American Frontier Firearms

[Grapeshot]

COLT 1860 ARMY CONVERSIONS
AS MANUFACTURED BY
AMERICAN FRONTIER FIREARMS, INC.

By: Grapeshot


When the Civil War (also known as the War of Northern Aggression) ended, the US Army found itself in possession of a large number of percussion revolvers of both Colt and Remington manufacture. 

Smith and Wesson had exclusive rights on the Rollin White patent on bored through cylinders for metallic cartridges for revolvers, and had just introduced their # 3 Break top in .44 Henry.

As usual, the United States Army was on a tight budget after fighting a long and costly war against the Confederacy of Southern States, and was not in a position to purchase new equipment.

Experiments at Colt and at Frankfurt Arsenal proved that the existing percussion revolvers could be modified to fire metallic cartridges.  The most promising was the Richards Conversion of the M1860 .44 percussion revolver.

This consisted of installing a recoil plate that incorporated a frame mounted firing pin and a loading gate.  The rear of the cylinder was milled off, removing the nipples and boring out the cylinder to accept the new cartridge.  The barrel was replaced and the modified firearm was now ready for action. 

With the expiration of the Rollin White patent, several thousand 1860 .44 caliber Army Revolvers and 1858 Remington  .44  caliber revolvers were converted to fire metallic  cartridges for the military.  Many more were converted for private citizens as well.  These firearms served as a stopgap between the percussion era and the center fire cartridge firearms such as the 1873 Model Colt Single Action Army, 1875 Remington, et al yet bore the brunt of the early days of the westward expansion of this nation.  Surviving examples of these early breech loading revolvers show extensive wear and ammo for the .44 Colt was made into the early decades of the 20th century.

Up to now the only way to get your hands on a cartridge conversion was to haunt the antique arms shows or have one of the reproductions converted by a gunsmith that specializes in this work.  Both options were an expensive proposition. 

Today, we have at least four companies that offer reproductions of these conversions: American Frontier Firearms, Inc, Navy Arms, Taylor's & Co., Inc., and Cimarron Firearms, Inc.   

The focus of this article is on American Frontier Firearms, Inc.'s conversion of the 1860 Colt Army .44.  To begin with these guns are new made as conversions not an actual conversion of an existing percussion firearm, and are proofed for smokeless powder.  The barrel is bored and rifled for .429 - .430 diameter bullet.  Any bullet designed for the .44 Russian / Special / Magnum can be used in this firearm.  The cartridges can be bought as loaded ammo from Black Hills Ammunition or made by trimming .44 Special case down to 1.10 inches and turning the rim down to 0.483 inch.  The actions on the two examples I own are butter smooth and are the best I've ever seen from a pair of revolvers right out of the box.  However the cylinders have a gap of 0.019 inch on one and 0.023 inch on the other between the face of the cylinder and the breech of the barrel.  There is excessive end shake and the wedges that hold the barrel to the frame were a bit loose.   To top it off, the pair shot six inches high and 4 inches left at 45 feet.  Even at that they grouped five shots into a cluster of less than two inches.

A trip to Jack's Gun Works, (321 N. Earlton Road, Havre de Grace, MD 21078) started these revolvers down the path to a reasonable showing at the local Cowboy Action matches in the area.  The first thing we did, was to dovetail a pair of front sights onto the barrels and fabricate a pair of 0.160 inch thick washers to fit between the barrel and cylinder to take up the slack and push the cylinders back against the recoil plate so the hand would index the cylinder.  These washers were made to fit over the cylinder pin and were cut to allow the barrel to be unobstructed at the breech and relieved to allow the extractor rod to pass into the front of the cylinder to kick out empty casings.  The only drawback to this arrangement is that gasses generated by firing the gun are directed into the empty chamber, which causes the loading gate to open when firing the first cartridge.  This really does no harm, and the gate is easily closed by a quick push with the trigger finger as you cock the piece for the next round. 

In comparing the conversions with an A. Uberti copy of the 1860 Army percussion revolver, I found that the barrel wedges on the American Frontier Firearms, (AAF), guns were considerably larger than the ones on the percussion guns.  There is no way to replace the wedges on the AAF guns with any of the spare Italian Parts.   I really do not want to have to rely on these people to provide me with any replacement parts unless I can walk into their facility, tell them what I want, pay for them and walk out with the parts I need. 

Their pistols are better than most I've encountered, the workmanship is very good, but I wonder about their quality control.  Maybe I got a couple of pistols that were put together under duress, as I was holding their feet to the fire to get them to honor their promises on their delivery times.  What had started out as an initial eight-month wait ended up as a three-year delay on delivery.

