Walker coming

[georgeld]

I've made a deal on a lightly? used CVA walker copy.
should be here next week. Man has never shot it. Says a slug measures .453" from the barrel bore.

Does anyone make a 6 cavity RB mold the proper size?
OR does anyone make/have a round burr cutter that size?

Thank you,

[StrawHat]

I think at one time Lee offered a six cavity for round balls but discontinued them for some reason.

Unless you plan on shooting it a lot, a couple of two cavitiy molds would be the ticket.

I use 3, two cavity molds to supply RBs for my 1860s and find it quite quick.

I too would like to find a 4 or 6 cavity round ball mold so I will be checking this thread for other answers.

I didn't use my Walker as much as my other 44s, too much weight and not enough accuracy for my taste. I shoot my Dragoon a bit more and my 1860s a lot more than I ever shot the Walker.

Not trying to discourage you, just telling my tale.

Good luck, it is an impressive piece.

[725]

think you ned the .454 RB mould. Many make it.

[jlchucker]

I agree with 725. Over the years I have had several varieties of Colt Cap n ball clones, including the Walker. These days I use an EMF 1858 Remington purchased about 20 years ago. I never cast, or buy, for that matter, any round balls intended for revolver use that are not .454. They fit all 44's, and if the chambers are a little bit smaller in some guns all you are doing is swaging them in to fit by loading. No trick at all with soft lead. I've no experience with the Rugers, but I understand those cylinders are bored a little bit bigger.

[Swagerman]

Got a question for all you BP round ball loaders.

Couldn't you use any .454 RN or SWC cast bullet that will fit the Walkers cylinder without poking out too far...does it have to be a round ball.

I'm not really into BP, so don't know didly. :confused:

But I do know if you are using a .453 barrel rifling, you should use at least a .454 diameter ball.

Thanks...Jim

[floodgate]

georgeld:

The determining factor for ball size is the chamber diameter; you should shear 0.001" - 0.002" off the ball to get a good seal as you seat it. The very first, original Walkers and Dragoons were made with cylinder chambers at or a bit under bore diameter (0.440" or so), and MUCH under groove diameter (that's why they called them .44's and not .45's) - as Colt discovered when they tore down originals to set up the specs for the replicas thay had made in Italy - and the two Walkers we got from the first batch imported around 1960 (also made to specs from an original) by Replica Arms in El Paso (later absorbed by Navy Arms) were made the same way. I got a good cylinder seal with 0.445" Lyman RB's. Those early balls must have bumped up into real "flying ashtrays"! Later originals and replicas were made with chambers at or over groove diameter, and I have found individual Colts, Remingtons and Starrs (original and replica) to work best best with RB's rangng from 0.451" through 0.457". Best measure the cylinder mouths before ordering a mould. And, PURE lead, ALWAYS, or you will break a rammer (I've done it!)

Swagerman:

Conicals can be tough to get seated square in the chambers, since the rammers have quite a bit of slop and poor centering control. A rebated base (like a gas-check step) seems to work best to get them started, so you can check through your gas-check .45 moulds to see which might work best. Most shooters who have tried this revert to RB's, as I did after only a couple of tries
floodgate

[Bent Ramrod]

My Walker is an ancient Armi San Marco clone. As I recall, I had to relieve the area where the ball goes into the cylinder in order to get the Ideal 450229 to go in straight under the rammer.

A good example of this mould casts a hollow-base boolit with an almost invisible rebate at the bottom of the skirt which is a slide fit in the mouth of the cylinder and allows the straight seating needed. I have a good example now; back when I had my Navy Arms 1860 Army, I had a copy of that mould that was just slightly oversize. The boolits were difficult to seat straight, and when they weren't straight, the gun shot pretty inaccurately. I solved the problem by getting a 0.446" H &I die and sizing the first band down to fit.

My Walker (or, for that matter, any of the other cap and ball pistols I've tried) doesn't shoot any more accurately with conicals than with round balls, but the hollowbase conicals seem to shoot a lot harder than the round balls. The Walker was a "weapons system" in its day, and had its own special loading flask which expedited the measuring and dropping of powder charges and the placement of round balls for ramming. A reproduction of that flask and a capper will enhance your Walker experience greatly. Without them, it's pretty slow and clumsy to reload.

