Looking to Cross Over but a little confused

[Coyote Roper]

I am looking to buy a couple Pietta 1858 Remingtons repros in .44 cal.  As far as I can tell, they only make them in .36 and .44 cal.

How do the 45 lc conversion cylinders work on a .44 black powder frame/barrel?   
Wouldn't the bullet diameter of the 45 lc be too large for the .44 cal barrel?

I hope i'm not trying to overthink this and just missing a simple point of balistics.

I've read a lot about the conversion cylinders and how easily they will convert cap and ball to cartridge.

[Dusty Morningwood]

They shoot a .454 round ball (I think) and handle .45 Colt ot Schofield just fine.  At least the one I had did.

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

With the old percussion revolvers, '44 caliber' is a bit of a misnomer. At least the way we think of it today. Today we identify caliber by the diameter across the rifling grooves. In other words, the largest diameter of the rifling. But during the time of percussion revolvers, caliber was often identified by the diameter the hole was drilled, or 'bored', before the rifling was cut. Once the rifling had been cut, what was left of the original hole formed the high spots, or 'lands' of the rifling. So in percussion days, it was common to refer to the caliber of a revolver by the land, or 'bore' diameter, as opposed to the more modern standard of using groove diamter.

I have never slugged an original 44 Cap & Ball revolver, but I have slugged the barrel of one of my Remmies, this one made back around 1975, by EuroArms. It slugs out right about .449, which is a bit tight for 45 caliber, which is usually .451, but it shoots 45 Colt and 45 Schofield out of an R&D cylinder just fine.

The bottom line is, it is nothing more than dumb luck that most 44 cal C&B revolvers have rifling that will accept a 45 caliber bullet, but there you have it.

[Coyote Roper]

Thank you for you expertise, it is very helpful.

Any suggestions on a black powder substitute to start out with?

[Alabama]

Try Black Powder,
then try the others , not the other way around . If your crossing over , cross over to the Dark Side .

Alabama

[Wills Point Pete]

 It is not any kind of accident that the .45 Colt and .45 S&W have the same bore-groove diameter of the .44 cap 'n ball sixguns. After all, the 1872 Colt's Mason transition guns used those cap 'n ball barrels.

Unless you have some local restrictions against the real BP you will be much better off with genuine Black.

[Steel Horse Bailey]

It is not any kind of accident that the .45 Colt and .45 S&W have the same bore-groove diameter of the .44 cap 'n ball sixguns. After all, the 1872 Colt's Mason transition guns used those cap 'n ball barrels.

Unless you have some local restrictions against the real BP you will be much better off with genuine Black.

Agreed!

Coyote Roper, the subs are fine and perhaps that's all you can readily find at your stores.  However, find some other shooters near you and someone will know where to pick up real BP.  Insurance regs have been making it harder and harder to find BP within a lot of city limits.  There's a LOT of animosity about that, because a LOT   of these OVER-restrictive new rules have been snuck in courtesy of the anti-gun factions trying - anyway they can - to limit our ability to shoot.  By the insurance/antis reasoning, BP is dangerous to store - IF your house catches fire.  True.  But did you ever see how dangerous stored gasoline is?  Few - if any - regs exist about storing gas in a can for your lawn mower.
   

But I don't mean to get political, C.Roper;  I just wanted you to know some of the facts.

Start with BP  - you don't get to have/see long streaks of fire with the BP substitutes ... just the smoke.



By the way, if you can't find BP locally, it IS a legal mail-order item in MOST of America still.  By the way, around here (Indianapolis) the price of real BP is a bit over HALF the cost of BP subs!

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy Again

Original specifications for 45 Colt rifling was a groove diameter of .454 min, .455 max. Bore diameter was specified as .445. This data was compiled from an 1882 US Ordinance publication.

When Colt reintroduced the Single Action Army in 1956 they changed the barrel groove diameter to .451, to match the rifling dimensions for 45 ACP.

I did a little bit of barrel slugging today. I slugged my two Second Gen Colts, an Uberti Cattleman, and a Stainless (original model) Ruger Vaquero, all chambered for 45 Colt. All four guns had groove diameters right on the money at .451, one Colt was about .4515. All four guns had bore (land) diameters of .443 or .444, with resulting land heights of .0035 - .004.

I also slugged my two 1858 Remmies; my old EuroArms Remmie that I bought around 1975, and a Stainless Uberti version that I bought used a few years ago. As I remembered, the old EuroArms rifling was tight, with a groove diameter of .449, and a bore diameter of only .440 with a resulting land height of .0045. The Uberti was the big surprise, I had never slugged it before. Groove diameter was a whopping .456, and bore diameter was a tight .440, resulting in lands that were a whopping .008 tall. Looking down the muzzle of this baby really shows how deep the rifling is cut.

Of course the chamber throats on my two R&D cylinders for the Remmies are down around .452 or so, so it is a little bit surprising that the Uberti gun shoots as well as it does. I suspect that in reality what is happening is the lands are so tight that the lead is smooshed around as it enters the rifling and pretty well fills up the grooves anyway. I shoot soft lead bullets in the Remmies, usually the J/P 45-200 Big Lube design sized to .452.

I also slugged my old Navy Arms brass framed 44 cap & ball revolver, but I found out the barrel has 7 rifling grooves and it is very difficult to get an accurate measurement on a slug made from a barrel with an odd number of grooves. So I dunno what the rifling is in my old brass framed Navy.

Anyway, even with the two wildly different rifling configurations in the two Remmies, I have no trouble shooting 45 Colt or 45 Schofield Black Powder rounds in them.

It is not any kind of accident that the .45 Colt and .45 S&W have the same bore-groove diameter of the .44 cap 'n ball sixguns. After all, the 1872 Colt's Mason transition guns used those cap 'n ball barrels.

I never thought of it quite that way. The Colt Richards conversions and the Richards/Mason conversions were chambered for 44 Colt, a heeled bullet cartridge with the bullet the same diameter as the case. The bullet was the same diameter as the round balls that had been used in the C&B guns. The early conversions were made up using stock 1860 C&B barrels, when those ran out new barrels were made to the same dimensions without the opening for the bullet ram. The 45 Colt cartridge of course used a cylindrical bullet designed to fit inside the case, so the case had to be appropriately larger on the outside to contain the bullet. I never thought about the relationship of the 44 Colt rifling to 45 Colt rifling. It would be interesting to slug an original 44 C&B and compare the dimensions.