Range Report 25NOV2023 Part II: Practicing with the Uberti Colt New Model Army

 

In part I of this range report I wrote about the experiments I have conducted with my replicated M1873 Colt .45 ammunition, believing that discussion sufficiently different from and unrelated to my subsequent practice with my Colt new Model Army reproduction as to need to be addressed in a separate article.

In part II, I will discuss today's range practice with my Uberti reproduction of a Colt New Model Army revolver, often called the Colt 1860 Army today.  I wrote a few weeks ago about comparing Johnston and Dow combustible cartridges with Kerr cartridges in my Colt (see the article HERE), but that shooting was all done from a rest to take the human factor out of the equation as much as possible in order to focus on the ammunition.  In this practice session I used only Kerr combustible cartridges, and all shooting was done offhand in order to test and improve the accuracy (not precision) of my shooting.  In addition to normal shooting, I also shot a table of fire using the "snap shooting" technique described in Captain Stanhope Blunt's Instructions in Rifle and Carbine Firing for the United States Army from 1889.

Given the fairly rudimentary sights on Civil War revolvers (especially Colts!) and their lack of adjustability we have to ask how important they were in actual combat, as opposed to in target shooting.  Captain Blunt suggested ignoring them completely and learning to aim instinctively, as if pointing your finger, saying:

832. Owing to the unsteady support that the hand gives to the weapon the methods of aiming previously prescribed for the rifle and carbine cannot be advantageously followed; this is especially true of the practice mounted, where the motion of the horse and the very limited time available for the delivery of the fire permit neither the steadiness nor deliberation so requisite for success with the other arms.

833. The best results will then be obtained by following the method of snap shooting; for which the pistol should be held raised and then quickly projected at the mark and fired without pause or any effort to align it upon the object, the action being somewhat similar to that employed in throwing a missile from the hand and from the same raised position of the arm. (Blunt 1889 p. 309.)

Blunt gave the following directions:

838. The clasp of the thumb and second and third fingers should be firm, the first finger being on the trigger and the little finger underneath the end of the handle. If the clasp is too high up on the handle the muzzle will be elevated; if too low, the muzzle will be depressed. The clasp should not be so tight as to communicate tremor to the pistol, yet sufficiently firm to sustain, when firing with ball cartridges, the force of the recoil. After the discharge the position of raise pistol will be resumed.

839. These motions will at first be executed rather slowly, the instructor correcting the positions if necessary, and the motions quickened as the soldier acquires the habit of leveling or projecting instinctively the pistol in the same man-ner that the forefinger would be pointed at an object. (id. p. 311.)

I strongly suspect that this method, or something very like it, was the norm in combat during the period, and, indeed, beyond, as it presages the later "point shooting" technique taught by Fairbairn, Applegate, Sykes, and others during WWII.  I do not practice this technique as often as I should, but plan to focus more heavily on it in future.  Normally, when practicing snap shooting I don't determine a String Test measurement (see below), instead opting to draw a 14 inch circle around the aiming point and simply calculating the number of hits within that circle since it's not a target technique, however, today I neglected to prepare any targets with circles, so I chose to use the string Test, and was pleasantly surprised by the results.

My ammunition was combustible cartridges with nitrated paper shells containing 25 grains of Schuetzen 3F powder under a Kerr bullet and dipped in a mixture of beeswax and tallow taken from the 1861 Ordnance Manuals.  To learn more about how I make combustible cartridges, read the article HERE.

Kerr combustible cartridges.

I judge the accuracy (as opposed to precision) of my shooting using the 19th-century method called the String Test, a system vastly superior to just looking at the group size since it takes both group size and the distance from the group to the intended mean point of impact in a single figure.  To learn how to use this system and why all historical shooters should do so, read the article HERE.

My Colt NMA, ammunition, and accouterments.

Shooting Conditions:  Lytle Creek Range, bright and sunny, 42 degrees, wind 9 mph (gusting to 22 mph) from 10:00, 52% humidity, barometer 30.08 inHg.

All shooting was done offhand at 15 yards using a full sight while aiming off to adjust fire.  Table of Fire Five was done using the above-mentioned snap shooting method.  Note that this article begins with Table of Fire Four because the first three Tables of Fire were done with my Colt conversion revolver, as discussed in part I of today's range report.

Table of Fire Four.

Table of Fire Four
6 rounds, string measurement 17 inches.
String Test: 2.8 in./rd.

Table of Fire Five: Snap Shooting.

Table of Fire Five: Snap Shooting
6 rounds, string measurement 19 inches.
String Test: 3.2 in./rd.
Note how the line of shots track down as I sought to overcome the first high shots, but how I drifted left in so doing.

