Is the Navy '6 More Accurate Than the 1860 Army?

[Silver Jack Hammer]

I've got 2 1860 Army's and another one on the way. I'm eyeing a Navy '6. Is the Navy '6 more accurate than my 1860 Army'? One of my 1860 Army's is great, the other one is a disappointment in overall quality. My question has to do with the .36 being more accurate than the .44. I've heard various stories of extremely accurate 1851 .36 calibrated cap pistols and would like to hear your input. Elmer Keith said he traded a Navy '6 for a S&W .38 and he was sorry afterward, the Navy '6 was far more accurate. Then a video of Hickock getting 10 out of 12 on a torso sized steel plate at 100 yards.

[Omnivore]

Don't rightly know. There are so many variables, and if we're talking reproduction guns we're generally talking super cheap guns. For what it's worth, some of the best 25 yards groups I've fired with any handgun came from Uberti 36s. One is a '61 Navy and one is a '62 Police, and both have been modified for barrel-to-frame stability. Close behind is a Pietta "1851 Navy" I have in 44 caliber, also modified.


Since shooting accurately is as much a psychological as it is a mechanical process, it's hard to say. Most people, given excellent guns in both calibers for example, I believe, could shoot a 22 better than a 44 Magnum. This has almost nothing to do with the guns' inherent accuracy, but rather with psychology.


It bears repeating that a 200 or 300 dollar repro is not an excellent gun, and so it's going to be something of a **** shoot.


I have a "Target" model Pietta Remington 44. It retails for around $500.00 and as it came it was still something of a mess. My standard model, which I got for 200, shoots about as well. One might have to spend a lot of time trying different loads, I imagine, to find one that gets the best out of a particular gun.


Trying to get people to report on their average group size is like pulling teeth. We ran a postal match on another forum the last two months. On a forum that has hundreds of registered users, and some threads with posts numbering in the many thousands, we got three people reporting scores. Three.


I have six or seven percussion revolvers, three in 36 and the rest in 44, Colts and Remingtons, all repros. Any of them will do five or six shot groups of 3.5 to 5 inches at 25 yards with just about any load. The better ones will do slightly over two inches, which is good, but not fantastic. It may be that I'm a poor shot, even shooting with the wrists supported as I do for accuracy testing, or it may be that slightly over two inches is the very best those pistols can do. I really can't say.


Good luck in getting honest reports, or any reports at all, from enough people to make any sort of general statement about these guns. Most people never state their best, not to mention average groups. There is usually a big difference between your best and your average. Usually you get re
orts saying this or that gun is "really accurate" without any attempt to define what "really accurate" means. Often I see targets posted on the forums with no indication of the distance, and no measurement of the group and no size reference other than the size of the bullet holes. It gets tiresome trying to pull that information out of people. I'm talking about my best groups, but I can repeat them when called upon to do so.


Unless we have a standard process which we all use and can therefore make meaningful comparisons, most of the talk is meaningless.


How many people even know what it means to say "I fired a three inch group"? How is that group measured? You'll be surprised to learn how many people don't know, and won't ask or even talk about it. How many could use a set of calipers to measure accurately the center-to-center distance between two holes to save their lives? I don't know, but I'm sure it's a subset of those who post on these forums regularly.


I've heard of people firing 90 rounds or so from an AR-15 into one target, holes all over the place. They'll circle the five holes that are closest to one another call that their "group". You can do that with a shotgun and say it shoots one inch groups at 50 yards, too, or maybe 100 yards. See?

The standard gun writer's (as in the paid magazine writers) definition of a pistol's "accuracy" is the average size of five, five-shot groups at 25 yards. For a itty bitty pocket pistols they may shorten the distance, but it'll be clearly stated and it's still the average of five, five-shot groups. Groups are measured center-to-center, and the way to do that is to identify the two hole that are farthest apart, use calipers and measure the far edge of one, to the near edge of the other. That gives you the center-to-center distance between the farthest holes (eliminating caliber as a variable) and that is your "group size". You do that five times with five separate targets, at a measured distance, and take the mean average. The mean average is the sum of the group sizes divided by the number of groups.

