Kisrt .22lr Konverter Review

[JohnsonBarr]

 This review has been a bit slow in coming but, it has been a busy summer shooting season. I have attended two national matches, several regional shoots and some special club events covering 6 states including my home state of Texas. The dust finally settled a week ago this past Saturday October 29th at the 5-day Camp and Shootfest in west Texas where I was able to test fire and evaluate Walt Krist and Jay Strite's latest percussion revolver conversion.
This story actually starts a few days before I left in mid-June for the NCOWS Nationals at Evansville, Indiana when my brother and greatest friend Bryan Buck of 3B Shooting Supply in Kaufman, Texas handed me a small white box. The box was marked: 'For Johnson Barr alias Mark Smith' and contained the 4 piece conversion kit marked X3 (experimental #3) along with several pages of complete and thorough instructions. Bryan Buck has X1 and his review of the Konverter appears in the current Fall 2016 issue of NCOWS Shootist magazine. First item out of the box was the slip-in .22 caliber barrel adapter. This 2" long rifled barrel's outside diameter precisely fits the bore of Uberti's .31 caliber 5-shot 1848 and 1849 Wells Fargo and Pocket models. Also included is an adapter bushing that slips over the barrel adapter. This bushing has the proper outside dimension that correctly matches the bore of Uberti's .36 caliber 5-shot 1862 Pocket Police and Pocket Navy percussion revolvers. I will be using my 1862 Pocket Navy with 5" barrel for testing. The two remaining components were the 6-shot (load only 5 with hammer down on the empty chamber) .22 long rifle chambered cylinder and the backing plate with an off set (rimfire ignition) floating firing pin and a loading port cut on the right side to aid in loading and unloading cartridges. It is important to know that to utilize this feature it will be necessary to cut a matching 3/8" port in the revolvers right side recoil shield. Complete and detailed instructions for this modification are also included. I plan to leave my pistol unmodified and simply disassemble and reassemble the revolver for loading and unloading. This is a fairly simple and quick process that I found I could do in less than 20 seconds.
  Back to Fort Benjamin. Most folks were already packed and gone, so I had the target pistol lane and cowboy range all to my self Saturday afternoon. I stapled up several targets on the backer board and tested a half dozen different brands of .22 ammo with velocities ranging from 710 fps to 1640 fps. Best grouping (see pic) was with CCI Standard Velocity (1070 fps) Target Ammo. I used a 7" diameter paper plate with a 3" 'shoot-n-see' sticker for bulls eye. Target was placed at 10 yards and I used one handed, duelist style grip holding at the six o'clock position of the 'shoot-n-see'. The 10 shot string averaged 2" high above point of aim.
  Now for more fun. At the cowboy range I started with the 7 yard plate rack and the 4"x6" swinger. No misses. On to the 10 yard special shapes Gambler Rack. These swingers were cut from 8"x10" plate in the shapes of the card suits; heart, diamond, club and spade with a 8" square kicker to complete a cowboy 5 shot sweep. Again no misses. Well, there's gotta be a miss in there somewhere. Next stop the 15 yard rack with mostly 8"x10" and 10"x10" plates. And it's there that my ammo and fun ran out but, still no misses. Excellent! Walt and Jay make a dandy pea shooter.
One last shot. Day before yesterday, Saturday November 5th, was the monthly NCOWS match at my home posse Berger Sharpshooters range at Lanetown just outside of Greenville, Texas. I took the Kirst equipped Pocket Navy with me and used it as my main match pistol. I signed in for the Working Cowboy 2-gun duelist category and used the conversion through  all six stages. Berger's pistol targets were at their usual 12 to 15 yard distances with the exception of stage 6 which used special shaped targets at 10 yard. Gawd how I hate those little marshal's. These are the smallest of our pistol targets and it seems my shots always go where the steel used to be. Well sir, I took my time adding an extra second or two to acquire the miniscule Pocket's sights and drilled those bow legged buggers in the brisket. As it worked out I had no pistol misses for the 6-stage match. Wish I could say the same for my rifle shooting. Seems to me I saw 3 of those rifle targets out at 50 yards jump away just before my bullet got there. Maybe they were scared of the black powder smoke and fire that belched from my .44 Henry carbine or it coulda been the sun got in my eye. Yea, that's it, the sun done it.   
  All in all the .22 Krist Konverter is not only very well made but, plenty accurate for cowboy style shooting. I had no failures to fire or properly index with each cocking of the hammer and I now have most of a brick of shells fired through it. The only thing that would have made shooting the conversion more fun would be .22 Black Powder cartridges.
  Hmmm, looks like I've just found my next project.
   

[JohnsonBarr]

Apologies Walt. So much for spell check and my poor proof reading skills. Looks like I spelled your last name correctly only once. Bad Mark, bad. But I will get your web address correct!   www.KirstKonverter.com

[pony express]

Looks nice. From the looks in the bottom pic, I think if the .22short was common anymore, you could load those without modifying the frame.

[Good Troy]

Thanks for the review!  It is something worth considering, as I don't own a rimfire....yet.

[JohnsonBarr]

Sadly no, the loaded .22 short rounds will not chamber without the recoil shield being relieved. Believe me I tried. I used CCI CB Shorts (710fps) in my testing. A really fun round; no need for hearing protection, and was able to dance empty pop cans down the range. The empty cases did clear the recoil shield coming out during unloading but, it was necessary to take-down the pistol to reload the shorts. The pic is from target set at 10 yards shooting duelist style.