1851 Navy Colt Cartridge Conversion ( Taylor's & Company)

Haycock 45 here well look what you see on the table really cool old revolvers we've got an 1851 Navy Colt percussion and we have an 1860 army revolver a couple of the most common percussion revolvers of the Civil War and as indicated 1851 that goes back pretty far doesn't it and that was a very popular revolver for a long time as well as the 1860 well for today's education we want to talk about some of the progression of these and the contrast think about it people were carrying these percussion revolvers and you know how they load you load from the front but the powder in the ball you know you got your plunger there to load it with and you cap the nipples back here you know in order for it to fire fairly tedious process you could say well that's what people were carrying in the 1860s 1850s in the 1860s for the most part but yet these things were around and you know what those are don't you those are cartridges now there were some more primitive cartridges they were copper cases and a lot of lot of cases and they were rimfire instead of Center fire in most cases but cartridges existed hmm they sure did if you remember back from some of our other education the Henry rimfire cartridge 1860 61 you know it was around certainly wasn't it through the Civil War and afterwards they in others too you know Spencer cartridges and everything but yet we still have these percussion revolvers lots of them thousands and thousands of them that people are carrying and going through that tedious process of loading so as you can imagine there was a desire to do something about that and figure out a way to get a cartridge into those cylinders so we're gonna talk a little bit about conversions no not everything you ever wanted to know about the cartridge conversions because I don't know it all but it in fact it's a little bit confusing at some time for dick turi reports in some cases of when something was being used and when it wasn't and all that but I'll give you a good ballpark look at how this worked if you have seen these guys and this is really the subject of what we're going to show and talk about today this 1851 Navy conversion this is a Richard Mason conversion and I thank Taylor's and company for sending this along because I requested it from them to do just what I'm doing right now give you an idea how this stuff works and how they worked ok so this is a conversion basically of one of these this is the 51 Navy you know longer barrel in that but these come in different lengths and this is one that's essentially converted the a factory job alright and it will fire a cartridge I think well we make sure before we proceed any further here let's see if we can actually get a cartridge into this thing or if we need to load it from the front oh we don't have the the ramrod or anything so I guess we can yeah it's got a bored-out cylinder so it's on half [ __ ] so let's put a 38 special in there skip one put another one in this load five and if you ask me that question I'm gonna guide you to our video hunt Annette did he load 5 the load 6 or whatever we call that video alright so we [ __ ] the hammer and it's going to come down on an empty chamber alright so now we have a cartridge gun what used to be more or less a 51 Navy Colt percussion quote-unquote revolver is now going to fire a cartridge I think yes oh yeah let's go ahead and shoot that guy sometimes I forget there's three red plate cowboy okay so quite a bit different from percussion and all those that goes into loading one of those in fact we could reload it here I can eject these cartridges okay you know the standard way now it's a little more awkward on this and I'll talk about that so I just get my cases out third this is 38 special and i-i don't reload 38 special usually let them fall on the floor on the ground okay 38 special and you notice i'm a little more awkward getting these out then i you normally am with my colts okay so that's empty alright so we could load it back up and shoot it again which would be a lot faster than the percussion system so that's the beauty of it of course we have now a cartridge revolver even though it's kind of a hybrid of the the old percussion so let me give you some ballpark timeframes here the 18 after the Civil War is when all this stuff started cranking up there were gunsmiths around the country probably you know I don't know maybe even during the Civil War I don't know I'm not sure anybody knows for sure but soon after that you could probably have found a gunsmith somewhere that would even if he didn't have the rights to do it to cut off the back of a cylinder and rig one these up to handle a cartridge maybe a 44 Henry or something you know just because it could be done it I mean think about it if you're a pretty sharp gunsmith and you know that would be a challenge wouldn't to try to do that even if you weren't legally allowed to do it it didn't have the patent rights so that was done and then before we talked about the Colts because you know Colts were most popular probably but the the Remington the 58 Remington is actually the first one I don't have one of those but it was actually the first cartridge conversion of their old percussion revolver they actually offered it from the factory in 58 59 they bought the rights or whatever they paid a royalty - to Smith & Wesson who already had the rights to use a bored-out cylinder see that's the thing that's why the old talk break Smith & Wesson's were around and with the board through cylinders and mairead be able to you know use cartridges earlier than Paul so so Remington bought the rights to do that so I wasn't even that aware of those so I did some reading that's nee look big old and I've got one in percussion I couldn't find it but it's it's dug it's in there somewhere but those things are big and ungainly in a lot of ways but they were available to fire cartridges you know in 58 no excuse me 68 you know 68 which was actually before the top brakes came out you know you know they had the rights to that so anyway so we're talking about the late 1860's and the early 70s primarily okay so that's a time frame we're talking about when these conversions were in their heyday late 1860's early seventies didn't even on into the 70s so guy named Richard's work is an engineer with Colt figured out how to convert these these firearms he came up with a system and it's a lot like this one where you put a plate back here install a plate they that's hidden cut down the cylinders as much as they manufactured the cylinders the the cylinders were actually newly made but they were they were shorter and to you know get all that off and then they installed this breech plate that's what this piece is here say that back whatever it is half an inch and because you know you didn't need all that stuff but yet you still had the frame the same size so they had to fill that in and