Table of Fire Six.

Table of Fire Six
6 rounds, string measurement 11.5 inches.

String Test:  1.9 in./rd.!!!

Table of Fire Seven.

Table of Fire Seven
5 rounds, string measurement 12.5 inches.

String Test: 2.5 in./rd.

Table of Fire Eight.

Table of Fire Eight
6 rounds, string measurement 15.5 inches.

String Test: 2.6 in./rd.

Table of Fire Nine.

Table of Fire Nine

6 rounds, string measurement 14.5 inches.
String Test: 2.4 in./rd.

Conclusions:
I don't normally write blog posts about routine practice sessions unless I am conducting some kind of comparison or experiment, but I thought this session was sufficiently interesting to warrant posting it because the Colt NMA is new for me (this is my first actual practice session with it) and because of the snap shooting trial explained above.

As I have said before, I believe (although I can't prove it) that snap shooting of one sort or another was far more common in combat than any kind of aimed target-style shooting.  What I found particularly interesting today was the rather excellent String Test I achieved, which reflects a lot closer hitting than I usually get.  Although I have never done a String Test with snap shooting before, believing that since it's combat shooting all that counts is the ability to hit a man's chest somewhere, I can still see from previous experiences that the groups I got with my Remington New Model Army were larger than the group I got today with the Colt--and believe me, as someone who vastly prefers the Remington, that's hard to write.  I attribute this to the better balance of the Colt in my hand, a factor that really seems to matter a lot with snap shooting.  I plan to practice this a lot more.

The other shooting results pleased me as well.  This Colt shoots closer to point of aim thand does my Colt Navy, which means that I don't have to guess in aiming off, which leads to better consistency, which is the key to a good String Test result.  My personal standard of acceptable accuracy is a minimum of 3 in./rd. at 15 yards, and with my Remington I have been consistently getting sub-2 inch results, which I consider to be not only good, but probably at or near the limit of the accuracy of the piece.  I consider Colts to be inferior weapons in almost every way, so to come close to that kind of result today (albeit with only one sub-2 inch result) is extremely gratifying.

Still, the only easy day was yesterday, and the only score that's good enough is one better than any you've done before, so I have a lot more practice to do.

Range Report 25NOV2023 Part I: Replicating the M1873 .45 Colt Cartridge

In a break from my normal practice, I am dividing today's range report into two parts.  In this one, I will discuss my efforts to replicate the military's M1873 cartridge in .45 Colt (remember, there's no such thing as .45 Long Colt).  I should start by saying that a perfect reproduction is impossible, for several reasons, as will become apparent below; rather, this is my attempt to reproduce the cartridge as closely as I can using modern brass and priming with an eye toward at least getting the external ballistics right.

Fig. 1: Early military .45 copper Colt cartridges with the Benet primer. (Left, M1873 Colt, center and right, Schofield .45 Short Colt.)

Fig. 2: The M1873 Cartridge after Kuhnhausen 2001.

The M1873 is the first of the .45 Colt metallic cartridges used by the U.S. military.  They were made of copper rather than brass and employed a rather unusual priming system called the Benet primer invented in 1866 by Stephen V. Benét.  This system included a small cup containing fulminate of mercury (see figure 1 above) which was crimped inside the copper case.  From the outside, this looks like a rimfire cartridge, but as the picture above shows, it is not.

The ball used in the M1873 weighed between 250-255 grains, and had two grease grooves and a hollow base (see figure 2 above).  This was loaded over 30 grains of 2F black powder (yes, 2F, that is not a typo).

Fig. 3: Comparing the Accurate Bullet Mold bullet (left) with the original design (right).

In order to replicate the bullet used in the M1873 cartridge I contacted Accurate Bullet Molds for a custom mold.  The mold they provided yields a bullet which is very close to correct, but differs from the original in two respects (see figure 3 above).  First, the Accurate bullet has a crimp groove while the original does not, and second, the original has a hollow base, which my bullet does not.  The originals didn't use a crimp groove for reasons which are obscure, but appear to be related to the difficulty of mass production of metallic cartridges in period.  The hollow base can't be easily replicated by the method Accurate Bullet Molds uses to make their molds since it requires a special insert, but it turns out to be unnecessary.  The original bullet was .452 (to make it easier to load into early loading machinery) and it was felt that the hollow base would be necessary for the bullet to obturate into the rifling, but the Accurate bullet is .454 and doesn't need to obturate for proper fit so there is no need for a hollow base.  The Accurate bullet is .454 in diameter and weighs approximately 255 grains.

I load my cartridges into Starline center-primed brass cases (incidentally, the civilian version of the 1873 cartridges were brass and had center primers, much like mine).  To read about how I load the cartridges, read the article HERE.

