As a newcomer to black powder, the last 8 weeks have been a big learning experience. I had been shooting .22 revolvers, Cowboy Action style up till last fall when ammunition became utterly unobtainable and had to quit. But not to be taken out of the game completely I decided to give black powder revolvers a try, just to see if they were really as much fun as I've heard from "some" that they can be.
Not wanting to dive in too deep, just in case this turned out to be the drudgery that "others" had told me it would be I picked up a Traditions 1851 Navy and enough of the related supplies to get things rolling. Well I gotta' tell ya', this ain't drudgery. I haven't had this much fun with a pistol in my hand in a good many years. But here's the deal:
After 150 shots or so using Hornady .457 balls (we can't get .454's here) with 25 grains of Pyrodex P the gun started to get a bit cranky. The barrel wedge was nearly impossible to remove, and mis-fires were becoming all to common. After a close inspection I found two very obvious problems.
1- There was a lot of slop in the cylinder between the barrel and the frame, which is the reason for the mis-fires. The cylinder was moving far enough forward that the hammer would bottom on the frame before it fired the cap. And that's how I discovered the other problem. . .
2- The barrel wedge had troughed out against the arbor on the front side rendering it too thick to fit the slot properly, which made removal and reinsertion nearly impossible. It was also too narrow to hold the barrel securly against the frame, allowing the cylinder to move forward on the arbor. So here's what I did to correct the problems:
First, I took the barrel wedge and miked the good edge to get an idea of how much to hammer out of the wedge, then using a hard steel drift hammered the front edge back to its original thickness, which also returned it to its original width, as compaired to a new wedge. There was still a tiny bit of play in the cylinder, though it was dramatically better then before the wedge was fixed.
Secondly, to insure the caps would fire with the small amount of extra play I scrounged up a handfull of copper model airplane glow plug washers -- they just happened to be the right size -- and placed one behind each nipple to space the cap closer to the hammer. To test the clearance so's not to fire more then one cap should the spacing be too close to the frame I capped each nipple and checked the clearance between the caps and the frame at several locations around the frame. It turns out that on the extreme LH side the cap was less then .001" from the frame, which to me is way too close for comfort, so I made up a filing jig from .020 brass sheet and filed the washers down from roughly .032" to .024" thick and checked the clearance again. This time a .007" feeler guage went in comfortably, so I figured it would be safe to shoot.
At the Range: Just to be on the safe side, the first time out with the modified set up I loaded one chamer with 25 grains and capped all of the cylinders. Should it fire a cap arbitrarily at some point against the frame at least it wouldn't blow up the gun. I did that 3 times without incident so figured it was good to go, so I loaded it up and have not had a misfire since.
An ounce of prevention: It's obviouse by the design that the 1851 does have some week points. That in itself doesn't concern me because I can see what I'm dealing with. Let's face it, the design, as beefy as it may appear, does have some inherant weeknesses. So to prevent any unnecessary ware and tare on the frame I've backed the powder charge down to 20 grains for target shooting, which is more then adequate to make steel plates go "clang". And a happy side effect is that the gun is actually a little more accurate with the lighter loads. It's also more comfortable to shoot with the lighter recoil. I really don't mind the recoil, but after 100 or 120 shots a day, it does make a difference.
Since the repair I've put a almost 300 rounds through the gun without a single misfire, and only had to re-swedge the barrel wedge once, and since then it hasn't been a problem at all. At this point, the gun is absolutely reliable, and is nothing but pure fun to shoot. I do believe I'll keep it. . . . .
PAT
