Remington vs Colt revolvers firing Johntson & Dow bullets 

Great video. Cap and Ball is a meticulous experimentantal historian. I love his work

How is it that you take a subject that typically I am not that interested in, and make it exceptionally watchable?

+capandball → At 14:05 in the video: *"Because it's a Colt. Again."* LOL....

Agree 100% on the Remington thing. I much prefer my Remington revolvers over the Colt. Just like I prefer my Henry over the Spencer. But, everyone has their preference. Capandball, you have an amazing collection of firearms. Even here in the USA, these guns are rare to find in such good condition and when found are very expensive. Part of my family has lived in the Gettysburg area and I was exposed to Civil War firearms as a young kid. It is good to see your videos and to see originals still in shooting condition.

I really appreciate your vast knowledge of these old revolvers. Thanks for another great video. I enjoy the hobby as well. 👍

Good to see you back! I had the same percussian cap problems with my Ruger old army replica, and it was brand new. Bravo on the video!

Great to have you back !👍🏻

That misfire showed you have great trigger control and no flinch at all. Very good technique.

Man, I love the look of the open-top Colts, but there's no denying that the Remington is the better-designed gun. I guess the solution is.... To have BOTH! :D

Is the audio messed up for anyone else? Anyway welcome back!

I just got my .36 cartridge boxes from capandball and I love them!

I love the Remington revolver myself. Ive had a Lyman .44 Remington reproduction since I was a young teenager. Cast my own round balls.

2 wonderful old guns.... in the right hands of the right owner ! Great sounds....

Rogers & Spencer is another great revolver from that era, also no misfires contrary to the Colt(s). Only a small number of that revolvers made it to the troops just at the end of the war, all the rest landed in depository and was later sold at the civilian market. In my opinion Colt 1860 is the most beautiful of the percussion revolvers, but Rogers & Spencer the best one for shooting.

Legend is back

For faster reloading with the 36 Navy, I take an empty 38 special case, fill with ffg, and push the .375 ball onto it with firm thumb pressure.

My Johnston and Dow 44's just showed up! Now I get to work up a cartridge. Thanks for ALL your Info! I too have the smell in my nose! Everyone makes a big deal about the Strength of the 1858 frame, yes it IS stronger. BUT "I Think" the Big Deal of the day was Just how Fast a mounted soldier could add a Fresh Loaded Cylinder! Just picture a bunch of mounted Troppers blazing past foot soldiers lines, both shooting at each other. The mounted ride out 100 yrds hold up and slap in a fresh cylinder and use a capper in about the same time as the foot soldiers are loaded with 1/6 the fire power?

The lower 8th ring hit is the double one. Nice vid!

I like watching your demonstrations a lot, thank you

Long Live the 58 Remington

I am going to order the cartridge former and boxes from you. Thanks for the information and entertainment!

Great comparison. Thank you for showing us these historical pieces.

Good video, great to see you back again, I look forward to seeing your next video on the 36 caliber tests. I would like to see if you have the same cap sacking problem on that Colt as you had with your 44.

Interesting presentation. I always thought soldiers used loose black powder & Lead bullets. I didn't know they were issued premade paper cartridges.

Just put the barrel up when re-arming the colt to avoid cap jamming...

Thanks Balazs! A excellent video, as always.

As always, interesting, informative and just plain fun to watch!

It still amazes me how you are able to get such fine originals

Imagine how much soldier die because of their Colt jam in the action ...

One excellent feature of the original cap-and-ball Remingtons that was carried over to the reproductions: The notches between the cylinders. These allow you to load all six chambers and carry the pistol safely with the hammer resting on one of the notches rather than a live percussion cap. Sadly, the .38 special conversion cylinder I recently received for my Uberti New Navy does not carry this feature over. So I can safely load six in the original cylinder but only five in the conversion cylinder. I believe some designs partially overcame this safety flaw with rebounding hammers, but it was only really solved with the transfer bar design introduced by Ruger. (I think - there may have been others earlier.)

I'd go with the colt. I'm a sucker for aesthetics and there is something so pleasing to the eye and elegant about the colt's design, even when the loading lever has the hideous hinge versus the tapered hinge shown here. That and like someone else said, the "pointability" is much better and is better for what it is...a point blank reaction pistol. And when you run out, you've got a club that'll beat someone half to hell just by looking at it

Welcome back! We missed your excellent content!

What beautiful bullets, so smooth and shiny!

Excellent video. I am going to have to get some of those molds and start making cartridges. What a cool way to enjoy your range time.