the first ones they put the firing pin it was actually a free spring floating firing pin on the breech plays I understand it wasn't mounted on the hammer like this one and they'd been loading gate and everything and then of course an ejector rod like this that was attached to the barrel so you basically essentially took this 1851 Navy you know and you took the rod off of it of course the loading plunger and they filled that in because here I've got a barrel off here another one I have and you would just you know take all this gizmo off and fill in the holes that's what they did on the first ones the Richards conversions I understand and then they attached the ejector rod housing on the side all right and then they put that breech plate on the back like this gun has similar to this and that was the first kind of generation of the the Richards conversions of these old Colt revolvers and I think they did that on both the 51 Navy and the 60 1860 okay and then another engineer by the name of Mason came up with a better idea as they ran out of these barrels like this because Colt had hundreds of thousands of parts that they were able to use for this sea and so when they ran out of these barrels that had all this gives my own made for for the loading plungers and everything then they just started making a barrel for these so this is the next generation basically this was the Richard's Mason probably the most popular I think more of these were done so most of these are the Richard's Mason conversions that you see I think and the replicas as well of course and so with this you've got the same contour basically the same system but if you're going to make one of these barrels for the for the gun and you're not going to use a loading plunger why you know why have holes and screws and all that so so that's why that looks the way it does it's all just smooth and filled in this is the Richards Mason okay need still have your ejector rod housing put on there and they use the frame of course they put a breech plate in now the breech plate on this one is a little different and then it does not have the firing pin minute mounted in the breech plate it's on the hammer they changed it to the hammer and the sights as well I think on the first one the Richards they had the the sight on the breech plate and there were variations of these two and some of them you see the sights out here but here they had it on the hammer you just got that little groove and you've got the firing pin got the sights and you got the firing pin so it goes through the breech plate and hits the primer so these are very common okay and this this is we're talking 1870 71 on this okay and I'm gonna prove to you again it works and it's got a little bit of a peculiarity about it because the you notice I was a little awkward getting that out there's a dogleg on that ejector rod and it you know it's not as smooth as a Colt he's got to kind of come around in that down and also on the 38 when you turn this around to her clicks it won't eject the case you got to catch it before it clicks like right there you know go through there on the 45s I've noticed you don't have that because you have a bigger hole so a few inconveniences it's not as smooth as what came later in 73 you know the big old Colts you know those just work so much better of course but this was a transition to the Colt single-action let's loading them up here again now again this all seems maybe a little bit awkward to you but hey we're talking about percussion versus this this is pretty cool even though it's not as smooth as the later you know single action cartridge guns while to be able to slide a cartridge in there and fire it and then just eject those cartridges that's not bad you know for the time period that was very very cool in fact now this one seems to be right on we're not going to shoot it a whole lot but you know let's try it once this go out for the gong see I think the sights are pretty well on the hammer sight let's see should I move the rear sight to the left if it's not it's be tough to adjust the windage wooden on that rear sight let's see I'm gonna hold right in the middle of it alright I hear the sound didn't mean to fire that's got a really light trigger nice let's try a 2-liter here DD fire 4 or DD fire 5 whoa let's just put on a show that had to be fine yes so like I say it's a little more awkward to unload but not so in the 45 you just got to get around there in time now I know that seems a again pretty archaic if you're going to compare it with a modern firearm maybe but they take that take yourself back to 1869 1870 71 this was pretty cool now a question you might be asking yourselves and I can just hear you asking it I can read your minds you know here's the colt single-action course this is an old one turn of the century ok these came out in 1873 ok here is Colt and then they're not the only ones that did it you know Remington and others but they're really busy putting these things together based on the percussion frames and everything in 71 and 72 well this is coming out in 73 so why are they so busy doing that well since you won't answer it I will I'll answer that question it's best I can again they had a ton of tons of parts and they were going to be useless you know in a year or two and essentially obsolete you could say and so they wanted to use all those parts part of it was a business decision they've got all these percussion revolvers that could be made into cartridge guns and all these these frames and and just other parts cylinders and whatever they're manufacturing so that's one reason the other reason was they could do it more cheaply and they could sell these for a better price I think these sold for about third of what a Colt single-action sold for in 73 so it's a third to maybe half the cost and that's big back then you know 15 20 25 bucks is a lot of money and in the early 1870s and and if it would fire cartridge hey that's pretty cool and because also in the larger calibers you don't have that awkward issue I'm showing you there either so it they work pretty pretty smoothly about as smoothly as these except for that little dogleg on the ejector rod so that's why they made these on up into the 70s years after this thing came along they're still making manufacturing and selling these conversion revolvers believe that so when you see these and if you watch closely in the movies you'll see them occasionally and sometimes they switch back and forth I've noticed that where they're carrying a percussion revolver maybe it's even before the conversions and then when they're firing it if you look closely they may have one of these they slipped in there because you know they need two blank cartridges you know to be fired and but they're they're an interesting issues the more they're an interesting firearm and that period of history still goes back into the pretty much the Old West and they were very