1858 Relvover Accuracy

[STEVES]

Looking for tips for improving accuracy. Uberti Remington 1858 .44 cal. The cylinders have been reamed to .456. Thanks in advance.

[Mike McDaniel]

Shoot each chamber separately, see which one shoots the best. The low-end Italian repros often have alignment issues...they can only do so much on a $200 manufacturing budget. Use the gun as a single-shot pistol for N-SSA individuals.

Get a good trigger job done, recut the forcing cone.

Then practice. At 50 yards.

[STEVES]

Thank you for your input!

[STEVES]

Not shooting NSSA stuff yet but I am very interested.

[Maillemaker]

Second what Eggman said. I'm a musket hack. I am good enough to be dangerous. I did some work on an 1858 Remington and it went off in my friend's hand while he as getting ready to shoot. Fortunately, it was pointed in a safe direction. It is easy to screw up if you don't know what you are doing. Definitely check your trigger pull with a hanging weight on the trigger if you attempt monkeying with it. The good news is you can replace the hammer very easily and start over.

My opinion is that accurization is an art and you are probably better off leaving it to an expert at it.

Some of these reproduction guns just don't shoot well. Some of the older guns I think had quality problems, like under-sized chambers, that resulted in under-sized bullets being sent down the bores which resulted in bad accuracy.

I own about 8 reproduction revolvers. The best one of the bunch is a 2019-manufacture 1858 I bought through EMF company (that Pietta now owns) over Christmas. Out of the box, it shot a .606" diameter group off a bench at 25 yards, using the Moose Molds revolver bullet. It also shot a .5" group using round ball and 18 grains 3F Goex, if you discounted the fliers.

Pictures: https://imgur.com/a/QEEj4Ev

But I've got a Spiller and Burr that just doesn't shoot well. I did a full load workup with round ball and 3F powder, and 12 grains gave the best group, but it still sucked. I even tried my hand at doing an 11 degree forcing cone job on it - I think it shoots worse now.

I've got a stainless steel Uberti 1858 that also shoots poorly.

I think it's luck of the draw with reproduction guns, though I must say after my latest Pietta I'm pretty impressed with them at the moment.

Some of the things that probably affect accuracy:



Lockup of the cylinder. I find all of my revolvers seem to do this pretty well.
Alignment of the chambers with the barrel
Correctly sized chambers for the bore size
Forcing cone
Barrel Crown
Trigger job


Other than hacking a trigger job and trying my hand at the forcing cone (which was very easy, by the way - just didn't help), the rest of the things are a mystery to me. My buddy has some reamers so I'm tempted to try my hand at doing some reaming on the Spiller and Burr. There is a lot of meat in .36 cylinders but not so much in .44 ones.

You are probably better off sending it to Charlie Hahn as the learning curve looks steep and expensive to me. :)

[Mike McDaniel]

+1 on sending it to Hahn. Unless you know what you're doing, don't try DIY trigger jobs.

The big headache with revolvers is that there is no cheap upgrade path. You can buy a cheap musket and upgrade it into a championship gun...you really can't do that with a revolver. You must have a gun with proper alignment of the chambers to the bore. A good barrel. A first-class trigger job.

Then practice, practice, and practice some more. Preferably at 50 yards. Master 50, and 25 will take care of itself.

[efritz]

All good advice. Mike summed it up pretty much. A good shooter in his own right. If your revolver is tuned sighted in properly and load worked up there?s only one other piece of advice I can offer. Hold and squeeze the trigger. Another good shooter once taught me if you?re shaking in the black and you squeeze the trigger it?ll go in the black. No one can hold like a vice. We all shake. It was some of the best advice I ever received.