Uberti – The ExhaustNotes Blog

The Wayback Machine: Two 1858 Remington Revolvers

By Joe Cota

This blog compares two modern Italian reproductions of the famed .44 caliber 1858 Remington New Model Army revolver. One is manufactured by A. Uberti S.p.A. (it’s the one on top in the big photo above); the other is by F.LLI Pietta (the revolver on the bottom). Here’s another shot of the two:

The Uberti in on top right, the Pietta is on lower left.

The 1858 Remington New Model Army was a competitor to Colt’s blackpowder percussion sidearm. The Army went with both versions but primarily bought the Colt (it was 50 cents cheaper than the Remington). Then the Colt factory had a fire in 1864. At that point, the Army starting buying Remingtons in quantity. The Remington was considered to be the stronger revolver because it has a top strap over the cylinder (the Colt does not), and some folks feel the Remington is easier to aim because the rear sight is cut into the frame (instead of the hammer, as on the Colt). And there are other advantages to the Remington, which Jose covers. With that as a background, here’s Jose’s article on the modern Uberti and Pietta reproductions. All photos in this blog are by Jose.

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If you’ve never fired a percussion revolver you’re really missing out on huge part of firearms history. But maybe you didn’t know that even here in California you can order one of these fine blackpowder revolvers online or over the phone with a credit card and have it shipped to your doorstep without background check or going through an FFL. Your state rules may vary.

Cap and ball packpowder sidearms were a huge part of arms on both sides during the American Civil War. The Union Army had a contract for the Colt 1860 Army, but when Colt could not keep up with demand Remington Model 1858’s were ordered. Many troops preferred the Remington over the Colt for a number of reasons. The Remington has a top strap making it stronger, and the Colt was prone to having loose percussion caps jam the cylinder.

Uberti 1858 Remington Revolver

I’ve had the Uberti for about 10 years. It’s an awesome piece of fine craftsmanship. There is nothing cheap about this revolver, the fit and finish are supurb. The cylinder and barrel are a deep blue, the steel frame is color case hardened, and the trigger guard is polished brass, ans walnut stocks, giving it a very classy look. The gun is a six shot .44 cal, rifled 8-inch barrel with 1:18 LH twist, and weighs in at 2.7 pounds.

454 cal pure lead balls, Remington #10 percussion caps, waxed felt wads, and the Uberti 1858 New Army.

Powder measure, balls, waxed felt wads, and caps.

I use .454-inch diameter balls cast from pure soft lead (stick on wheel weights or plumbers lead, BRN 7) weighing in at 143 grains. It fires best when loaded with 35 grains of FFF blackpowder (I don’t like substitute synthetics), a felt pad soaked in bore butter over the powder, and the ball over the top. The felt over the powder charge prevents a chain fire from jumping between cylinders, and also adds some lube to the barrel between rounds helping prevent a buildup of powder. Either Remington or CCI #10 percussion caps provide the spark.

The color case hardened steel frame on this model Uberti is off set nicely by its polished brass trigger guard.

The loading lever on the Remington 1858 is used to ram the ball into each cylinder, after loading powder and waxed wad. The percussion caps are placed on the cylinder nipples only after all cylinders have been loaded.

The cylinder doesn’t require removal between loadings, only for cleaning.

The Uberti is very well balanced and feels good in the hand. The cylinder locks up very tightly. There are noches between the cylinder nipples to rest the hammer on making it safe to carry with all six cylinders loaded. The rear sight is a V-notch on the top strap, unlike the Colt 1860 which has the notch on the hammer because the 1860 lacks a top strap. It’s no exaggeration that out to 40 yards my the Uberti 1858 holds about as tight a group as my Ruger Super Blackhawk .44 mag!

The Remington 1858 has a top strap over the cylinder making it stronger than the Colt 1860 and older firearms. It also allows for placement of a stable V-notch rear sight as opposed to the Colt’s rear site which is a simple notch filed on the back of the hammer.

Nice sight picture. This Uberti has a 1:18 barrel groove twist and holds groups as tight as my Ruger Super Blackhawk out to about 40 yards.

Properly cleaning and blackpowder revolver after a day in the field is a good exercise in gunsmithing. The revolver should be entirely disassembled, down to the Springs, removing hammer from the frame, cylinder pin, loading lever, trigger, mainspring, nipples from the cylinder – everything except for removing the barrel from the frame and front sight.

The notchs between the nipples are for the hammer to rest, allowing the six-gun to be safely carried with all cylinders loaded.

A good set of gunsmithing drivers and properly fittjng nipple wrench are mandatory to keep from damaging the screws. Owning a blackpowder revolver will help anyone gain confidence to start Barking simple dunsmithing repairs and parts replacements on other types of firearms. If you don’t already have a blackpowder gun order one today! They are a blast.

Pietta 1858 Remington Revolver

This one was recently purchased because the price was right. It looks like it has never been fired, and I’ve not fired it yet, either. The specs are essentially the same as the Uberti; however, the claimed weight of the Pietta is only 2.4 pounds compared to Uberti’s 2.7 pounds. For whatever reason the Uberti feels much lighter and more well balanced. The Pietta is noticeably front heavy. The Pietta has a little play at cylinder lockup. The hammer pull and trigger feel smooth and crisp, similar to the Uberti.

The Pietta, another quality Italian replica in a slightly lower price range.

The really nice thing about the Pietta is that it came with an optional .45 Colt conversion cylinder. I’ve always wanted to get a conversion cylinder for my Uberti but they are very expensive, about 2/3 what I paid for the gun, and they always seem to be out of stock.

This Pietta came with a .45 Colt conversion cylinder.

The conversion cylinder has an upper plate that holds a separate firing pin for each cylinder.

