting on these to show up), and ended up paying a $25.75 dollar HazMat fee (oh well, it is all for the love of shooting).
I got enough tools together to try and disassemble my new revolver for cleaning. The resource I used for this was a two part video on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qtMkLGdZA4
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=057mS44KLCA
I made my way through removing the barrel assembly and sliding the cylinder off removing the nipples and cleaning all the parts disassembled so far. I found I did not have a good enough screw driver to proceed in taking apart the grip to continue cleaning further. After some thought I decided to put it back together, I didn't want to damage or strip any screws. After I put it back together I noticed that there was some cylinder play after cocking the hammer and slowly releasing it down to the nipple so as to not damage it through dry firing. What i noticed after 10 cycles or so it looked something like this: http://i613.photobucket.com/albums/tt214/shutupandjump/view-2.jpg (not my gun, a picture of one from somewhere on the internet. But I do not want it to progress so the black cylinder is all marred up with silvery areas on the stops.
So now I have a few questions:
How do I get rid of the play that is in the cylinder, it has a very tiny bit of play from back to front, and a very tiny bit as well on its rotation axis. I did a search for how to fix it, and a post from THR did come up about replacing the Cylinder Stop. Is this an avenue that needs to be pursued?
Who makes a good gunsmith tool kit that would be able to handle this revolver's screws at a decent price?
What is a good resource on the complete disassembly of the 1860, or was the one that I was using good enough?
What is a good container to carry all of my black powder paraphernalia?
What will make a good gun case for this revolver? It seems to be a tad too long for most pistol cases. Or should I just get a pistol bag or nice belt and holster and store it in the holster?
If you have any other tips, anything I should know, it would be greatly appreciated.
If you read through the whole post, thank you for reading, and your patience!
Brammers
