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Any replica better than another for shooting frontier cartridge?


Ambush Andy

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I thought about getting a rifle and revolvers in .44-40.  Recently got the rifle but I’m thinking I’ll go with .45 Colt in the revolvers.  As an experienced FC friend observed, a .44-40 case full of black powder makes for a pretty stout pistol load.  With .45 Colt revolvers I can use Cowboy .45 Special cases for my pistol ammo.  Pretty easy to avoid getting those stubbies confused with .44-40 rifle cartridges.  I’d really like .44 Special revolvers but EMF doesn’t offer that chambering.

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Mike at Goon Gun works will start work on my pair of Sheriff's model 1851 Navys in February.  I plan to pair them with either an Uberti 1866 or an Uberti 1873 in 45 colt.  I won't need to worry about mixing up pistol and rifle ammo, and if I anneal my brass, clean up in the rifle should be easy.  If I want I can add a set of Vaqueros in 45 colt and I'll be set for Classic Cowboy too.

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Sometimes I wonder if every gun just might be a law unto its self?  I had a consecutive pair of Uberti Schofields at one time that actually worked great when shooting 45C and 45CS ammo in Frontier Cartridge.  It just required some weird reloading techniques in "my guns" and I specify this way because others claimed it worked for them while others said no such luck??

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11 minutes ago, Slowhand Bob, 24229 said:

Sometimes I wonder if every gun just might be a law unto its self?  I had a consecutive pair of Uberti Schofields at one time that actually worked great when shooting 45C and 45CS ammo in Frontier Cartridge.  It just required some weird reloading techniques in "my guns" and I specify this way because others claimed it worked for them while others said no such luck??

I'm quickly learning if I ask 10 cowboys a question, I get 10 different answers and they are all probably right in their own way :) so far I've heard stay away from replica schoefields for bp at all cost as well as schoefield's have served me for 20 years with no issues in fc :)

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Andy, The recipe included using a bp substitute as part of the formula and this turns most true wart hogs off at the get go.I think the fact that the sub makes its own lube adds to the overall success I had in my guns.  I came clost to offering a pard a price on a short barl pair of Schofields recently and this would have been the same bp load that I would have used to make it happen!!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I’m the second owner of a pair of 71/2” Cimarron Uberti 73’s in 44WCF. They have only ever shot real BP and LOTS of it, full loads, about 38gns and as of late I’m using cannon powder, it has less felt recoil, in both pistols and my 66 also a Cimarron Uberti as well as Cimarron 73. I also shoot only black in my CZ Hammered Coach, Chinese  87, 86 Winchester 45/90, EMF 73 Hartford in 38WCF and 45/70 Pedersoli Sharps. Only cowboy gun I have that takes smokeless is that dang 44WCF Schofield, it will go 2 rounds but that’s not good enough. 
I cast my own soft lead bullets with Large lube groves and use a 50/50ish crisco beeswax mix. Rifles and scatter guns don’t get cleaned during matches but I will wipe the pistols down with ballistol so they keep lookin purty! 

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Howdy

 

One of my favorite topics.

 

Black Powder fouling being blasted out of the Barrel/Cylinder gap and deposited onto the cylinder pin is the most common cause of a revolver binding up when shooting Black Powder. The fouling works its way between the cylinder and the cylinder pin, and causes the cylinder to bind, making it difficult for the cylinder to rotate, which also affects how difficult it is to cock the hammer.

 

When fouling is blasted out of the B/C gap, it spreads out pretty much in a plane. Way back during the Black Powder cartridge era revolver manufacturers realized the best way to counteract this was to put a collet, or bushing on the front of the cylinder. This shielded the front of the cylinder and prevented fouling from being deposited on the cylinder pin.

 

Left to right in this photo are the cylinders from an Uberti Cattleman, a Ruger 'original model' Vaquero, and a 2nd Gen Colt Single Action Army. These cylinders all do a very good job of deflecting fouling blasted out of the B/C gap away from the cylinder pin. As a side note, both the Cattleman and the Colt have removable bushings.  They are a slip fit in the cylinder. The original intent of Colt in providing a removable bushing was to provide an extra bearing surface to further insure the cylinder would not bind. Uberti merely mimicked that design. In my experience it really does not matter if the bushing is removable or not, the fact that it is there is what is important. If you look closely you will see the Vaquero bushing stands further away from the front face of the cylinder than the other two bushings. I don't have the numbers handy, but I have measured them and the Ruger bushing does extend much further out.