[happy7]

Floodgate. I have always wondered why they were called 44s. Thanks for another informative post!

[floodgate]

Dave:

What was that flask you were talking about? I had a close replica of the original Walker flask cased with my Replica Arms Walker (their serial #83!); it measured powder just fine with the plunger-type dispenser, but didn't do anything with the RB's

I did have an early RA "Texas" Paterson (serial #84!!!), cased, with the five-station flask that would charge all five chambers at once, but only with the cylinder removed from the piece. It had a compartment for the RB's but didn't line them up with the chambers. Ingenious old pieces, but a bit too complicated for their own good!

Sold off both cased sets several years ago, at only a slight loss (*sob*).

Doug

[Bent Ramrod]

Doug,

The replica flask I have has the thin screw adjustable plate that varies the level of the powder inside the plunger dispenser. The dispenser tube fills to the level the plate is adjusted to when the plunger is out and dumps when it is pushed in. It and the gun are buried in my safe so I'm going by memory here, but I think it adjusts from 20 to 50 grains volume. Next to the dispenser tube is a sliding cover over a tube running down into the flask that holds six round balls. I got it at a gun show after I'd traded for the Walker, so it might have been a later replication than the one you had.

I used to sit on the tailgate of my pickup truck, brace the grip of the revolver against my left thigh, rotate the cylinder with the fingers of my left hand and "plunge" the powder charges until the chambers were all filled. Then another cycle (slower) with the ball tube cover open and a finger as a gate to let only one out at a time. I used 0.451" balls so I could hook a couple fingers over the lever while still holding the flask and ram the balls home. Then the historically correct popsickle stick full of grease to smear over the whole works and reverse the gun (barrel pointed off to the side) for the capper. I got the impression that it would be not impossible to load the gun pretty efficiently sitting in a saddle on a hopefully motionless horse. The gun was too heavy and big for me to just hold in one hand and do all these manipulations.

Without the flask and capper, a revolver stand would help in the cylinder charging and small, very nimble fingers for the individual caps on the nipples. The 1860 Army was vastly easier to load by unassisted hands; like you with your Patterson, I wish I still had that gun.

Dave

[floodgate]

Dave: OK; now I remember - my Walker flask DID have a ball compartment, but I never tried to feed directly from it to the cylinder chambers.

Two asides you may find amusing: When I picked up my Walker from Replica Arms, the accessories were still on backorder. Next time I went through there, I picked up the flask, nipple wrench and capper. While the revolver had the full Colt "civilian" stampings, the Colt logo had been embossed onto the flask, but had then been buffed off. RA's proprietor, Chris Sherwood, said Colt had threatened him with a lawsuit if he used their name on them.

And second: I was travelling with a rather raunchy 'cat, and when I showed him the accessories, he asked me what the funny-shaped steel thingie was. "A nipple wrench." " A WHAAAT!!!"

Doug

[tom barthel]

Georgeld
I had a remington 1858 copy of unknown make. The main problem I encountered was flame jumping. I fixed this with a small can of crisco. I just covered the ball with crisco. I don't know how the old timers did it. Crisco worked for me. I also changed nipples to use #2 caps. The cylinder will determine the size of the ball. If you can ram in into the cylinder, it will shoot. The thing to keep in mind is you are having fun.

[georgeld]

In the 60s a wilder older buddy had a .36 c n b, that's the only one I've ever fired.
And then, not much. I'm greatly looking fwd to having one of my own to play with.
Have always wanted one. And been doing quite a bit of shooting with a .54 cva plastic
stocked rifle and a kit .45 5" I finished a few yrs ago.
From these, I've learned those old guys were NOT as ill armed as many of us used to
think they were. I can't hit anything with it, but, I can put them all thru a 4' sq target frame
at 100yds off hand with the 5". Don't matter if rb's or slugs, but, the standard .45 SWCs
shoot the best in it, much better than rb's.

Another guy with a lot of bp rev exp said to chamfer the cyl mouths a little bit. That
way a larger ball will swage in tighter and make's them a whole lot more accurate.
He also said to start with a .454" ball as min.

I've only seen half a dozen pictures of this, and there's nothing coming with it, just
the gun. The metal all looks good in the pictures, but ,the grips are kinda dimpled.

