1862 Colt Police Revolver

[Bunk Stagnerg]

The following is my experience with my Uberti copy of the Colt 182 Police revolver. It is neither a condemnation nor recommendation of the gun, simply my experience with it and observations of it.

Thursday I received the Uberti 1862 Colt Police revolver purchased from DGW and with the stream line shape and semi fluted cylinder it is a very attractive small hand gun. The operative word here is small...very small.

I shot it 35 times Sunday and discovered what I consider a fatal flaw in the gun. Mechanically it works just fine and it is essentially a scaled down 1860 Army/1861 Navy revolver. The load was 15 grains of FFFg Goex powder, a wonder wad, and a Speer swaged ball. It is very comfortable to shoot and seemingly pretty accurate at 10 yards.

The flaw is that the caps were not scaled down. With only seven cylinder loads (35 shots) I had to take the gun apart two times to remove cap fragments and fished one fragment from the hammer slot before it dropped into the works. No matter how careful I was to be sure the cylinder was clear there it was. Most of the fragments were of a size that my 1860 Army would have swallowed them and kept on running.

The gun was easy to take apart the first time for the most part with only a couple of the screws that needed "persuasion" to come out. The inside of the frame shows careful workmanship with no tool marks and only the factory grease needed to be cleaned out. There was some problem installing the hammer and hand, I am not sure why but after about an hour of work it all suddenly went in place. I am no stranger to the inside working of the Colt single action revolvers but this still has me stumped.

No matter which cap I used whether it was the #11 CC, #10 or #11 Remington or the German RWS Dynamit Nobel #1075 the problem persisted. Oddly enough the #10 CCI caps would not fit the factory nipples, so it appears there is no standardization of sizes for percussion caps like there is for center fire primers

I don't think the Petifogger fix will work here because most of the cap stays in the nipple cavity and are not pulled out by the safety notch in the hammer, but little fragments fall out when the gun is cocked. There is just not enough room in the frame for little pieces of copper to accumulate.

Having said all that said it is a fun gun to shoot and only 5 chambers to clean I like it, but it really is not, in my opinion, a good choice for a beginning shooter.

Respectfully submitted ,
Bunk

[pony express]

I have had similar results with my 2 1862s. Haven't shot them in a while, need to get out some of my BP pistols one of these days.

Also, not surprising to me that #10 CCI caps won't fit. I've yet to find anything they will fit on.

[WV Scrounger]

try canting ( Leaning )  the revolver to the right as you cock it....it will help the frags fall out much better....
the colts were also designed to cocked fairly quickly as you tilt it to the right....any attempt to cock it click by click is just askin fer a cap jam...

[Pettifogger]

The 1862 Ubertis suffer from the same arbor fit problems as their bigger guns.  Fix the arbor, install Treso nipples and switch to Remington 10s and it will help a lot.  I bought a pair, even put little miniature cap guards in them thinking they might make semi-decent main match revolvers for people with small hands.  They are still miserable little beasts.

[Bunk Stagnerg]

Thanks for the ideas and suggestions but let me try to explain the problem which I really think is unsolvable because of the way the gun is built
.
The diameter of the recess for the nipple I will call the "nipple well" is smaller than the exploded cap. Therefore when the cap explodes it expands and the pieces are trapped between the side of the nipple well and the nipple. Only the hammer slot is unsupported and that is where the little pieces come from.

My best success was to s cock the hammer with the gun inverted, check for little pieces in the hammer slot with tweezers, and use a pair of very small needle nose pliers to pull out the remaining pieces.

The "gun fighters flip" just won't work because the pieces are mostly stuck tight.  It is slow process but is faster than taking the gun apart with loaded and capped chambers which I consider dangerous.

The problem is that the gun is so small, and the clearances are so small any little thing can jam the gun up. But it is fun to shoot so it is something I can live with.