 

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In this photo I have pulled the bushings out of the Uberti cylinder on the left and the Colt cylinder on the right to show how they are removable.

 

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This photo should illustrate how the bushing does its job. This is an old Bisley Colt, but it works the same on any Colt or clone. I only chose this photo because it shows the components so clearly. The upper arrow points to the actual Barrel/Cylinder gap. The lower arrow points to the front of the cylinder bushing. The bushing is rubbing against the frame. Notice there is a significant amount of horizontal spacing between the B/C gap and the front of the bushing. When BP fouling is blasted out of the BP gap it is pretty much restricted to blasting out in a vertical plane. The front end of the bushing is well ahead of that plane, and shields the underlying cylinder pin from most of the fouling being blasted out of the B/C gap. I suspect the concave contour of the bushing also helps direct the fouling away from the cylinder pin too.

 

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Here is the same area of the 'original model' Vaquero. The bushing is so proud of the cylinder that there is even more horizontal spacing between the front of the bushing and the B/C gap. This revolver does very well with Black Powder. Yes, New Vaqueros have a cylinder bushing too, just not so massive as on the older 'original model' Vaqueros.

 

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What this illustrates is that any Colt or modern replica of it whether made by Uberti or any other company, even a Ruger, will be well suited to shooting with Black Powder because of the relationship of the cylinder bushing to the Barrel/Cylinder gap. 

 

 

 

 

The 1875 Remington does not have quite as prominent a cylinder bushing as a Colt. This is the cylinder of an antique Remington Model 1875 revolver. The bushing is an integral part of the cylinder. It is not as 'tall' as the cylinder of a Colt.

 

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As can be seen in this photo, there is less horizontal spacing between the B/C gap and the front of the bushing than on a Colt. This model does tend to bind up a bit more quickly than a Colt or clone with its more prominent bushing. Although this is an an actual antique Remington, the modern reproductions have similar dimensions and generally tend to bind up a little bit more quickly than a Colt, with its greater horizontal separation between the B/C gap and the front of the bushing.

 

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While we are on the subject of Remingtons, lets look back in time at the earlier 1858 Cap & Ball Remington. The 1858 Remington had no bushing at all on the front of the cylinder, it was completely flat on the front. On the left is a cartridge conversion cylinder for the 1858 Remington, on the right is a C&B cylinder. Yes, these are both modern reproductions, but they share the same features as the originals.

 

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This is a Remington 1858 with the cartridge conversion cylinder in place. There is no horizontal separation at all between the B/C gap and the front of the cylinder. In my very humble opinion, the 1858 Remington was the worst of all Black Powder revolvers, as far as binding goes. There is nothing to prevent fouling from building up between the cylinder and the cylinder pin, so they foul very quickly. When I shoot this one with Black Powder cartridges I have to take the cylinder out and wipe it off after every cylinder full, or it will bind up after only about two cylinders full. So when Remington brought out their cartridge revolver in 1875, adding a bushing onto the front of the cylinder was an improvement, even though it was not as prominent a bushing as on the 1873 Colt.

 

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Merwin Hulberts had a very prominent bushing on the front of the cylinder.

 

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The bushing nestled in a 'shroud' of sorts on the underside of the barrel.

 

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This gave excellent protection against BP fouling blasted out of the B/C bap from being deposited on the cylinder pin. The very rare Merwin Hulbert replicas are excellent for shooting Black Powder, they seldom bind up. (Just kidding, there are no modern replicas for Merwin Hulberts, only the originals, which can shoot Black Powder loads all day long, trust me)

 

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Let's talk about Smith and Wessons now. This is the cylinder from an antique Smith and Wesson Top Break New Model Number Three. Notice the large bushing pressed into the front face of the cylinder.

 

 

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This photo shows the way the cylinder fits to the barrel. The ejector rod and spring slide inside the hollow cylinder arbor. The bushing rides on the outside of the arbor. Notice the helical clearance cuts on the arbor where it meets the barrel.

