Regulating '58 Remington sights for close range

[ZVP]

  I'm relatitively new to Cap and Ball shooting and have bought 4 revolvers to whet my taste for the hobby.
I decided to take the big step and set up my 1858 Remington 5 1/2" for a 7 yard sight setting. I filed the front post to be a six o clock hold at 21 ft with the ball striking atop the sight picture. The load is a 35 grain charge  set off with a Remington #11 cap ( this size of Cap fit my gun best). I alternate with either a Greased wad atop the powder or Crisco as a chain fire preventitive.
My reasoning for filing the sight was that I measured the distances on my Club's Cowboy action targets and took an average of it and the current distances for gunfights per FBI accounts and the distance came to be 21 ft as the best average. We have movable targets at our Club's Pistol Rqange so sighting-in for that distance and pratice is easy.
This Sherriffs Model Remingtons sights are very well centered and at this close range and hit spot-on!
I only had to remove less than 1/16" from the front post to achieve hits at this range with the afore mentioned measured load. I know it's slow, but I measure each chamber with a small powder measure for both safety's sake and for accurate as possible reloads. (Heck I didn't get into B/P cause it's FAST!) All in all the load and sights give a very accurate POA and impact on the target. Shots at 20 yards strike a tad higher but on Steel targets you'd never notice the difference.
I think the Remington style sights are regulated for a much lower POI than the Colt design and therefore this sight modification was the easiest type of gun to set up for this distance. I wonder how tall the front post on the Italian repla guns is as opposed to the origonal Remington '58 Factory sights? From pictures I'd estimate that the Italian sights were pretty good representations...
This Sherriff's model Remington set up this way makes for a fast handling close range blaster! I feel it is both a good outdoors companion (especally for snakes) and a viable beginners gun for shooting Cowboy steel targets.
Have any of you set-up your revolvers for close range or do you just hold under to get hits?
ZVP

[SGT John Chapman]

You don't say what size ball your using,....I use .454" balls and Lee 200gn conicals,...if you want to see some real improvement all the way around use the conicals.....

If you want accurate reloads look up my combustable cartridge instructions over here ,....

http://www.cascity.com/forumhall/index.php/topic,9695.0.html

http://www.theopenrange.net/forum/index.php?topic=326.0

[ZVP]

 I have used both .454 and .457 lead balls for my general puropse shooting favoring the .454 ball for ease of swaging into the cylinders. The .451 diameter balls move forward under heavy loads and I am assuming that I may have one overdiameter chamber so I just stick to .454's.
I haven't yet tried conicals just because of cost and because I wanted to try and keep the loads as close to the old days shooting lead balls. I know that the Conicqal gives additional weight to the projectile, thus more foot pounds of energy to the load. The additional power would be intresting to play with. I also understand that the accuracy of current Conicals is of the highest measure. Technology prevails once more!
I know that the average cowboy did shoot Conicals and many guns were sold with lead forging dies to form Conical bullets. History has shown that the favored projectile was and still is the round lead ball. However these days and with current equipment the likelyhood of forming a very good Conical exhists and several manufacturers sell very good Conicals.
Paper patching?
I never gave it a thought being new to the sport but it too is a very intresting propisition!
ZVP

[SGT John Chapman]

I think your greatly under estimating the use of bullets instead of balls,....personally I get the idea that they were about equal in use. All combustables of the time were all bullets and all Colts moulds were one each.

All you need to make them is this mould,...   http://www.midsouthshooterssupply.com/item.asp?sku=0000690382
a fired 45-70 case and a 6" piece of 7/16" dowel with a handle drilled and the dowel glued into it.
Then if you don't have it a lead pot and dipper. From that point your only limited to the ammount of soft lead you can find...

[hellgate]

The greased 200gr LEE conical over 30 grs of FFFg is a nice "thumper". In general, the heavier projectile will shoot higher. I would highly recommend both the .454 and 200gr conical LEE molds in double cavity. They have kept me in ammo for years. However you must develop an eye for scrounging soft lead.