CONVERSION REVOLVERS! from Cimarron Firearms

today we're gonna be looking at conversion revolvers from Cimarron firearms company and when I had told some of my gun savvy friends that I was going to be doing a video on conversion revolvers I got the question what is the conversion revolver so today we're going to find out [Music] [Music] now since some of my fairly gun savvy friends had asked that question I decided that it was probably wise to do a general overview of what a conversion revolver is I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail about each specific model and dates and calibers I'm just going to give you a general overview of what they are and why they're important in American history this is the Cimarron 1851 Richards Mason Navy conversion and 38 special there will be points in this video where I refer to it as the 1851 Navy conversion but you will know what I'm talking about this is a Cimarron 1858 New Model Army and 45 long colt it is a conversion and it is a reproduction of a Remington handgun and this is the Cimarron 1860 army Richards transition type ii conversion in 45 long colt so to convert a cap-and-ball revolver into a cartridge firing revolver they did a couple different things the most important being they cut off the back of the cylinder which would have been solid with little nipples on each chamber that they put a percussion cap on they cut off the back of the cylinder so that they had a board through cylinder and then they added this conversion plate behind it and into the frame so now they could load cartridges directly into the chamber another thing that you'll see is on this 1860 army the ramrod is gone and instead they replaced the ramrod with this ejector rod housing that just slips into the old ramrod hole and screws into the frame they're now on the remington 1858 reproduction the ramrod is still here and you can see at work right there and this is the ejector rod the production and development of conversion revolvers represents a real small window and time in American history but it does occupy a significant place on the timeline of American arms development well before the beginning of the Civil War cap and ball revolvers were already being improved upon there were people who had developed processes for creating a board through cylinder that would allow a metallic cartridge some of the very earliest versions of revolvers that would accept metallic cartridges were from Europe in the United States a fellow by the name of Roland white had taken out a patent on a board through cylinder that would accept a metallic cartridge now Smith & Wesson bought that patent and they aggressively sued anybody who infringed upon it so throughout the period of the Civil War both Remington and Colt had produced massive amounts of cap and ball revolvers well after the war was over and the roland white patent had expired they all wanted to start quickly producing revolvers that would accept metallic cartridges and because there was so many cap and ball revolvers out there and they had so many parts in storage they wanted to be able to use all those parts that they had as the parts supply for cap and ball revolver conversions was drying up Colt produced a brand new revolver that would accept metallic cartridges and it wasn't based on a cap and ball revolvers it was built from the ground up to accept metallic cartridges and that was the 1872 open-top which I do not have an example of here so I believe that around this time 1872 ish the United States government was looking for an official service handgun Colt submitted the 1872 open-top which kind of looks similar to this except for it has a rear sight on the barrel and it doesn't have any remnants of the cap and ball design the army wanted something that was a little bit more robust that had a top strap similar to the Remington well it just so happens that Colt had an employee who used to work for and he helped design the most famous single-action handgun in history the Colt single-action army now this is a Ruger reproduction of the Single Action Army the Colt 1873 Single Action Army also known as a peacemaker went on to become the official sidearm of the United States Army and is still in production today so conversion revolvers were an evolutionary step to get from cap and ball revolvers days to a revolver that accepted metallic cartridges was robust and strong and would become the United States Army's service sidearm one of the neat things about the Colt conversion revolvers is that on the cylinders I don't know if the camera will pick it up there is an engraved scene from a naval battle and I believe is between Texas and Mexico on the Colt conversions the rear sight is built into the hammer you can see that little notch right at the top of the hammer these guns are unloaded and that's what you would side down and they're actually very accurate the Remington handgun has a top strap on it and they just cut a groove into the top strap for their rear sight that might look familiar because Colt copied that design with their 1873 Single Action Army this is the Cimarron 1851 Navy conversion in 38 special first shots ten yards okay so not a super good group but we'll try again this is the next five shots out of Cimarron 1851 Navy conversion third round five shots up next we're going to shoot the Cimarron 1858 new army conversion in 45 long colt now this is a reproduction of a remington conversion we're going to put it on half [ __ ] open the loading gate load one skip one and then load the rest in sequence close the loading gate [ __ ] the hammer back the rest of the way and set it down that is called the cowboy load and that is so that there is an empty bore in the cylinder underneath that hammer if all six of the chambers in the cylinder are full then when you set the hammer down the hammer is resting on the primer of the cartridge right underneath it so we do a cowboy load we skip one two where when you finish loading it you [ __ ] the hammer back and set it back down the hammer lands on an empty