.41 Remington 1858

[Good Cheer]

I'm in the midst of a new project, the 1858 Remington .36 reworked to nominally a .41 caliber.
This isn't going to be chambered for the .41 Colt cartridge (though it is tempting!) but rather a percussion revolver set up to use commonly available .41 molds such as the Lyman 410610 & 410026, Lee's 240 grain round nose & 210 grain SWC.
There's basically two ways to go about making the bullets fit the cylinder.
(1) Size the back third or half of the castings to slip into the chamber.
(2) Have a two diameter chamber with a larger diameter cylindrical section up front.

Have any of you guys altered chambers to be a stepped cylinder? How well did it work?
The only way I've tried it is to size the hind end of the bullet so that's what I know.

[bedbugbilly]

Sounds like an interesting project. Are you going to load the chamber off of the pistol? I doubt you'll have room to do it with those boolits with it on the gun but could be wrong on that.

If you do step 2, you are still going to have to have the conical so it shears lead when loaded in order to keep them from jumping. Have you figured out the volume of the chamber with these bullets to know what your charge of BP will be? If you do a two step chamber, you'll have to figure that out - and either you won't be able to get enough in to hit the "accurate spot" or you may have to use a filler to take up the space if the accurate powder charge is less than the volume of the chamber.

I primarily shoot "Navy caliber - .36 cal.". I shoot a '51 Navy model most of the time but do have a Remmie Navy. Mine shoots RB more accurately than anything else.

Just curious - have you shot conicals out of it? What was your accuracy like with them? I've never had a whole lot of luck with them so have always stuck to RB.

I think the project has some potential that would allow the use of the other boolits you are talking about . . . just don't know how much you are going to pick up in accuracy. How are you going to rework your barrel? Are you going to re-rifle it or line it?

Keep us posted please - and photos if you can - and let us know how it works out. Ought to be a fun and interesting project!

[Good Cheer]

Hey there.
The current plan is to rebore the barrel to .40 bore and have groove depth and twist to suit.
On the volume of the chambers, there's no way to figure ahead of time what will be most accurate... well, it'll just be what works!
As always with percussion revolvers the centerfire pistol bullet molds really aren't the most efficient seeing as they have a bunch of lube grooves that like nose designs just translate into loss of powder space, but, this is about fun and learning how things work (as opposed to ft-lbs, kill power, penetration, etc).
Looking forward to working with a ".41 Remington".

[Good Cheer]

By the way, one item to be resolved, it will shoot higher and need more front sight.