So how many participants on this forum will you ever get who will go through all the and give you numbers based on all the same procedures? I can tell you how it's done, but I don't believe I've ever done all of that one time in all my life.

I think most of time we're talking about "accuracy" it's something along the lines of "I hit that tin can more often with this gun than I did with that other one. The distances may or may not have been the same, and cans may have been different sizes, but really; this gun is more accurate."

[Beagle333]

I love my '60s. I have at least half a dozen of them, but the accuracy varies great between them. I can't say I'd put my navy over any of the 44s, but I do believe it just depends on the gun. My best shooter is the Walker. And I don't think it's the caliber, but the weight. The big ol rascal is just steady as a rock, time after time. 8-)

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Omnivore is right on the polite and respectful side of the reasons why accuracy reported on the internet is far from a realistic guide.

I would be surprised if there was any intrinsic difference in the accuracy of a .44 or a .36 of the same design. If there is, it will be slight. With some guns I would say it will be dwarfed by the way recoil and muzzle blast affect your shooting, but this isn't much of a factor with conventionally sized cap and ball revolvers. For me the larger Army grip is more comfortable than the Navy one, but for plenty of people it makes no difference. Similarly although a solid frame may be slightly more accurate, or rather retain its accuracy better after a lot of use, I never liked the Remington grip.

Really it comes down to the Navy using less powder, which may be significant if you do a lot of shooting and find black powder hard to get. If it is the 1851 Navy in your comparison, I like the 1860 Army rammer better. That difference vanishes with the 1861 Navy, which has never been as popular in reproductions, but it does exist.

[Hickok]

Just my results, I seem to get about 2.5 to 3.5 inch groups from a 1860 when properly loaded and benched @ 25 yards. Most repo's are to me "Kit revolvers" that need tweeking, tuning, and TLC to get the most out of them.

We must remember too, they were designed as combat firearms, and were for putting a slug into the torso of an enemy. For this purpose, they do the job well. These revolvers were as much point and shoot, as aim and shoot in my opinion. And to me, the Colt design just naturally "points" great.

I have had only one Colt 1851, and it is one of those repo's that you sometimes get that doesn't make the grade. It is a Pietta, and it shoots about 3 inches to the left, no matter what I have tried to do to correct it. I refit the cylinder arbor, filed, tweeked and tried to exorcise the darn thing, but can't get it to shoot where it points, so I am no help with this revolver on groups.

I have several 1860's, both Piettta and Uberti, and they are my favorites.

[Mk42gunner]

As per Omnivore:
It bears repeating that a 200 or 300 dollar repro is not an excellent gun, and so it's going to be something of a **** shoot.

Very true statement.

I think it is going to depend mostly on the fit of the individual gun. If the dimensions all match, it will be accurate, if not it won't.

For practical accuracy, it is more a matter of if the sighting system is anywhere close to POA=POI. I once had a 5½" Uberti Sherriff's Model 1851 in .36 that I modified by reshaping the hammer into a #5-esqe shape and soldered high profile sights onto the barrel. That gun would shoot 2½-3" six shot groups all day long at 25 yards from the Weaver stance.

I also have a Pietta '61 that I think is more accurate, but I can't see the sights well enough any more to tell.

My load for .36's is a full charge of FFFg, a lubed Wonder Wad and a .375" round ball.

I do have a Pietta 1860, but I haven't shot it enough at paper to be able to tell just how it shoots.

I have never fired a Remington repro, so no clue on those.

Robert

[Good Cheer]

The most accurate .36 I've shot is a forty plus year old Navy Arms '61.
It loves the Lee 9mm round nosed mold recut with a 3/8" drill.
It's all luck of the drawl. :guntootsmiley:

[Silver Jack Hammer]

Thanks for the honesty guys. I've shot IHMSA and placed second in the Nationals in 1995 with a Ruger SRH, I've hit rifle targets at 200 yards with various handguns in front of witnesses and as a LEO I hit an offender at 80 yards with a handgun. Regular practice and the correst lighting are vital in my opinion for accurate shooting at long range.