 

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This is how it looks when assembled. The Barrel/Cylinder gap can be seen next to the cylinder.  The front of the cylinder bushing is horizontally separated a great distance from the B/C gap, and does a terrific job of shielding the cylinder arbor from getting any BP fouling blasted onto it. In addition, the helical cuts I mentioned in the last photo provide a place for any fouling that makes it past the bushing to accumulate without binding the arbor.

 

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There were five distinct large frame Top Break revolvers that S&W made, the American Model, the Russian Model, the Schofield, the New Model Number Three and the 44 Double Action. They all had a similar arrangement for protecting the cylinder arbor from fouling blasted out of the B/C gap. Here are some photos of an antique Schofield.

 

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The original Smith and Wesson Top Breaks all had cylinders 1 7/16" long, which was a perfect length for the 44 S&W American, 44 Russian, and 45 Schofield cartridges. In fact the length of the cylinder of these revolvers is why the 45 Schofield cartridge was developed. When S&W approached the government for an Army contract, the Army insisted on a 45 Caliber cartridge. Up until that time all the S&W Top Breaks had been 44 caliber. It was no problem opening up the chambers and bore to 45 caliber, but the 45 Colt cartridge was too long to fit into the 1 7/16" cylinders and frames that S&W was building. S&W was in the middle of very lucrative contracts with Russia, Turkey, and Japan and eventually supplied over 150,000 revolvers to those countries. They were not about to interrupt production to retool for a longer cylinder and a longer frame to accommodate it. So a compromise was reached and S&W supplied almost 9,000 Schofield revolvers to the Army. Years later they built some New Model Number Three and 44 Double Action Top Breaks with 1 9/16" long cylinders that were long enough to accommodate the 44-40 and 38-40 cartridges, but those models had longer frames that could accommodate the standard cylinder bushings that were so successful keeping S&W Top Breaks from binding with Black Powder.

 

The problem with modern replicas of the S&W Top Breaks is in order to chamber longer cartridges such as 44-40 and 45 Colt the cylinders were lengthened to accommodate the longer cartridges, but the frames were not stretched an equal amount. Instead, the bushings at the front of the cylinders shrunk to a length that did not do as good a job of protecting the cylinder arbor from BP fouling blasted out of the B/C gap.

 

The cylinder in the foreground of this photo is a cylinder from a modern reproduction of the Schofield. Notice how much less prominent the bushing is than the bushing of the cylinder in the background.

 

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This is a close up of the B/C gap of an Uberti replica of the Schofield. Yes, the cylinder is not pushed all the way forward, but it can still be seen how much less horizontal separation there is between the B/C gap and the front of the cylinder bushing. That is why the modern reproductions tend to bind up more quickly than the originals.

 

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I might as well mention at this point, that Kuhnhausen recommends a Barrel/Cylinder gap of .006 for jacketed bullets and .008 for lead bullets. I have always found a gap of around .006 - .008 works fine with my revolvers when fired with Black Powder cartridges. Some recommend opening up the gap more, to allow more space so fouling building up on the surface of the cylinder does not cause it to bind against the forcing cone. My personal opinion is opening the gap up more only allows more fouling to build up on the front face of the cylinder than if it were left at .006 -.008. One day I took my old 45 Colt/45 ACP Ruger Blackhawk to a match and shot it with my Black Powder 45 Colt cartridges. That revolver has a very tight B/C gap, only around .002 if I recall correctly. It functioned fine through out the match without any problems.

 

 

 

 

So last of all, let's talk about ammo. It really does not matter if you want to shoot 45 Colt, 44-40, or any other cartridge with Black Powder. 44-40 is a bit fussier to load, but that is another subject for another time. Because of the very thin brass at the case mouth (not the bottle neck shape) of 44-40 it does tend to expand better at the low pressure generated with Black Powder and seals the chamber better than the thicker case walls of 45 Colt. So for a rifle, if you want to load the slightly fussy to load 44-40 (or 38-40 for that matter) 44-40 is a good choice. It really does not matter in a revolver because no matter how well the case seals the chambers, fouling is going to blast out of the B/C gap and get every where anyway. For the record, I do not own any rifles chambered for 45 Colt. All my CAS rifles are chambered for either 44-40 or 38-40. All my Colts are chambered for 45 Colt. My antique S&W Top Breaks are chambered for 44 Russian. The only 44-40 revolver I have is the Merwin Hulbert. I try to be very careful not to slip a 45 Colt in one of my rifles because I would probably have to take it apart to get the round out. Been doing it this way for close to 20 years, Knock on Wood.

