Ruger Old Army

[moparclan]

Got a few and a couple of limited Talo Horse Pistols in consecutive numbers. 48 & 49 of 100. Quite fun to shoot and easy clean up in hot soapy water. The stainless will rust if not cleaned after shooting. Bought a few with totally ruined barrels but still shot pretty good.
The cylinder base pin can and will bend if the base pin retainer is not in the locked position.

 

[Cartwright Jones]

I've owned an assortment of BP handguns over the eons. I currently have a Ruger Old Army riding it's box for the last 20 years, had one before that - back when the 200th Anniversary issue was current - cost me a whopping $167 which seems cheap, but that was just a few dollars less than a contemporary Super Blackhawk!
I don't understand the obsession with paying a small fortune for an Old Army, then shelling out what it would cost to buy a decent 9mm or J-frame for a cartridge cylinder all for a "range toy," which is what they always end up being. Cylinders for the Old Army aren't true conversion cylinders in that they can't be loaded while mounted in the gun and must be removed, the back removed, empties pushed out, newbies dropped in, reassembled, and re-installed. That ain't exactly a faster process to reload an Old Army or any C&B revolver! The Old Army is just to gigantic for anything less than holster carry, and then, a Super Blackhawk (if one is being comparative) is the better choice for sheer power.
One of my most favoritest BP guns was an Uberti 1860 Army that I cut down to a 6" barrel, and actually carried, loaded with 180gr. Buffalo bullets! That thing would rupture a water-filled pain can at normal SD distances, and while not as potent as an Old Army CAN BE, it was potent enough in a much more compact, carriable format, plus it pointed like a finger making it very fast to put the first round on target when drawing from concealment.
But almost lost to the modern world is the fact that NOBODY was using a powder flask, loose ball, and grease pot to reload C&B revolvers during their heyday. Paper and other forms of combustible cartridges existed and were manufactured in quantity, supplied to troops, and available OTC so-to-speak. There was even one company making compressed, pelletized powder cartridges with a nitrate coating that didn't use any paper casing, and were completely waterproof! Numerous videos on Youtube reveal this history of this now-arcane ammo and process to make your own, or simply order yourself a few boxes of cartridges loaded with period correct bullets! I think the true "joy" of black powder guns isn't simply loading up and banging away as is typical range practice today, but in becoming immersed in the entire process of operating C&B revolvers, not just in making your own cartridges, but also your own powder which is surprisingly simple, and with that knowledge gained, you truly can NEVER be disarmed by the various regulatory schemes.
Back to reloading. A major reason the '58 (really '63 New Army) Remington was so favored by yankee troops - aside from being $8 cheaper per gun than the 1860, was its complete frame - copied by Ruger, and method to quickly drop out the cylinder - also copied by Ruger, but not as well done as the original which was purposely designed for the base pin th slide forward and be retained while the cylinder was swapped out, whereas the Ruger requires a tool to lock and unlock, and the base pin will draw completely free - NOT a good idea on a gun meant for rapid recharging in combat. One can reload an New Army faster than any modern cartridge single-action using spare cylinders, and even at today's inflated prices, they're much, MUCH cheaper than so-called conversion cylinders!
But, since the entire Colt line was not so easy to cylinder swap, it, and the New Army, were generally fed a diet of factory fresh cartridges, generally 6 to a box with 6 percussion caps included. Even with that, reloading time for a percussion revolver rivals the single-action cartridge models because there's no need to kick out empties one-by-one, just insert a cartridge, ram, proceed, then cap - pretty fast by the standards of the day. This is a way to bring out that Ruger Old Army and start enjoying shooting it (again?)

 

[desi2358]

I've owned an assortment of BP handguns over the eons. I currently have a Ruger Old Army riding it's box for the last 20 years, had one before that - back when the 200th Anniversary issue was current - cost me a whopping $167 which seems cheap, but that was just a few dollars less than a contemporary Super Blackhawk!
I don't understand the obsession with paying a small fortune for an Old Army, then shelling out what it would cost to buy a decent 9mm or J-frame for a cartridge cylinder all for a "range toy," which is what they always end up being. Cylinders for the Old Army aren't true conversion cylinders in that they can't be loaded while mounted in the gun and must be removed, the back removed, empties pushed out, newbies dropped in, reassembled, and re-installed. That ain't exactly a faster process to reload an Old Army or any C&B revolver! The Old Army is just to gigantic for anything less than holster carry, and then, a Super Blackhawk (if one is being comparative) is the better choice for sheer power.
One of my most favoritest BP guns was an Uberti 1860 Army that I cut down to a 6" barrel, and actually carried, loaded with 180gr. Buffalo bullets! That thing would rupture a water-filled pain can at normal SD distances, and while not as potent as an Old Army CAN BE, it was potent enough in a much more compact, carriable format, plus it pointed like a finger making it very fast to put the first round on target when drawing from concealment.
But almost lost to the modern world is the fact that NOBODY was using a powder flask, loose ball, and grease pot to reload C&B revolvers during their heyday.
Back to reloading. A major reason the '58 (really '63 New Army) Remington was so favored by yankee troops - aside from being $8 cheaper per gun than the 1860, was its complete frame - copied by Ruger, and method to quickly drop out the cylinder - also copied by Ruger, but not as well done as the original which was purposely designed for the base pin th slide forward and be retained while the cylinder was swapped out, whereas the Ruger requires a tool to lock and unlock, and the base pin will draw completely free - NOT a good idea on a gun meant for rapid recharging in combat. One can reload an New Army faster than any modern cartridge single-action using spare cylinders, and even at today's inflated prices, they're much, MUCH cheaper than so-called conversion cylinders!
But, since the entire Colt line was not so easy to cylinder swap, it, and the New Army, were generally fed a diet of factory fresh cartridges, generally 6 to a box with 6 percussion caps included. Even with that, reloading time for a percussion revolver rivals the single-action cartridge models because there's no need to kick out empties one-by-one, just insert a cartridge, ram, proceed, then cap - pretty fast by the standards of the day. This is a way to bring out that Ruger Old Army and start enjoying shooting it (again?)

An interesting post and quite accurate in regard to the use of premade combustible cartridges. There was a great deal of effort put into developing more efficient and quicker ways to reload black powder firearms. Loading loose powder & ball was slow, fine for a civilian loading a gun at home or perhaps on the frontier if you simply didn't have or ran out of cartridges but largely obsolete for serious users.

A couple small things...... First, the Ruger cylinder pin retainer is not based on the Remington at all, it is based on the Whitney revolver. The Whitney used a rotating latch that allowed the cylinder pin and rammer assembly to be pulled out as a unit where the Remington had them as separate pieces and the cylinder pin was retained in the frame when the lever was lowered. I have a Whitney and the only real differences are the Whitney has a tab you can turn with your fingers while the Ruger has a screw slot and the rammer assembly on the Whitney is screwed together while the Ruger has interlocking tabs.

Second thing is that while swapping cylinders has become very popular with modern cap & ball shooters there simply isn't any record of it being common during the Civil War period. Nor is there any indication that the Remington was designed for quick cylinder swaps. This is a subject that has been beat to death on the muzzle loading forums. The only significant documented use of spare cylinders was with the early Colt Patterson revolver which had to be taken apart to load. Once they added a loading lever to the design they quickly faded from use.