If I really want to slam rounds down range I will load up the 1861 Navy which is accurate and reliable.
Thanks
Bunk

[clehfeldt]

I have a pair that perform well BUT it required the installation of cap guards to get them to work. Before the guards I could expect a cap jam about half of the time. Now they just work.
Carlos

[Pettifogger]

I have a pair that perform well BUT it required the installation of cap guards to get them to work. Before the guards I could expect a cap jam about half of the time. Now they just work.
Carlos

Unless your revolvers are five shooters you don't have Colt 1862s.  Pietta makes what they call and 1862 but it is really an 1861.

[rifle]

Clefeldt....what type cap guards you talkin bout?

Those little red rubber type cap guards sold at muzzleloader supply places remedy the cap jam problem the "62's" have. They slip over the outside of the caps and when the gun is fired the caps don't frag apart and stay on the nipples cones. No problems at all with those little read things sold in bags of a hundred for a modest price.

I have a bag of them left over from the days my wife was out with me shootin hot lead all over the hills and fields on the farm.

Anyway.....if they are still sold the red caps guards are the easy cure. They were said to water proof the caps and not touted as cap supports but......the support they gave the caps was actually astounding. No frags,no caps fallin off,easy on and easy off. Blessed lil things.

I like to mention how the CVA caps used to be thicker and never fragmented and were actually hard to get off after the chamber was fired. They never fell off or fragmented. Never blew gas out the nipple holes either.

Why some enterprising cap company doesn't make some caps like that for the cap&baller revolvers I can't even guess. The secrete to the CVA caps had to be the fact the cap metal was thicker. Probably like they had back in "the day", when cap&baller revolvers ruled the roost.

I've heard of folks that drill a small hole in the cones of the nipples that releases gas before the cap and not under it.

Anywhoooo....the Treso nips have smaller holes in them and coupled with a stiffer mainspring the cap frag problem would at least be minimized.

One trick could be takin the #10's that are too tight to go on and stoning the cones a lil so they will go on and be tight. That can help.

[Bunk Stagnerg]

Hello Pettifogger

I checked in Haven and Belden and what I have is the reproduction by Uberti of the New Model Police Pistol, also called the Model of 1862 Pocket pistol, or the Officer's Model Pocket pistol, with the half fluted cylinder in .36 Navy caliber.

The Old Model Pocket Pistol is the improvement of the "Baby Dragoon" Old Model Pocket Pistol or Model of 1848 Pocket pistol and is in .31 caliber.

Reference page 65 or page 107 in H&B.

Not wanting to start an argument or anything like that but you had me puzzled about what I had and if I was calling it by the right name so I looked it up.

By the way I am familiar with cattle guards and shin guards, but what is a cap guard and where do you find them or make them and how do they work?

Respectfully submitted
Bunk

[Pettifogger]

Hello Pettifogger

I checked in Haven and Belden and what I have is the reproduction by Uberti of the New Model Police Pistol, also called the Model of 1862 Pocket pistol, or the Officer's Model Pocket pistol, with the half fluted cylinder in .36 Navy caliber.

The Old Model Pocket Pistol is the improvement of the "Baby Dragoon" Old Model Pocket Pistol or Model of 1848 Pocket pistol and is in .31 caliber.

Reference page 65 or page 107 in H&B.

Not wanting to start an argument or anything like that but you had me puzzled about what I had and if I was calling it by the right name so I looked it up.

By the way I am familiar with cattle guards and shin guards, but what is a cap guard and where do you find them or make them and how do they work?

Respectfully submitted
Bunk

I figured you knew what you had.  My comments were to another poster as I'm not sure he knows what he has.  I'll try to find a photo of some cap guards.  The only problem with the 1862 Pocket is that it is a five shot.  In SASS shooting the hammer has to be down on an empty chamber on with a five shot on a safety pin or a safety notch.  When you install cap guards you have to weld up the hammer so there is no where to safety set the hammer when it is fully loaded with five rounds.

[Pettifogger]

Not a very good photo, but this will give you an idea of what cap guards are.  Some people just solder two separate pieces of metal to the face of the recoil shield.  I mill a slot in the frame, solder in a solid plate and then mill a notch in the plate.  The hammer face then has to be welded up to eliminate the safety pin notch and is then milled narrower so the nose fits into the cap guard.  Helps keep cap frags from falling down the hammer channel.