My 1860's are Colt's, as is the Navy '6 I'm eyeing. The Clan I shoot with expects only guns calibrated to something that begins with a "4" in matches. I have found 9mm's and .38's to have a slight edge in accuracy over 44's and 45's. I've contemplated that a larger bore of a given barrel length barrel should not be as accurate as an scaled down caliber with the same barrel length because the dimensions of the bore are smaller, but guns are different. I've got a K38 6" that's nice but nothing exciting when it comes to accuracy. The most accurate gun I've ever owned was a Sig 226 but other than accurate it wasn't much good for anything.

[johnson1942]

i have a converted navy to 38 special. i shoot roundballs in the 38 special. it is a tackdriver. most anyone with this gun can take the center out of a playing card at 15 yards. even my 14 year old grandson. they do shoot well and point like a finger. my ruger old army took some tweeking to get their but it took tweeking. my navy is much faster to point on target and to get on target. cant say about the 60 army, never had one.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The most accurate .36 I've shot is a forty plus year old Navy Arms '61.
It loves the Lee 9mm round nosed mold recut with a 3/8" drill.
It's all luck of the drawl. :guntootsmiley:

The most accurate I've shot was an original London Colt Navy, from the factory Charles Dickens wrote about, with the British government broad arrow and a slim chance, based on statistics, that it was in the battery in the charge of the Light Brigade. It wasn't even a very good bore, so I would put it down to fit and solidity.

I once had that revolver in a deep wooded ravine by a waterfall in the last minutes of light, and proceeded with extreme caution when I heard a strange whistling, very much like a rather affectionate guinea pig, aka cavy, which I used to have. Something was swirling in the black pool under the waterfall, and turned out not to be a seatrout when it climbed out on a rock. It was a wild otter, with droplets on his whiskers, and I still don't know whether I wish he had been a fox. But I'd read "Little Joe Otter" and "Tarka the Otter", hadn't I?

[bubba.50]

I would say it'll depend on the individual gun & individual shooter.

[Texantothecore]

My 36 Navy is my most accurate pistol, and fun to shoot.

[gnoahhh]

I always preferred the Navy Colt over the '60 Army, but that's only because powder and lead lasted a bit longer with the .36.

Without a doubt, the most accurate .36 I ever owned was an original '51 Navy. It lacked finish but the bore was mint and timing/lockup was crisp. I shot the heck out of it and it got to where it felt like second nature in my hand. Out of curiosity I let a buddy jerry-rig it into a Ransom Rest where we got several groups of close to an inch at 25 yards. Another one I shoulda kept...

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Yes, it seems like Colonel Colt got it right, and his modern copiers may or may not get it right.

[Hickok]

Would be great if the repo's had the original Gain twist rifling that the original Colt's used.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Agreed, though plenty of cap and ball revolvers are accurate with constant twist, including some of the replicas. It isn't the biggest factor.

[Tar Heel]

The 36 Navy is far more accurate than the 1860 Army. Statistics bear this out.

[Outpost75]

When I was a kid, we shot original Colts, 1851 Navys and 1860 Armys. The .36s were more accurate, but I think largely due to condition, as the 1860s had seen hard service.

I also think that the Ruger Old Army, with balls or bullets which fit, and well managed loads, will out shoot either of them, and I sold my original Colts years ago. I have kept my Ruger Old Army as the only cap & ball sixgun I own. I replaced the flimsy Ruger adjustable sights with Hamilton Bowen target sights, and it shoots splendidly! With .457 roundballs cast 1:40 tin/lead and Drydene Pyroplex grease over the balls and 30 grains bulk measure of Pyrodex P, Swiss or KIK it is a 4-5" 50-yard gun. I also have a Kirst conversion cylinder for it, which with good .45 ACP wadcutter match loads, H&G 68 cast 1:30 with 4.2 grains of Bullseye does as well off a Ransom Rest as my Clark long-slide wadcutter gun, 2 to 2-1/2" at 50 yards, so I don't ask for anything more...