Speedloading the ruger old army????

[missouri dave]

Can you speed load the ruger old army just like a remington by replacing the cylinder with another preloaded cylinder?

[naedlaen]

Dave,

I own an Old Army (not that I shoot it much, time constraints), and the loading lever is enough different that it would not be a speed reload.  On the Remington, you drop the loading lever and pull the pin, change cylinders, replace the cylinder pin and lock the loading lever up.  On the Old Army, you need to unlock the loading lever keeper, drop the loading lever and remove it and the ball rammer to get the cylinder out.  Not impossible, but not as neet as the Remington.

Another issue is a source for a second cylinder for the Old Army.  Ruger will not sell one to you without the revolver and the revovlers orignal cylinder being sent back for fitting, and they will not return the original cylinder.  (source, the Ruger manual).  So the only way to accomplish this is to find a second Old Army for the second cylinder.  Then it is quicker to have two loaded revolvers.

The final caution ( and probably Ruger's main reason for the above) is that you would probably not want to handle a loaded and capped cylinder by itself.  While it may be a slim chance, a cap could receive enough impact to go off, resulting in a ball ending up someplace you did not want, and a cylinder bouncing around some more as the result of reaction.  I belive that people that swap out cylinders on the Remingtions do not cap until after the cylinder is in the revolver.

Neal

[longcaribiner]

I called Ruger a few years ago (maybe 2001) about fitting a second cylinder for my pistol and I was quoted a price of $120.00.
They only needed the frame sent.
The price of another toy kept me from following through.

[LubeckTech]

Rugers are too complicated in design to quickly swap cylinders with besides you still have to cap the cylinders after loading into the gun. Doing so before hand would be unsafe for if the cylinder were dropped BOOM!!
What could be done is to design a system to safley speed up the way we load any revolver with the cylinder in the gun. I was thinking of a dispencer which could dispence a ball, lube pill then a powder charge into a half (for.44) inch piece of tubing so it could be dumped into a chamber for ramming into place. What about making paper containers with powder and ball like I've seen reinactors use? Basically there should be safe ways to mare the loading sequence more efficient if we can think of them.

[Flint]

The ROA base pin lock does not have to be turned, the loading lever latch up front will keep the lever in place, and the base pin can't back out.  Even if the lever drops, the base pin is unlikely to completely slide out.

Most SASS/CAS shooters either loading percussion cylinders on a loading device or using conversion cylinders just rely on the lever latch to keep it together.  Also, if you're using conversion cylinders,or loading cylinders off the gun, you can leave the ball seating plunger off the gun, just one more piece to fumble with.

[mousegun]

I recently purchased an extra cylinder from an ROA owner who had converted his to cartridge.  I have seen a couple of ROA cylinders on EBay over the years, probably from owners parting out their guns for more money, but EBay is the riskiest way to do it.

There are several issues to consider before trying a spare percussion cylinder in the ROA that hasn't been factory fitted for it:

1. The guns should be of the same vintage and metallurgy in order to assure similar fit and timing, thus avoiding any problems with design changes over the years.  Also, stainless dimensions may be different from blued, so you'd be taking a chance there.

2. There is a chance that the cylinder length will be incompatible with the barrel breech to back of frame length.  I was lucky, but was prepared to shorten the cylinder if necessary.  Since the chambers are closed and there's no headspace issue, it's possible to shim a too-short cylinder from the back, but tacky.  The fella I bought the cylinder from was a real gentleman and agreed to take the cylinder back if it didn't work.  It was perfect!  You may not be so lucky.

3. It isn't necessary to keep the ram on the loading lever; no ram simplifies changing the cylinder.  Make sure a spare ram is available in case the first one is misplaced. I modified the loading lever with a small strip of aluminum duct tape to keep the ram from falling off the lever during reloading.  Works fine.  It isn't necessary to set the cylinder pin lock screw if the loading lever stays on the gun sans ram.

4. It might be worthwhile to see if Ruger will fit a cylinder to an empty frame, but I was told by a lady in customer service that they had to have a return cylinder before they'll fit a new one.

Having a spare cylinder as well as an R&D conversion for the ROA is terminal kewl!