chamber and it can be carried safely in that manner there's gonna be the first rounds downrange out of the Cimarron 18:58 new army conversion in 45 long colt ten yards not a bad group for the first shots I love it alright this is gonna be the second round of shots out of Cimarron 1858 new army conversion and 45 long colt target is on the right 10 yards unloading the 1858 new army can be a little bit tricky because you'll notice that unlike the other conversions there's no spring on the ejector rod which means you have to manually run the rod back and forth each time the other tricky thing about this is that the ramrod from the old cap-and-ball use of this gun is still on it so you just pinch these levers here to open it and you can see the ramrod still air goes down into the cylinder to pack the ball on top of the powder so with the remington conversions they didn't take that off they left it on there so what a lot of people will do is and is undo their ramrod so that they can get the ejector rod out and then they just leave this hanging well what happens with most people is that they'll they'll start the process of unloading so they'll turn the cylinder and they'll run the ejector rod and run it back out but if they turn the revolver up too much a lot of times this ramrod will fall just due to gravity and it will fall into a cylinder and you'll get kind of jammed up so what I do when I'm loading the 1858 new Army is okay put it on half cocked like usual open the gate unhook your ramrod so that you can spin the handle out on your ejector rod and then hook the ramrod back up so it's not flopping around it won't catch in your cylinder then this doesn't have a spring so you just I like to hold it my left hand so that my left thumb is able to rotate the cylinder and my right hand is able to run the ejection rod back and forth this is pretty quick even without a spring then you turn that handle on the ejector rod back around flip your ramrod back up shut the gate and you are empty these are the first five shots out of the Cimarron 1860 army Richards type two conversion and 45 long colt ten yards [Music] this is the second round of five shots out of the Cimarron 1860 army Richards type two conversion 45 long colt so these are the very first shots out of these conversion revolvers that I got from Cimarron the target on the left here is with this 1851 Richard Mason conversion in 38 special now I'm going to tribute the larger group here to both shooter air and animal I only brought one type of ammo to shoot out of this and some guns like different ammo better for some reason I had a difficult time holding a solid group with the 38 special but I'm gonna try again and give it another shot the center target was shot with the Cimarron 1858 new model army conversion in 45 long colt which is of course a reproduction of the remington handgun now this was probably the easiest gun to shoot of the three it is chambered in 45 long colt which is the more powerful cartridges than the 38 special but the New Model Army is huge and it has a lot of weight to it so it's very easy to manage the recoil the third target on the right over here was shot with the Cimarron 1860 army Richards type to transition model this is a very accurate handgun I was aiming dead center in the middle of the red in a shot firing right just a little bit but 10 shots and all but two three four of them so six shots are in one big ragged hole before the wind gets too bad and ruins all of my audio I'm gonna give this Cimarron 1851 Richards Mason conversion in 38 special another shot maybe it can redeem itself [Music] okay obviously there was some human error involved with the first target so I'm gonna load five more so we have the same amount of rounds on every target Cimarron 1851 Navy Richards Mason conversion in 38 special second target second round of five shots well that right there proves that the very first target was just a fluke it was bad shooting on my part turns out each one of these Cimarron conversions is capable of putting multiple rounds into one ragged hole at 10 yards each one of these revolvers had its own unique characteristics that I liked about it the 1851 Navy conversion was the lightest of the three and had the least amount of recoil initially I didn't shoot this very well but after I put 10 more rounds on target I found that it was actually quite accurate the smoothest of these conversions would definitely be the 1858 New Model Army this isn't a nickel finish and that might contribute to some of the smoothness with loading and unloading but there's a box and a half of ammo through that and half of the cartridges that you unload just fall out without even having to use the ejector rod this is the heaviest of the three and also the longest my favorite of the three is the 1860 army conversion now this is quite accurate and I have another video clip that I'll roll in now me shooting it at a hundred yards and connecting on a target this size four out of five shots today I'm shooting the Cimarron 1860 army type ii conversion in 45 long colt and i'm gonna shoot it at a hundred yards let's see if we hit the target there's four rounds out of five at a hundred yards with the Cimarron 1860 army type two conversion all three of these conversion revolvers from Cimarron have functioned flawlessly they have a great fit and finish and they're quite accurate and I'm keeping this one [Music] [Applause] if you like videos like this please click that subscribe button down underneath the screen and on this side click the thumbs up button and let YouTube know that you liked my video here's a couple more videos that you might like [Music]

Channel: The Adventure Cowboy

Views: 214,924

Rating: 4.913991 out of 5

Keywords: Adventure, Fun, Guns, Horses, Western, Cimarron, Firearms, Hunting, Montana, Country, Conversion Revolvers, Cimarron Firearms, Uberti, Cowbuy Guns, Single Action, Cowboy Action Shooting Society, Gun Reviews

Id: 7dTw2Op_FpY

Length: 18min 39sec (1119 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 31 2018