. . . bought another Remington . . .

[Arizona Trooper]

Wolfgang,

    That is the Elliott's patent. The barrel should read;

            PATENTED DEC. 17 1861
MANUFACTURED BY REMINGTONS ILION NY

    The transitional models are a miss-mash of early and late parts. In addition to the early high spur hammer and cone sight, you have the no safety notch cylinder. I can't tell for sure on the frame, but it does look like the early grip frame design. Can you post a picture of the frame around the hammer and at the back of the trigger guard?

    The transitionals are getting to be hard to find, plus, you can pretty much bet they saw action in the field. A lot of the late deliveries are in great shape because they sat out the war in a warehouse someplace. By the way, the "New Model" Navy in my picture above is actually a late transitional model, with the 1861 patent date barrel. The serial number puts it around March of '63.

   On the lack of accuracy, a lot of antique arms need to be shot quite a bit before they settle down and hit the target. Don't worry about accuracy for the first 100 rounds or so. Fire a couple cylinders, clean and repeat. It will settle down and shoot as long as your cylinder bores are a couple thousandths larger than the barrel groove diameter. Bore pitting has to be pretty bad before it affects accuracy much, but it will pick up fouling a lot faster.

   A lot of guys in N-SSA shoot Remingtons and would be happy to give you their pet loads. Check out the BB over at www.n-ssa.org .

[Hoof Hearted]

Guys

The easiest way to tell the difference between a Beals and a NMA frame is by looking at the "wings" on the cylinder pin.
The NMA frame is cut to allow the "wings" into the frame (Arizone Troopers pics show this).

Charlie

The grip sizes differ greatly. It appears that it depended on the shaper at time of manufacture........

HH