Hair trigger

[Artificer]

P.S. BTW, many gunsmiths who normally work on modern guns don't want to work on Italian Repro Cap and Ball revolvers - just because it may and often can take too much time to fit the parts (if the parts can even be fit). Customers are not going to want to pay for labor work that costs as much or more than what they originally paid for their guns.

Now at least one importer of Italian Revolvers has a gunsmith who works on their revolvers or other revolvers for reasonable prices. If you run into problems you cannot fix, then I recommend contacting Taylors and Company at the following link: http://www.taylorsfirearms.com/contact-us

Gus

 

[Artificer]

Oh, one important thing on working half cock notches. Widening the notches so a sear face enters properly is something one sometimes have to do, BUT BE CAREFUL not to make/cut the notch deeper or cut further into the tumbler/hammer than the original notch. When/if you cut deeper, you run the risk of the hammer going down too far when at half cock to easily get a cap on the nipple/s.

Gus

 

[snubnose57]

The trigger is from Pietta, but I have no clue who made the hammer. Will take the revolver apart, and see if there are any burrs, etc. May order a Pietta hammer if I can find nothing wrong. Would take pictures, but have no idea how to do that. Everyone, thanks again for the many posts and all your help.

 

[hawkeye2]

I don't believe you have told us what brand your revolver is but you can buy a parts set for Pietas from Cabela's for a very reasonable price. The price is so good that I keep a couple sets on hand just in case. They also have them for Remingtons, look under " Black Powder Pistol & Revolver Accessories" on their site.
http://www.cabelas.com/product/sho...owder-revolver-parts-kit/740233.uts?slotId=12

 

[Artificer]

The trigger is from Pietta, but I have no clue who made the hammer. Will take the revolver apart, and see if there are any burrs, etc. May order a Pietta hammer if I can find nothing wrong. Would take pictures, but have no idea how to do that. Everyone, thanks again for the many posts and all your help.

Since you don't know if the hammer is a Pietta, that probably is the source of your current problem. I

I agree with Hawkeye, buy the parts kit as it really is MUCH cheaper than buying individual parts you are going to need in the future.

Gus

 

[hawkeye2]

Actually I have bought a couple of the brass .44 "Navies" when they were on sale and parted them out in the past. $$ back ++

 

[Artificer]

Actually I have bought a couple of the brass .44 "Navies" when they were on sale and parted them out in the past. $$ back ++

Good Grief! That reminded me how I got the .36 Steel Frame Navy I used in reenacting in the 80's. I put the word out I wanted a used steel frame Navy Colt, but no one had one with the "regulation" full length barrel.

Finally a customer brought up a Steel Frame .36 Colt Navy for us to sell on consignment, but it had the shorter "Sheriff's Length" barrel. Because most NSSA folks did not want the shorter barrel, he had a pretty cheap price on it. I checked it out and it was a Navy Arms Colt.

I must have been exceptionally slow or busy that day (or both :haha because it was a couple three hours before I thought of trying one of the full length barrels in that pistol from a new Navy Arms Brass Frame we were selling super cheap. So I took the Steel Frame and the three Brass Frames we had in the back room and carefully took the longer barrels off the brass frames and tried them on the Steel Frame Colt. Two of the three would have worked, but one of the two that did work had a barrel that fit the steel frame perfectly and the shorter barrel fit that brass frame perfectly. I used my ranging rod to ensure the cylinders lined up on the barrels and they did so perfectly. OK, so I bought both revolvers and did the switch. Now I had a Steel Frame Navy Colt with the full length barrel.

So I had just laid the Brass Frame Colt with the used/switched shorter/Sheriff's length barrel now on it and looked around for a tag to put a price on it. A customer picked it up and said that was exactly what he was looking for. While I was trying to figure out a price, he offered a little more than the other two New Brass Frame Navy Colts we had. OK, so I explained to him that the other two Colts were new, but though everything else on this gun was new, the barrel was used. He asked me to take the barrel off so he could examine it and after he did so, he said, "Well, I'll pay you the same price as the new ones with the longer barrels, if you want to sell it." I made sure he was happy with that and he was very pleased. Of course I was pleased I had Zero money in the longer barrel and that made my used Steel Frame very inexpensive.