I get notions on the shooting, sometimes I'll shoot for several hours with the same
gun. It's nothing to shoot 300-500 rnds in a .38 or the like's. When I put in the time
casting, I like to produce as I can't sit for more than a couple hours at a time with
this back eating me. That's why I prefer 6 holers. Generally when I get started
casting, it's with a two gallon bucket full of each size as the goal even if it takes me a
week to do it. I stick with it as steady as I can til it's full. So far this winter I've loaded
up a bucket each of .45 250swc's and 147gr .38 swc's. No, I haven't shot that many
of them yet. But, I've got plenty when the time come's. I've run out of both size's
though.

Sure glad to hear about the hard balls breaking the rammer. I'll keep that in mind.
I do have a couple hundred pounds of soft lead though, so that's no big deal.

Thanks much to everyone for sharing your knowledge with me.

[Maven]

georgeld, A couple of things to mention. (1) You may not need 60gr. charge for the Walker. Try 20gr. - 30gr. FFFg first and use a cereal filler, e.g. COW or cornmeal to take up the rest of the space (leaving enough room for the RB of course). (2) If you can find .45cal. lube-impregnated felt wads (Ox-Yoke, et al., used to market them), seat them atop the powder and/or filler charge and then seat the RB. They prevent chain firing, are more convenient to use than the smear of lube across the cylinder mouths, and really help to keep the BP fouling in check. (3) Neither of my BP revolvers ( Ruger & Euroarms Rem. New Mod. Army) have chamfered cyl. mouths, but both are as accurate as my smokeless [powder] wheel guns when using the appropriate RB. Btw, the Ruger is less particular about this than the Euroarms. You can try a .457" RB v. .454", but I don't know how much pressure the loading lever and wrist will tolerate.

[Bent Ramrod]

I would second Maven's advice about the powder charge. The Walker is big enough so it looks plenty stout but there is not a lot of "meat" back there where the cylinder arbor screws into the frame. A few afternoons of shooting maximum charges loosened up my cylinder arbor pretty noticeably, which is one of the reasons I don't shoot it a lot any more. The gun is still solid with the barrel assembly keyed into the arbor, but the arbor wiggles a little with the barrel removed. Granted, the ASM was a pretty cheap copy, doubtless with indifferent metallurgy and heat treating, but a word to the wise and all that.

Oddly enough, this same Walker clone is the only one I've ever heard of that the rammer didn't flop open on firing, even with full charges. In the course of one shooting session I noticed the front sight had departed this life, but the rammer never left its catch unless I unhooked it for loading.

Ditto for the use of pure lead only. I wore out the key that held the barrel onto the cylinder arbor in my 1860 Army. Not from shooting, but from the strain of ramming round balls and conical bullets cast of range scrap and wheel weights. And the quality of that gun was top notch.

[georgeld]

Appreciate all the great lessons and info you fellows have posted.
I've down loaded and printed the booklet from cva's site. Read it once
so far.
They say: each 72 shots at full load replace the wedge. Hmmm!!
Sounds like they know their products huh?

I don't intend to load it heavy just because I know wheel guns will
loosen up without much excuse. I seldom fire heavy loads even in my
new blackhawk .45 colt either. Seems like even medium loads in that
sucker are heavy enough to make a boom and fully penetrade a 10"
live pine tree with hard cast 250gr SWC's.

Sure am looking fwd to getting this new toy in hand so I can start mic'ing
things.

[bobk]

Georgeld,
If the grips are dimpled, and it bothers you, you can steam them out. Remove the backstrap, and then the grips. Put a couple of layers of paper towels over the wood, wet it thoroughly, and play a propane torch over the towels. The reason I recommend paper towels is that if you go just a bit too far and singe the towel, you can dispose of it later and not have to explain anything to the wife. Sometime later, you can remove the towels. Likely the dents will have been raised. The finish on the wood may look a little odd, but it will dry out. As long as there is no wood actually missing, this will restore the surface.
Bob K

[floodgate]

A friend who had the other of the two Replica Arms "First Edition" Walker replicas we bought back around 1960, liked to load them "So they kick enough I can FEEL it!" He worked up to 70 grs. FFFg - and blew barrel, rammer, arbor, wedge and all down-range!