Fig. 4: A batch of my replicated M1873 cartridges.

As the article in the link above shows, I started with 35 grains of 3F powder, but since I want to replicate the M873 correctly I have switched to using only 30 grains.  I believed that the 2F powder originally used in the M1873 cartridges would be less accurate since 2F takes longer to combust fully in a revolver barrel (which is why 2F is normally used for rifles while 3F is normally used for revolvers), so today's range session was intended to compare the two types of powder to see which was more accurate, and to see which came closer to the original in terms of muzzle velocity.  Unfortunately, my chronograph gave obviously spurious results (ranging from more than 3,000 fps to under 300 fps for the same loads), so that determination remains to be examined.  As to accuracy, however, my prediction failed, with the 2F and 3F having almost exactly the same accuracy, with the 2F being a very, very slight bit better (small enough to be within the margin of error of such a test).

Conditions:  Lytle Creek Range, bright and sunny, 42 degrees, wind 9 mph (gusting to 22 mph) from 10:00, 52% humidity, barometer 30.08 inHg.

All shooting was done with my Colt 1860 Conversion revolver from a rest (to take the human factor out of the equation as much as possible) at 15 yards.  All shooting was done at a 3 inch black dot using a full sight and a 6:00 hold without aiming off.  I fired three tables of fire, with 12 rounds with 30 grains of 3F Schetzen, 12 rounds with 30 grains of 2F Schuetzen, and 6 rounds of 35 grains of 3F Schuetzen.

I used the String Test to gauge the accuracy of my shooting.  To learn how the system works and why anyone doing historical shooting should be using this superb system to gauge accuracy, see the article HERE.

Fig. 5: Table of Fire One.

Table One:  30 grains of Schuetzen 3F.
12 rounds, string measurement 31.5 inches.
String Test: 2.6 in./rd.

Fig. 6: Table of Fire Two.

Table Two: 30 grains of Schuetzen 2F.
12 rounds, string measurement 29.5 inches.
String Test: 2.5 in./rd.

Fig. 7: Table of Fire Three.

Table Three:  35 grains of Schuetzen 3F.
6 rounds, string measurement 15.25 inches
String Test: 2.5 in./rd.

Conclusions:
My goals today were first, to see how close my replication of the M1873 cartridge was to the original, and second, to compare the accuracy of using 3F vs. 2F powder.  Finer 3F powder has always been used for revolvers, with short barrels, because it is completely consumed sooner (contrary to popular belief it does not burn any faster than coarser powder) than coarser powder, while rifles, with long barrels, use coarser powder so the bullet is more gradually accelerated in an effort to reduce stripping (in which the bullet starts out too fast and so strips over the rifling).  I expected that using 2F powder would mean that not all of the powder was fully consumed before the bullet left the muzzle, resulting in a lower muzzle velocity and correspondingly worse accuracy.  That expectation was not realized.  In fact, although I couldn't get my chronograph to work correctly and so couldn't compare muzzle velocities, I shot a third table with cartridges containing 35 grains of 3F just for comparison purposes, and got approximately the same accuracy with that load, indicating that the higher muzzle velocity it produces failed to provide any better accuracy.  But then, that's the thing about science:  You hypothesize, then you experiment, and your lovely, elegant hypotheses are often shattered on the harsh shoals of reality.

Check my blog soon for part II of this range session in which I practiced with my new Uberti 1860 Army revolver using Kerr combustible cartridges.  I felt that this experiment with the .45 Colt cartridges was different enough to get its own blog post, however, which is why I split the study into two parts.

Information on the M1873 .45 Colt cartridge in this article comes from:  Kuhnhausen, J. The Colt Single Action Revolvers - A Shop Manual, Vols. I & II. Heritage Gun Books, 2001.

Range Report 11NOV2023: Comparing the Johnston and Dow and Kerr Cartridges in a Colt 1860

Uberti Colt 1860 with accoutrements and both J&D and Kerr cartridges.

J&D (top) and Kerr (bottom) cartirdges.

I purchased an Uberti reproduction of a Colt 1860 Army with a great deal a trepidation; my experience has been that Uberti's are prettier but Piettas shoot better, and for me, shooting is all.  Still, I got a deal, so I bought the revolver.  I took it to the range and was incredibly disappointed--it was extremely inaccurate, it had the tiniest most useless rear sight notch I had ever seen (the Piettas are much more functional), it had a weak spring which meant the caps often didn't go off, the hammer was very sharp which lead to constant cap sucking, and it never seemed to go together quite right (because of arbor problems endemic to Ubertis).