 

First off, you really want a bullet lube that is compatible with Black Powder. This means soft and gooey. When typical modern hard lubes are used with modern bullets, the modern lube tends to combine with the fouling, in the bore, on the cylinder pin, or wherever else it lands, to form a hard, difficult to remove layer. This can quickly reduce accuracy and cause binding problems. There are many solutions to this problem. Adding a Lube Cookie of soft lube under the bullet is one. Adding soft lube over the bullets is another. For some time I was melting the lube out of regular hard cast modern bullets and pan lubing them with a mixture of about 50/50 Crisco and Bees Wax. This worked pretty well in revolvers with their short barrels, but it was problematic in my rifles. The skimpy lube groove on modern bullets did not carry enough lube to keep the bore of a rifle coated with soft lube for its entire length. The bore became 'starved' for lube about 6" from the muzzle and accuracy declined until I swabbed out the barrel with my favorite water based BP cleaning solution to restore accuracy. I tried all sorts of solutions, adding lube cookies, adding card wads, but none of them really worked well until I discovered the Big Lube family of Black Powder bullets.

 

This photo shows one of my Black Powder 44-40 rounds on the left and one of my Black Powder 45 Colt rounds on the right. Next to each round is the Big Lube bullet I use in that cartridge. The 200 grain 44 caliber Mav-Dutchman bullet for the 44-40 and the 250 grain PRS bullet for the 45 Colt. Each bullet is shown stripped of lube to show how huge the lube groove is, and filled with lube. With this much soft, BP compatible bullet lube in my bullets I never added wads or lube cookies or anything else to my BP ammo again. Just seat the bullet with about 1/16" -1/8" compression and that's all there was to it.

 

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I used to cast these bullets myself, but these days I buy them from Springfield Slim, who has already commented on this thread. He sells them from his Whyte Leather Works website. I cannot recommend these bullets highly enough.

 

http://www.whyteleatherworks.com/BigLube.html

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8 hours ago, Driftwood Johnson, SASS #38283 said:

I used to cast these bullets myself, but these days I buy them from Springfield Slim, who has already commented on this thread. He sells them from his Whyte Leather Works website. I cannot recommend these bullets highly enough.

 

http://www.whyteleatherworks.com/BigLube.html

 

Wow thats great info.  I am learning so much.  I had also been experimenting with different bullets on the 44-40, and was a little skeptical about lube amounts and such, but I was really surprised how different the ones I got from whyte were from the other I was using in terms of clean up of the rifle barrel.

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On 1/21/2021 at 2:31 PM, Abe E.S. Corpus SASS #87667 said:

I thought about getting a rifle and revolvers in .44-40.  Recently got the rifle but I’m thinking I’ll go with .45 Colt in the revolvers.  As an experienced FC friend observed, a .44-40 case full of black powder makes for a pretty stout pistol load.  With .45 Colt revolvers I can use Cowboy .45 Special cases for my pistol ammo.  Pretty easy to avoid getting those stubbies confused with .44-40 rifle cartridges.  I’d really like .44 Special revolvers but EMF doesn’t offer that chambering.

I shoot 44-40 in my rifle and 45 Schofield in my 1871 Open Tops. I had a bunch of 45 Schofield rounds and they worked out in all of my revolvers except an older 1875 REM Outlaw that would not cycle that round. I bought a newer 1875 REM Outlaw and it does cycle the Schofield round. It appears that the newer models will shoot 45 Colt as well as the 45 Schofield. DC

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I shoot FCGF for years, favorites are Rugers.  However I did purchase from the estate of a cowboy pard, two nickeled Remingtons by Uberti in 44-40.  Nope, beause as Driftwood mentioned, the cylinder gap is too tight and it bound up on the first cyinder full and all following attempts.  Works ok with smokeless, but they are sharp looking guns.  Colt clones have also served me well once arbor issues are taken care of.  

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