(He had the arbor brazed back into the frame and went on shooting it, but backed off a little; I stayed well away from him at the range!)

floodgate

[Bent Ramrod]

Floodgate,

I can sympathize with your friend. The problem is that it's like buying a Ferrari and then crawling along in city traffic with it. The temptation is always there to open it up and let it rip. I remember reading a delighted testimonial from one of the US Mounted Rifles officers that the Walker was the practical equivalent of the service rifle-musket as far as range and power were concerned. As I recall, the full loads were certainly everything he said they were.

I've been thinking of brazing mine back together as well. Glad to hear somebody else succeeded in doing this.

[floodgate]

Dave:

Frank didn't need any sympathy; he was asking for it and he knew it!

A funny story about him:

He used to operate a hairdressing shop, "Frank's House of Beauty", in downtown Ridgecrest (no, he was TOTALLY straight!). The City had hired a really TOUGH new Police Chief to clean out the riff-raff, and the downtown folks used to meet in the mornings at the coffee shop next door to shoot the bull. The Chief went off to an IACP convention and came back sporting a new tie tack - a nice miniature pair of handcuffs in gold. One of the boys asked, "Hey, Chief; whadd'ya gonna do with them little handcuffs?" and Frank popped up "He uses 'em to play with his Barbie Dolls!" Chief was NOT amused, and Frank felt it prudent to come and go by his back door for a couple of weeks...

Ever hear how Ridgecrest got its name?

Doug

PS: I think it was actually one of the high-strength, low temperature silver solders that Bob Paxton used to put the Walker back together; not braze as I stated. Fg

[Ricochet]

There are two problems with using standard plain based SWC boolits: A flat base won't start into the chamber and hold the boolit in line for the rammer, and many boolits are just too large to go into the loading port to be rammed in.

As mentioned above, a gas check heel is great for starting the boolit into the chamber. Look for a short boolit with a gas check. A bevel base may work.

One I found works in my Italian Walker is the Lee 452-160-RF. Its base isn't actually beveled, but is like a very short gas check shank, and it will hold the boolit in place for ramming. You have to cast them very soft to work. Forget lubing them before loading, just smear lube in the top of the chamber over them as with balls. (Or use grease wads under them.)

I always load mine to full power, just for the fireworks. It's not very accurate, and shoots way high. (Except when I pulled a shot low shooting freehand over my Chrony and killed it most impressively with one of those Lee boolits at about 1000 FPS.)
:mrgreen:

[EDK]

Try Cliffsgunsmithing for a six cavity round ball mould...he has a lot of items that are discontinued, etc.

I'd also consider one of the LEE conical moulds. I had one for a Ruger OLD ARMY (with a brass grip frame!) back in the early 70s. Never had
a chain fire with the gun.

:cbpour::redneck::Fire:

[Bent Ramrod]

Doug,

I know Ridgecrest used to be Crumbville and some of the more unreconstructed denizens still think the name change was a mistake. But I can't recall ever hearing how the name Ridgecrest came about.

I have some of that low temp and some of the medium temp Brownell's solder. The medium temperature has lots more strength; that's probably what I will try.

My Walker was acquired in a trade and wasn't in pristine condition when I got it, so I figured it wouldn't be hurt by a little experimentation. A little work with a Dremel tool and a conical polishing spindle (not a stone) gradually deepened the loading area on the barrel enough so the conicals could go in straight. The 450229 is kind of squatty and it didn't take much to clear the nose. I've never tried those conicals that are the other cavity in the brass Colt copy moulds.

I bought a Uberti Cattleman cap and ball retro Peacemaker from Cabela's when they remaindered their stock, figuring that since it had a separate loading press for the cylinder that it would be the perfect test bed for boolits from the various .45 moulds I've managed to accumulate. Bent the handle on the loader right off trying to seat same and replaced it with a tool steel strap twice as long and twice as thick. Tested the boolits cast of lead and cast of alloy, hollow base and plain base and never saw anything that would beat the round lead balls for accuracy. It always seemed to me that the hollow base boolits shot harder, but this didn't check out velocitywise on the chronograph; typically they were around 50 ft/sec slower.