popular and they were pretty common I think Colt made about 50,000 of these things so there are a lot of them out there and they're probably a neglected I don't know piece of hardware really when you think about it I mean I've been aware of them for a long time I read all of Mike Boettcher RINO's books and I've got his book guns of the frontier of whatever of the Old West and you know he talks about these and writes about them and I've always thought they were pretty interesting looking firearms even though I didn't really understand why there were so many of them but they really filled a niche okay John had a little coughing 50 I was all ready to shoot and I was ready to blast something so we'd hit let him walk away get a drink keep some cough drops in his pocket in the future so anyway we're gonna these are again 38 special and it seems to suit pretty well this is a pretty cool of a revolver and an interesting piece of history so let's let's try that too later we don't want him to escape he's gonna try to it looks like I bet that big propane tank over there playing the white one on that I'm gonna I'm gonna shoot at the chicken up there job probably won't hit it but I want to just see how far the sights are off or how close they are it's got a nice trigger that's all that right under is uh behind ok synthy so I mean you could drive nails through this thing we're gonna shooting a little bit of practice pretty cool a convergence so I know it seems kind of odd then why would you buy a revolver that is a is I going back in time it's a conversion of say the Colt single-action or something well it's because of the history same reason you buy these you know these percussion revolvers you're visiting the old days and that's pretty cool pretty cool and then also one thing I didn't mention I was one reason again that Colt was so energetically putting these together and selling them was they're in the business of making money making firearms but you know again Smith & Wesson in the early 70s were putting out the big old number 344 revolvers using cartridges and Smith still didn't have the rights to the you know the roland patent the rolling white patent hadn't run out yet and say they were not allowed to to start with their Colt single-action right away and so they were just stable and converting these these other guns and making these and adamant I'm a little bit vague on the the years of the action I think the rollin white patent expired maybe in 69 or and the time they got geared up to make what they knew they wanted to make the final version it was 73 but they did have the rights of course or they couldn't have made the the convergence of where they were making them but Smith was selling a lot of these and so this this helped keep them in the game until they came up with the big competitor you know in the army contract you know for these and also when these came out the first ones the seven half-inch barrel of the Colt single-action so many of them went to the military because it was the Colt single-action army you know they went to the army that you know they had difficulty selling the commercial market so a lot of these went to the commercial market as I understand people like you people like me were not in the military and we wanted to cartridge gun that felt like a Colt 51 Navy or 1860 army so both of these were very very popular conversions they really were and but it's a it's a period in history they're kind of a transitional time that you know we forget about sometimes but whenever you see these and it's cool that you birdie in I don't know who else but I think there's actually so a couple of gunsmiths around the country guy named Hal warehouse does these and there's some different people that do but as far as the bulk of them the volume I guess it's mostly you birdie okay and you know tailors of imports these from there and they make several versions of it so different calibers different barrel lengths of the of these revolvers it's a it's at that snapshot of the period of history of late 1860's early 1870s when these things were very very popular again they were bargain price as compared with the Colt single-action or probably even the the Smith & Wesson the model number three's the Scofield's and you know they were just less expensive and you know very very very desirable in that standpoint and they worked they worked most people were not doing the kinds of things that I do or you try to do we all try to do I try to do is shoot stuff at long range and that sort of thing with that and gun necessarily so they really they filled that in it's just pretty nicely okay the conversions so when you when you see these I hope that gives you a little bit better idea and vote you can read up on them there's a lot of different versions of them and a lot of different you know pieces of information you might find really interesting that you know I don't know everything about them like I said I just know the the timeframe kind of where they fit and you know why they did it what the benefit was and that they worked for the most part you know again there they had that back plate to fill in the gap and some of them had the sights on that bridge plate and some did not some of them retained on the hammer and then one thing I didn't mention then finally cult started making what they called the open top which did not use the old percussion frames or in this it was just made okay before they introduced this I think that was 72 maybe so when you see one called the open top it will probably have the rear sight right there from the barrel or the rear of the barrel and it is basically the Colt Single Action Army without the top strap it looks a lot like these but it was it was made from the ground up to be the gun it is it's not really a conversion okay it won't have the breech plate you know they don't they didn't need to put a breech plate on it they made the frame the size that needed to be and put the sights right there and it's a very popular pistol as well it was very very popular of course I don't know that any of them were as popular as this became right the good old colt single-action so anyway we appreciate tailors and company saying that and fall man look at that aren't they some pretty firearms makes you want to shoot doesn't it I'm glad you could come to the compound today for this little lesson on conversions and we're gonna convert everything to black here in a minute and say goodbye but life really is good [Music]

Channel: hickok45

Views: 2,921,377

Rating: 4.8513145 out of 5

Keywords: 1851 Navy Colt, Navy Colt Conversion, Conversion REvolvers, Richards Mason, Richards conversion, Richards Mason conversion, Cartridge conversions, 1860 Army Revolver, Colt, REmington, Colt SAA, 44 Rimfire, .38 Special, 38 Special, .38, Breech Plate, ejector rod

Id: Qyaj8K5y1Us

Length: 23min 22sec (1402 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 18 2013