Great to have you back

Great to have you back long live the 58

Great video! Good to have you back. +1 on Remington over Colt. Is there a story about the gold razor blade necklace? I notice it has been with you on videos for a long time.

Dude, I love your videos, there the reason I'm obsessed with old timey guns.

Another great video. I've ordered a .36 Johnson & Dow mould from Eras Gone and I'm looking forward to your next video testing .36 conical bullets.

Great job as always. Let's keep supporting this channel.

You, just convinced me to get a Remington. Even in that time, Colt made you pay for the name.

Just a little heads-up when cocking your revolver tilt back with muzzle pointing up ,cap will fall free less likely to jam the actions Interesting video.

My understanding is that Colt was supplying the 1860 Army revolver to the US Army till a fire in the factory stopped production in 1864. It was at that time that the Army filled the shortfall by purchasing many Remington New Model Army Revolvers.

My dude where are your subscribers serious man your channel is pure gold

I cannot believe you had 2 hang ups in one cylinder full ! I have been shooting my Colts for over 40 years and have only 4 or 5 such hang ups, it must be down to having the wrong cap/nipple fit, and by crushing the caps on the Remington you are leaving yourself open to chainfire, although you did not seem to have the normal awful capping problems with the fiddly cap ports on your Remington, there is a new design of capper made for the Remington, although of course that would not be appropriate here on this test. Many thanks for posting this.

He's back! GOOD!

Excellent. I am currently experimenting with paper cartridges and the J&D mould from Mark Hobbs in my Ruger Old Army. Early days but the accuracy is good.

I bought a Rem new army 3 weeks ago and another one yesterday. Way better than the 1860 I got rid of because I couldn't hit anything .

You missed my birthday by two days but I'm still considering this a birthday present :) Glad to see you upload!

Blackie Thomas has a video on a modification to eliminate or greatly reduce cap jams on the Colt.

The Colt was the most popular revolver in the cap and ball era. It was a fire at the Colt factory that caused Colt to not be able to fulfill their government contracts not an issue of quality control. So after the fire at Colt , government buyers turned to Remington to fill the gap. Remington were a more advanced design but the Colt outsold Remintons four to one.

yet another very interesting video Thank'you. I have a Ruger Old Army takes a .457 round ball with 30 gns Swiss F2, lots of fun.

An interesting idea for a T shirt......"Because it's a Colt." Keep up the great videos and little journeys back into yesteryear. Thanks!

I love to shoot my worn torn Remington's. When my friends come over I show them my pretty clean Colts in the Box LOL

All Piettas use #11 caps without pinching.

The Daniel Jackson of the gun world ;) Great video!

Relative to the fired caps jamming the colt. The colt IIRC should pointed up when cocking so the cap does not fall into the action. ""Supposedly cavalry officers would fire their gun and then bend their elbow and point the gun straight up in the air as they cocked the hammer for the next shot. At the same time they would flick their wrists to throw the spent cap off the nipple and away from the gun preventing the cap from falling into and jamming the action.""

If my old ears heard correctly, thanks for shooting @25 & @50 meters to get a true test for accuracy.

Hi Professor, happy for your return on one of my favorite channels. I guess his collection of authentic percussion revolvers is all respect. Reminded of his wonderful Remington, I was wondering if an original weapon in the United States could easily be found, and if there are still new weapons produced and packaged by the Factory. Thank you for your response. Thank you very much, Ferro.

Excellent Video again, thanks. Let us Czech it :-) Greetings from The Czech republic.

Köszönjük a csodálatos videót. I am an owner of an original 1858 Remington as well as many reproductions and I enjoyed your testing.

Good video. Also the very first video I have seen even mentioning how the early Colts sometimes had primers drop into the mechanism and cause misfires. In combat that was bad news. It is worth noting though that the Colt 1860s remained in service right up to 1873 when Colt's SAA entered the arena.

I love Remington's too. I have a 44 and 36 Repops. I would love to have originals. I don't think it likes the powder you are using. Glad I found you.

i have a remington model 36 cal. ball gun. didnt think it would SHOOT that far! must be 40-50 yrs old. bought it new lyman brand. have to dig it out.

Love your videos, always from a scientific perspective. Remington's design was clearly better, given that Colt contracts stopped in 1863. The Colt is about 161 years old. It appears to have loosened up. Suggest you try a newly built high quality replica Colt 1860 to see if it suffers from jamming by cap debris and other issues.

Love your work. Greetings from Scotland

Very interesting I like the way you explain things plus the history side .Thank you .

These guns are so beautiful!

Glad to see you back!

