Finally Finished My Rem. NMA Project

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Howdy y'all!

I'm a happy camper!

'Bout 7 years ago I bought a Pietta NMA from my favorite BP related dealer.  He was selling everything and retiring to Florida.  Sales were final and no return.  This gun must have been around for at LEAST 5 years sittin' in the display case, but the price was right.

There was a little surface rust and pitting.  The hammer wasn't shaped right and blocked the rear notch making sighting impossible.  10 minutes with a Dremel and various grit sandpapers fixed the sight and oil-soaked steel wool took care of the rust.  I put some Uncle Mikes Stainless nipples on it and first chance I got, I took it to the range.  It was a shooter!  Plenty accurate for my use.  (I wasn't into SASS or NCOWS at that time and hadn't heard of them; I just thought that C&B pistols were cool.)  I did file the sights down to bring up the strike of the bullet - and took off too much! I found this out the next shooting session.  After about 3 or 4 cylinders full, the loading lever dropped down.  Huh!??  Lo and behold, the lever latch had fallen off and was now lying in the gravel near my feet!  Mumbling to myself, I put it away and finished shooting my trusty (Uberti made, Iver Johnson marked) 1860 Army and went home.  Upon further examination, I found that the lever latch hole was drilled through to the rifling and the lever latch had been GLUED in place to get it past the inspectors!  Well, I now had a 44 cal. paperweight.  I decided I'd TRY to put it in some kind of working order.  Someday.

Fast foreward to Summer, 2005.  I finally had researched all possible fixes (all of which involved cutting the barrel) and worked up the courage to tackle the project.  Did I mention that I have only a borrowed table-mounted drill press and everything else is hand tools?  Well, I got a couple new hacksaw blades, taped the barrel and began.  Unbelievably, mostly to myself, I did OK and the finished barrel and beveled crown looked pretty good.  I ordered some parts from VTI; post front sight, post lever latch, dovetail lever latch, and a few other internal parts just-in-case.  Months go by and it's still a paperweight, but I decide to cut a dovetail by hand.  It worked!  Finally, I decide that since I wasn't smart enough to order a dovetail SIGHT I'd drill and press it into place with my vise.  I have a full set of fraction drill bits, 1/16" - 1/2" by 64ths; a full set of alphabet drill bits, and #1-80 Number drill bits.  Doncha know that none were the needed size?!  Either too big (by .001") or too small (by .002".)  Rats.  Plan B:  drill using the bit a touch large and silver solder.  So I grabbed the cut-off piece of barrel that I used to test drilling depth, etc., and fluxed the sight to prepare to silver solder.  Didja know that flux will instantly take off blueing?  OK< I figured that I'd be REAL careful and only get flux in the hole and not on the surrounding blue.  Well, at the touch of the torch, blueing that wasn't touched by the flux started to flake off!

Well, dear readers, I ended up using 2 ton epoxy in the shallow hole I drilled and it seems to be doing well.  I then proceded to give it a home action job, including grooving the cylinder pin to hold more lube, and got the trigger pull very smooth and went from 7.5 pounds to 3.0 pounds.  I stripped the Red shellac off the grips.  They don't match each other well, but they look better.  I got the chance to shoot it on New Year's Day 2006 and it worked like a champ, shooting point of aim @ 25 yds.  The barrel is now 6 & 1/16th" and handles very well!  And my homemade lube worked great, too!

The NMA has now taken a place of honor next to my pair of 1875 (Uberti) Remingtons. 

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Next project: new grips.  Some Stag (like) grips I think would be jes fine!

[Marshal Will Wingam]

Gripmaker (Larry Little 417-461-1123), has some great synthetic stag grips. Here's a photo of mine:

[Oldelm]

Nice grips, there, Marshall. I always liked the looks of those you gotten,......more white showin ,...not as many crags. I like that.

Steel Horse,.......good work you did on your Remington. It takes a creative mind to readjust one's approach along the way with trying to work on these guns.

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Thanks, Oldelm!

Marshal, those look pretty much perzackly what I was thinkin' about.  Nice Grips!  Thanks for the phone #.

[Major 2]

dag nab it Steel ...

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Uhh ... I don't know where the durn digital camera ran off to, and I'm not sure how to post pictures.  But I'll try!

[Sam Perfye]

SHB, Gripmaker will be at the NCOWS convention. Probably be able to bring the perfect set of grips to finish off your project. Just not plain ivorys, I need them to finish my antiqued 58 Remmie. See ya there, Al.

[Marshal Will Wingam]

......more white showin ,...not as many crags. I like that.

So do I. I sanded them a bit more than normal to achieve that look. There was plenty of material so it wasn't a problem.

[Oldelm]

So do I. I sanded them a bit more than normal to achieve that look. There was plenty of material so it wasn't a problem

Ahhh,...very clever...     I'll have to remember that.