Reloading for the .44 Colt was easy.  I started out with two hundred rounds of Black Hills .44 Colt Ammo, which is loaded with a 230-grain lead RN/FP bullet.  After sighting in the pair, I reloaded the cartridges with 5.5 grains of Unique, a CCI # 300 primer and a Lee 215-grain LRN bullet sized to .430 inch.  This gave very good accuracy and was my standard load for this cartridge until I acquired some National Bullet Company's 205 grain RN/FP sized to .429 inch.  I then increased my powder charge to 6 grains of Unique.  Both loads print point of aim.

Cleanup on these pistols is just as easy as with their percussion cousins.  Drive the barrel wedge out and pull the barrel from the frame.  Remove the cylinder from the cylinder pin and your ready to start.  The really great thing is that you get to clean the barrel from the breech end.  This lets you really inspect the forcing cone and, if needed, use your Lewis' Lead Remover to get rid of any lead build up in that area.

Shooting these pistols in the local Cowboy matches has proven to be a lot of fun.  Both are now sighted in and are real comfortable to shoot with those generous grips and light charges of Unique.  Teamed up with my .44 Special Yellowboy rifle, I capture the post Civil War period up through the early 1870's. 

As it stands now one of the Revolvers is out of time.  When I cocked the hammer during a stage, the cylinder slipped past the stop and I end up with the area between two cartridges under the firing pin instead of the primer.  I will be taking these pistols back to Jack's and we are planing to shorten the cylinder pin and mill the extension under the forcing cone to bring the barrel-cylinder gap down to 0.005-0.008 inch.  This will hopefully eliminate the end shake as well.  During his examination of the revolver that was skipping past the cylinder bolt, Jack determined that I will need a new cylinder stop assembly.  Hopefully we will have these babies back in action by the next shooting season. 

No such luck.  Jack tried to get the Cylinder Bolt (cylinder stop) from American Frontier Firearms to no avail.  He did manage to talk to one live human to give them his order, (Three Weeks Ago), but has not been able to talk to another live person there at American Frontier Firearms since.  All he gets is the answering Machine, and to top it all off, the last time he tried to call (30 April 2001) the machine informed him that the tape was full and he could not record his message.  We are now looking for alternatives to replace this part as of 7 May 2001.  As of 11 May 2001, Navy Arms reported that they might have a bolt we can use.  They will ship it to Jack A.S.A.P.

While these guns have been at Jack's, he shortened the cylinder pin and milled off some metal from the rear of the barrel assembly where it mates to the frame.  This closed up the excessive barrel gap on both revolvers.

As of 27 May 2001 the revolvers have finally been fixed.  The revolver with the timing problem needed not only the cylinder bolt but some metal taken off the hand to true up the indexing problem.  I pick them up Friday and sight them in again at the range. 

Wonder of wonders, they still shoot to point of aim.  This can be attributed to the skill of Jack Mortimer as a gunsmith.  Now I need to get them out to a match where I can put them through their paces.  Nothing like a little cowboy shooting to prove whether or not they will stand up to the strain of continued firing.

The revolvers shoot well, and they will be a great addition to the Cowboy Battery, but they have lost their charm with all the trouble they have caused me.

If anyone else on this forum has an AFF revolver, I wish you the best.

[Hell-Er High Water]

Grapeshot,

Who is American Frontier Firearms?  Are they still in business?  Do they have a web site?

I tried to 'Google' them and came up with nothing.  Either I am missing something or I am looking in the wrong place.

Any leads would be appreciated.

Thanks.

HHW

[Coffinmaker]

Well .... Taint Grapeshot, but .....

Unfortunately AFF went bust several years ago.  Was a shame.  The were marketing a real nice Richards and an Open Top.  the examples I have seen were fairly well made.  The early built guns had some teething problems but the latter guns were pretty good.
AFF also marketed some ammunition, called the ".44 4 in 1."  Basically a .44 Russian case with a slightly reduced rim diameter.

Coffinmaker 

[Long Johns Wolf]

In his book "Colt Blackpowder Reproductions & Replicas" Dennis Adler has a couple of pics of AFF conversions. According to these pics their Colt M 1860 Richards conversion has a straigth cylinder like the ASM Army conversion. Actually it looks very similar to the ASM Army conversion but with a nicer blueing.
Bringing this into perspective I hear from another source that AFF had ASM produce parts to their specs which AFF then assembled/finished into conversions in the USA. This source also says that ASM (later) produced their conversions using AFF blueprints. This might be a rumor, though...
Bootsie

[Coffinmaker]

Bootsie,

Not a rumor.  AFF guns were based on ASM parts.  Early on, AFF had "teething" problems, and those problems can be traced directly back to ASM and their poor quality control and sloppy machine work.  AFF sorted out the problems with their parts, but ASM never really recovered from their own production errors.  It is a shame as the ASM guns and AFF guns were some fine looking reproductions of the early Richards conversions.
At one time I had 9 ASM conversions (I have a "thing" for conversions) that I sorted out into good working guns.  I had about 50 or 60 hours work in each though.  I'm down to 5 "good" guns which I'll keep.  At least until someone else markets a good early richards.

Coffinmaker