Love your video's! Excellent history to complete the life of these firearms. Job well done!

I have seen so many people say the Remington is a better designed gun, due to it's top strap style frame. I have shot1860 colts and 1858 Remington's for many years and my experience is the Colt is the better gun. It has a much larger cylinder pin and rotates much more freely, especially with build up, than the much smaller weaker Remington cylinder pin. Love them both, but my money is on the Colt for being a better functioning design.

How did they compute velocity in the 1850's?

The black powder guru Excellent video

Thank you for a great video. 👍🏻

Got both, the Remington is best. Rather gamble my life on the Remington

With Colts, flip the gun to the right (or the left for a left handed) with a brisk rotation of the wrist when you cock the hammer, so that debris from the cap is thrown out of the workings of the gun. It greatly increases reliability.

glad to see you back!

I punch out little circles for the bottoms and put them on the body while still on the mandrel. I use packing tissue which I have nitrated with KNO3 and cut to exact size. My lube is much the same as yours. With reproduction revolvers of this type the usual problem with them is that the chamber mouths don't match the bore size well. They always seems to be a bit undersized. I always ream them out to be .001" over groove diameter, which gives best accuracy if your bullets are .451-.454". I run my Remingtons "full throttle" with 30gr of 3F and find they are very consistent.... y groups are about the same size as yours....around 3" at 25 yards, more than good enough......"minute if bad guy" for sure....My lube is sufficient to hold the bullets in the cartridge and I run the bullets through a Lyman lube-sizer to fill the grooves... seems to work well.

The sight picture on the (Uberti) Remington is also vastly superior to those of reproduction Colts. With the hammer notch substantially enlarged, the Colt is much more nearly matched to the Remington-but, together with the stronger top-strap frame design, plus the greater reliability of the action against cap-jams and the superior sight picture, Beals’ design must have been the incomparably superior tool for the man in the field. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a beautiful collection of Colts and, to my knowledge, no Remingtons. The Remington may have had greater utility, but the Colt had style! Honda Civic vs Stutz Bearcat; the Colt seemingly remained more popular.

I shoot a fair amount of blackpowder. With the cap and ball I noticed a common issue in your video. Most of the time the caps blow out without issues but they can often hang. No more or less common between any original or copies of that era regardless of caliber or model. What many did and still do who shoot these on a regular basis is what some refer to as the cavalry cock. Before pulling the hammer point the barrel skyward. This facilitates the cap falling free of the cylinder as it rotates.

I love Remingtons too! Mine are not originals though... but still wonderful. I also have the revolving carbine...:-)

Question: You said you were using Swiss powder. Have you done any longevity testing of your loaded cartridges in the wooden boxes? I ask because I prefer to keep my 1858 Remington cylinders loaded but so far Triple 7 and American Pioneer/Shockley's Gold have proven unreliable in humid environments.

Fascinating subject and absolutely gorgeous guns.

Where can you look up manufacturing date based on the serial number for a Remington New Model Army?

Another quality video, if only the Remington had been made with a Colt Army grip!!

What's your target distance? Great groups out of the old timers.

Have to wonder how much more comparable the Colt could be if it was in better condition. While the bore may only be a little worn down, that makes a *lot* of difference. The barrels are also rifled, correct? How worn down is the rifling compared to the Remington?

Very nice civil war guns would love to collect them good presentation {thanks}

The jams are interesting. Any chance the modern caps (poor fit, thinner copper?) are to blame?

It's amazing that the Colt revolver was the more popular design given the miss fire issues resulting from 'cap-sucking'. Faster/better handling response(so reported) must have been an out weighing factor. And then the shell-bangers came along and changed everything!

Very cool and informative video, thanks again!!!!! 👍👍👍👍👍

Little to the left. Accuracy of the gun seems good. Extra Pressure with the thumb should help

Excellent!

pretty much the exact results I have gotten, I concur that the Remington is superior in reliability. It is also significantly better in disassembly!

Great to see you ! I've always enjoyed your videos !!!

Hi, great guns and video. I have Remington 1858 NMA replica manufactured by Uberti and I love to shoot it every Sunday. If I can sugest something, please by and wear some better eyes prorection glasses especially when you play with such a old toys. Regards :)

Imagine a cavalry charge. I pity the trooper who drew the Colt and had misfires and jams. The 'other side' would LOVE Remingtons as well!

Do you cast J&D bullets with pure lead or with some additional tin?

Great Show Cheers.........

I have researched a lot of black powder loads and most are very, very vague if any info can be found at all. The military loads are the worst to try to duplicate for the info is vague to say the least.