[floodgate]

Dave:

It was actually Crumville (no "b"), after the Crum family who had a dairy near the present intersection of China Lake Blvd. (178) and Ridgecrest Blvd. (Trona Road), back in the '40s. When the city was formd and they needed a Post Office of their own, they had a lottery for the name, and a woman from a town named "Ridgecrest" - in Arkansas, if I recall - had the winning slip. This despite the fact that the city is essentially "flatter than pi$$ on a plate", as Pierre St. A. quaintly phrased it (in another context). Several of the streets off Norma were named after individual "ladies" from the cribs in Randsburg.

Doug

[Bent Ramrod]

Doug,

That's a great story. Sort of like the O. Henry setting of the town of Summit which was smack in the middle of the endless Midwestern plain.

Pierre is still around, by the way. He runs regularly for a position on the Water Board. Not the "torture" kind, although the contumely I sometimes hear about would probably have the same effect on some of the members.

Dave

[yeahbub]

The reason .44 cap-and-ball revolvers are called .44 is the dimensioning convention that was still in use in gun-making at the time. Muzzleloaders were still the dominant arms of the day, and when the barrel maker made a .44 cal barrel it was bored and reamed to .440 or so and then rifled to some indeterminate depth, preferably .010-.012 on a side. A muzzleloader would then have a groove diameter of .464, but still be called a .44 because the primary dimension was the land (bore) diameter which determined the size of the cherry used to cut the ball mold for that rifle. With the advent of revolvers, consistent groove depth became much more important as this would now determine the ball diameter. If memory serves, Colt's intention was that the chambers should be .001-.002 larger than groove dimension, yet we see specimens that have undersized chambers by as much as .010 or so. I haven't found a truly satisfying explanation why some were so far off other than quality controls of the day weren't up to catching all of them. Obturation would have fixed the problem to some degree, but in egregiously undersized chambers this would not be the case. In the 1980s, I once received a Colt 1860 Army the owner wanted me to unload. It still had 4 chambers loaded from some forty years prior when the current owner's father had last shot it. Interestingly, it was loaded with combustible paper cartridges containing 15gr of BP that looked finer than 3F but not so fine as 4F. She also had a s**** of cartridge box that had print on it that suggested it was made in the prior century but no date and proclaimed, "Paper Cartridges" and other info now forgotten. Three of the four were extracted intact, the fourth was found to be torn open. The conical bullets still had the cartridge paper around the outside and were a thumb-press or lighter fit in the chambers. Chambers were .452-.455 by dial caliper. The barrel was .450-.451, also by caliper. Anyway, the development of cartridge arms ushered in a new naming convention wherein the caliber was increasingly named after the groove diameter (.357mag, .41mag, .45 Colt, .45ACP), though, there are plenty of examples of those which do not comply like .38 spl, .32ACP, etc.

What the Italian makers have done with the slavish copying of even pointless detail in the originals is to use accurate high-tech equipment to reproduce ERROR. It doen't take a rocket scientist to know that an undersize projectile will not be accurate, but it seems the money people make the decisions rather than the shooters. I can easily imagine some Italian machinist looking over their drawings and wondering in amazement, "Why would the Americans insist on having their chambers be smaller than the groove diameter?"

BTW, I'll have to disagree on the strict use of only pure lead prjectiles in repro revolvers. I get much better accuracy out of WW round balls in an SILE stainless '58 Remington I rebuilt a few years ago when I still had access to machine tools (.456 ball, .453 chambers, .451 groove) than with soft lead. The rifling is fairly shallow, so WWs allow for better purchase. The chamber edges aren't chamfered, but just polished to provide a very slight radius to help swage the ball as it enters for a very snug fit. A thin ring still shears off, but less than when the chambers were freshly line-bored and the edges sharp. My favorite conical boolit is a 200gr RNFP at .454, pan lubed, with the heel band sized .452 in my Lyman lubrisizer. They are a perfect slip fit in the .453 chambers and the .454 body swages into the .453 chambers without shearing any lead. Groups of 2" at 25yds are doable from a rest, but that's harder and harder these days. I'm twenty-nine and holding, but my eyes seem not to have gotten the memo.

[Ricochet]

The only reason I have to have the boolits very soft in my Walker is that harder ones (like ACWW) are just too hard to seat with the rammer on the revolver. An unpleasant strain for me, and I worry about tearing it up.