Still, I see all of the cap and ball reproductions as "kit guns" that require extensive work, so as I have with all my other revolvers, I sent this off to Gary Barnes (https://www.facebook.com/cartridgeconversion) to have it reworked.  Mr. Barnes, as usual, worked wonders.  He  did a trigger/action job, adjusted the forcing cone, reamed the chambers to a correct and uniform diameter, resurfaced the hammer to reduce cap sucking, corrected the horrible wedge/arbor problem that Ubertis typically have, stripped and refinished the grips, and, most importantly, opened the loading port so I can shoot correct ammunition instead of having to waste my time with round balls.  I also replaced the crappy nipples with Slix Shot nipples, which are essential for good shooting.

Today was my first chance since getting it back to take the revolver to the range, so I thought it would be interesting to use it to do a comparison between the Eras Gone Johnston and Dow ("J&Ds") bullets and their Kerr bullets.  I tend to prefer the Kerrs because they have a wider base for attaching the envelopes for paper cartridges, whereas the shoulder on the J&Ds is a bit smaller, making getting the envelope to sit correctly a bit more problematic.  Honestly, I just need to develop a pattern specifically for the J&Ds and it should be less of a problem, but I make so many Kerr cartridges I have refined my pattern to be ideally adapted to the Kerr.  To learn how I make combustible paper cartridges, go HERE.

Precision is a measure of the consistency of a specific weapon with specific ammunition, disregarding the shooter as much as possible; it's basically similar to, although far superior to, group size.  It should always be done from rest (to take the shooter out of the determination as much as possible).  Originally, my intention had been to focus on the precision of the this revolver and ammunition using the Figure of Merit ("mean radial deviation") system to compare the two cartridges, but honestly, as will be seen below, the groups were so tight and close that it would be hard to mark the individual hits precisely, especially since many of them went through the same hole.  To learn more about how the Figure of Merit was used in the nineteenth century, read this ARTICLE.

When I saw how tight the groups were, however, I decided that the Figure of Merit would be pointless, so I just calculated the String Test instead, counting all the rounds that went through the same hole as being the same distance from the Intended Mean Point of Impact.  To learn how to gauge accuracy (not precision) using the String Test, read this ARTICLE.

Shooting Conditions:  Bright and clear, 58 degrees, Wind 8 mph from 11:00 (gusting much higher), 19% humidity, Barometer 30.11 inHg.

All shooting was done at 15 yards from a rest; the sight picture was a 6:00 full hold at the bottom of the 3" black disk on the target.  I fired 12 of each cartridge type.  Each was made identically with 25 grains of Schuetzen 3F powder.

Table One:  Johnston and Dow
12 Rounds, String Measurement 13.25 inches.
String Test:  1.1 in./rd.

Table One: Johnston and Dow.

Table Two: Kerr
12 Rounds, String Measurement 9.0 inches.
String Test:  0.8 in./rd.

Table Two: Kerr.

Conclusions
In all honesty, I don't know what I was expecting, but this wasn't it.  I did expect the revolver to shoot higher than it did--my Colt 1851 Navy certainly does, and Colts are notorious for that.  These kinds of results are phenomenal, even allowing for them being made from rest, and I couldn't be more pleased.  Honestly, the two bullet types seem functionally identical--the slight difference could be a matter of me twitching as I shot.

I had intended to chronograph the cartridges as well, however, I forgot my chronograph.  I am planning to to a head-to-head comparison between my Remington NMA and this Colt soon, so I will get chronograph results then.

Despite these superb results, the day was not without problems.  The Uberti spring is still too weak, and almost 1/3 of the caps failed to go off the first time they were struck.  In addition, I had intended to shoot the same test offhand, comparing the cartridges that way.  Unfortunately, I had some J&D cartridges I made using cotton rag paper that I wanted to test, but when I tried to fire them they refused to ignite at all, even after repeated caps.  Since I didn't have the tool I use to remove bullets from the chamber, that put an end to today's shooting.  In truth, it's just as well, however, since the rear sight on this revolver is practically unusable--the notch is far smaller than in my Pietta Colts, and the front sight can barely be seen through it, so offhand shooting would have been extremely difficult.  I will have to work on opening the rear sight notch up more.  Finally, although the work Mr. Barnes did on the hammer face prevented the cap sucking which so plagued this revolver right out of the box, and the Slix Shot nipples heled reduce cap jams, caps were still a problem.  None jammed so badly that I had to disassemble the revolver, but I constantly had to use a small pick to remove pieces of spent caps.  Once again, I return to my conclusion that Pietta are far better than Ubertis, and Remingtons are far better than Colts, although I confess I like the balance of the Colt slightly better.  Watch for a coming article comparing my Colt and Remington.