A year or so later, the guy who bought the converted Brass Frame stopped by to tell us how much he was enjoying it. That deal worked out great for everyone.

Gus

 

[M. De Land]

Great story Gus, I love it when deals like that work out to all's satisfaction.
I especially like buying orphans that are thought to be almost useless and turning them into fine shooters.

 

[Artificer]

Thanks, M.D.

One thing in that story that perhaps I should have more strongly mentioned was that even though the one Steel Frame and three Bronze/Brass Frame Colt .36 Cal. Navy Revolvers were all Navy Arms, all made by the same manufacturer on the same machinery and all made within maybe three years or so of each other - only two of three barrels from the Brass Frames fit the Steel Frame and only one fit perfectly without needing adjustment.

Now this is WAY too small of a sampling for any kind of general statement about parts interchangeability with Italian Revolvers, but it was at least somewhat telling that only one of the three barrels fit the other revolver perfectly.

I had also recently attended the S&W Armorers Academy for Revolvers, where I had been trained in the use of Ranging Rods for revolvers. So I had two precision ranging rod gauges made up for .36 and .44 caliber Black Powder Revolvers. Prior to that we had checked the barrel to cylinder alignment by eyeball and using a flash light. The Ranging Rods were much more accurate to ensure alignment of the barrel to the cylinder chambers. So I had full confidence the "Frankenstein" Revolver I made from the Brass Frame Revolver and different shorter length Sheriff's Model barrel, would make a sound and good revolver.

Gus

P.S. Up to the point I eventually got the full length .36 Cal. Navy Colt, I had been carrying a .44 Army Colt in my Officer's Reenactor Impression. Once I got the Navy Colt, I could see why it was far and away much more popular with Infantry Officers on both sides during the WBTS compared to the Army Colt.

 

[M. De Land]

I've never had any confidence in range rods for the simple reason most revolvers have choke under the threads and I can see more mis-alignment with a goose neck auto lamp than a range rod will pick up.
Also plug gauges can be used to check alignment so you don't have to order range rods.
S&W also teaches some things I don't agree with either in revolver tuning. They don't like boss shimming but I think it makes a lot of sense.

 

[Artificer]

I've never had any confidence in range rods for the simple reason most revolvers have choke under the threads and I can see more mis-alignment with a goose neck auto lamp than a range rod will pick up.
Also plug gauges can be used to check alignment so you don't have to order range rods.
S&W also teaches some things I don't agree with either in revolver tuning. They don't like boss shimming but I think it makes a lot of sense.

Yes, precision ground plug gages will work instead of precision ground range rod heads.

I'm not disputing you may be able to notice more with goose neck auto lamp, but I have seen a whole lot of people who said alignment was good using that method and range rods showed they were off.

Yeah, I have used shims in S&W revolvers myself over the years.

Gus

 

[M. De Land]

What I'm referring to Gus is being able to see a slight incursion of the chamber mouth into the bore (forcing cone)that a range rod small enough to get by the barrel choke, under the threads, will go right on by.
You can see the slightest misalignment with a goose neck (LED)auto lamp using this method because it works on the same principle as a peep sight. A circle within a circle.
I most often see the misalignment at 2:00 position but on some guns 10:00.
I have a complete set of hard ground steel precision plug gauges in .001 increments .251 through.500. I use em all the time to check bore level and such.
The choke under the frame hole threads comes from a couple of things:
A. In complete thread tap through frame barrel hole.
B. Improperly cut and fit barrel threads.

 

[Artificer]

M.D. Thank you for going to all that trouble typing, but I knew exactly what you meant the first time you wrote about it.

Yes, even checking with a light exactly as you described from others and myself, I have still found chambers out of alignment that the Range Rods picked up. In the 16 or so years of selling Navy Arms and later also Euroarms guns at the NSSA Spring and Fall Nationals, we sold a lot more guns than others because we would check them for and with the customers. The way you mentioned doing it on revolvers by eye was the number one way most people did it.

What I found the Ranging Rods would show was how close the path of the bullet from the chamber would go into the barrel. Of course the Range Rods were not as large as the chambers, but you could see and even measure how close they were to the walls of the chamber when pushed from the barrel into the chambers. Then by figuring the difference in the diameter of the range rods and the cylinder holes, you could tell exactly how close the ball was to being center on the barrel, for each chamber.

Gus