[Slowhand Bob]

I now have four revolvers with the Manhatten (Project ) and wonder why Colt didnt make it standard?  After much thought I decided that the Uberti '62 just wasnt a reasonable choice for SASS shooting BUT I still love my pair and will hold on to them.  I never tried the cap guards on the nipples as sources for them seem to have pretty much dried up by the time the idea came along!  As an aside, I had a pard loan me some at a match one time and found them to be a very valuable help in completing that match.  In addition to the already mentioned problems that can be helped by cap guards, they sure stopped a chain firing problem I was having at that match.  Never use a match to try out your new untested guns!!!

[Bunk Stagnerg]

Thanks Pettifogger that is a pretty neat fix, but unfortunately I don't have the equipment to do it.
I have other full size sx chambered guns for SASS, I just got the '62 as a fun gun to plink and carry when I am riding the pasture for snakes or other small varmints.
I did find some cap guards with a web search  that are little pink pieces of plastic tube but I am not sure they would fit in that small recess. I have enough trouble just getting caps on the nipples.
Bunk

[pony express]

Reading this a thought came to me(Danger! Danger!). Maybe put the cap guards on the caps BEFORE capping the pistol. Added benefit of making caps easier to handle. If the cap guards aren't readily available, how about cutting short pieces of appropriate size aquarium tubing? Of course, they wouldn't feed through a capper anymore, but I don't know of a capper that will work with these small guns anyway.

[Pettifogger]

Reading this a thought came to me(Danger! Danger!). Maybe put the cap guards on the caps BEFORE capping the pistol. Added benefit of making caps easier to handle. If the cap guards aren't readily available, how about cutting short pieces of appropriate size aquarium tubing? Of course, they wouldn't feed through a capper anymore, but I don't know of a capper that will work with these small guns anyway.

The plastic guards are OK if you are just going to pop off five rounds and go home.  They take forever to get on and off at a match and just take to much time and effort.  Properly fitting nipples and caps are the solution.  Rubber hose is a band aid.  If they won't fit in a capper then that means you have to put them on by hand.  Ever seen the photo of the guy's thumb where a cap went off when he was pushing it on?

[pony express]

Agreed it's better to have something that works properly than to have a band aid. I wonder, did the originals work better? They must have, since Colt sold a lot of them. Was it simply the better caps available then, or is there some difference from the original design that causes the problem?

If I keep reading about these, I'm gonna have to dig mine out and shoot them some. Bit I'll have to do some work first, I think I swiped the hammer spring out of one of them for another pistol. Another problem, one is a regular Uberti, I think the other is Lyman. Was told Lyman was made by Uberti, but the nipples are different thread.

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

There was a time when Uberti percussion revolvers used the same cone threads as Pietta.  I have an 1861 that uses Pietta cones (But not quite, they are shorter!).  Date stamp is XXIV. I couldn't get Treso cones to fit & fire and suffered cap fragment problems during my last match.  I still won the "frontiersman" category being the only entrant!

[Paladin UK]

Fer Pettifogger...

Twas Cuts Crooked`s thumb!!

Here`s the link...

http://www.cascity.com/forumhall/index.php/topic,1620.0.html

Paladin (What uses a push stick  ) UK

[Pettifogger]

Fer Pettifogger...

Twas Cuts Crooked`s thumb!!

Here`s the link...

http://www.cascity.com/forumhall/index.php/topic,1620.0.html

Paladin (What uses a push stick  ) UK

Didn't know the whole story, but I've posted that photo a bunch of times.  As soon as someone starts talking about pinching caps and seating them with their thumb its time to bring out the photo!   

[Slowhand Bob]

I might be wrong BUT didnt SASS actually add something into the books that specifically forbid seating caps with the thumb/fingers?  I know the photo was a pretty big topic on the WIRE a few years back.