The conversion cylinder for the Pietta fits very nice, locks up tightly, and came with a box and a half of .45 Colt ammo which I have no intentions of using. Remington first started converting Model 1858 revolvers to .46 cal rimfire metallc cartridges in 1868. These were still blackpowder cartridges as smokless powder hadn’t yet been developed. So I will hand load .45 cartridges for the Pietta using blackpowder to stay traditional.

I’m looking forward to shooting these two together on a side-by-side comparison soon. For now, I hope you enjoy the photos.

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A Uberti 44 Special SAA

Good buddy Paul is the guy who got me interested in the Uberti Single Action Army and blackpowder Colt replicas, and it’s an interest that I am thoroughly enjoying. We visited recently and Paul showed me one I had seen before that he had recently added a set of custom grips to. This is a Uberti Single Action Army with the black powder frame chambered in .44 Special, and it is a stunning example of Uberti’s work.

Paul purchased a set of synthetic ivory grips that had a large decorative eagles molded into the grip material. The original grips with the eagles didn’t quite make it for Paul, and the fit of the grips to the grip frame was poor. Paul sanded the eagles into oblivion and very carefully recontoured the grips for what is now a perfect fit. There are no gaps and no overhangs anywhere. There’s something about the Colt SAA configuration that just feels right in the hand.

I like this gun. I’m a big fan of the .44 Special cartridge. Paul tells me he shoots a 215-grain bullet he casts himself and it is quite accurate. Like my .45 Colt Uberti, Paul’s gun shoots to point of aim at 50 feet, which is great for a fixed sight handgun.

Paul and I had a good conversation about our shared interest in these old western style sixguns. We’re both about the same age and we grew up in an era when cowboy TV series and western movies dominated the entertainment industry, and that undoubtedly influenced our taste in firearms. It was a good time to be a kid, I think.

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Colt Walker: The Official Handgun of Texas

Governor Greg Abbott of the great state of Texas is a leader who gets it…he understands what “common sense” gun laws should be. Need proof?

Good buddy Paul alerted me to Governor Abbott’s proclamation, and I like it. I used to live in Texas, you know. Sometimes I wonder why I moved.

In case you were wondering, here’s what the Resolution for such an act looks like:

SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The original 1847 Colt Walker pistol was
historically crucial to the early survival of the great State of Texas; and
WHEREAS, The original 1847 Colt Walker pistol was an essential tool in the defeat of the Mexican army during the Mexican-American War to reclaim Texas, the 28th state of the Union; and
WHEREAS, The co-inventor of the original 1847 Colt Walker pistol, Samuel Walker, was a captain in the Texas Rangers, the first state police agency in the country; and
WHEREAS, The original 1847 Colt Walker pistol was America’s first pistol to hold six rounds, otherwise known as a “six-shooter”; and
WHEREAS, The original 1847 Colt Walker pistol is still the most powerful black powder pistol in existence; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That the 87th Legislature of the State of Texas hereby recognize the original 1847 Colt Walker pistol as the official handgun of the State of Texas.

That’s pretty cool.

We’ve written about the Walker Colt, its history, and the Uberti replica of that great gun before. I haven’t shot mine yet, but that’s a character flaw I aim to correct in the near future. When I do you’ll read about it here on the ExNotes blog. At the risk of being redundant, here are a few excerpts from our previous Colt Walker blogs:

And one more…a photo I like a lot. It’s my Uberti duo…the Colt Walker and a Single Action Army.

There’s more good gun stuff here, folks.

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Youberty? You bet!

That would be my tuned Taylor Uberti in .45 Colt, the Italian Stallion Single Action Army revolver that has graced these pages in a few earlier blogs. It was a good day…a couple of my good buddies stopped by with brass they didn’t want (including the ultra-tough-to-get-these-days .45 Colt), and I was hard at it on the reloading bench shortly thereafter. My go to fun load in .45 Colt is 6.4 grains of Trail Boss, a 200-grain cast bullet (in this case the truncated roundnose thrown by the Lee mold, although just about any 200-grain semi-wadcutter works equally as well), and a crimp for an overall cartridge length of 1.595 inches. It was 5 shots at 50 feet, and I was putting them pretty much into one ragged hole just about exactly at my point of aim. You just gotta love a good Single Action Army revolver…I sure do!

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About the only thing I don’t like about Trail Boss powder is that it doesn’t obturate well, although you wouldn’t know it from the accuracy this load delivers. Trail Boss soils the cases and they take longer to come clean in the tumbler, but it’s a small price to pay for this kind of accuracy.

The nice thing about the Trail Boss load mentioned here is that it shoots just about to point of aim for me at 50 feet. Another nice thing is there’s almost no recoil…this load in a Single Action Army is a real powder puff. Yeah, I could go hotter, but what would be the point?

More Uberti blogs? Hey, take a look…

Colonel Colt and Captain Walker

Men of a Certain Age

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Two .44 caliber 1858 Remington New Model Army Revolvers

This is a guest blog by good buddy Jose, and it compares two modern Italian reproductions of the famed .44 caliber 1858 Remington New Model Army revolver. One is manufactured by A. Uberti S.p.A. (it’s the one on top in the big photo above); the other is by F.LLI Pietta (the revolver on the bottom). Here’s another shot of the two:

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Uberti 1858 Remington Revolver

Pietta 1858 Remington Revolver

I’m looking forward to shooting these two together on a side-by-side comparison soon. For now, I hope you enjoy the photos.

That’s an awesome article, Jose. Thanks very much for sharing it with us here on the ExNotes blog.

I asked Jose to tell us a bit about himself, and he did. Jose is a geologist, an offroad racer, a fly fisherman, an upland game hunter, a handloader, and he likes to teach outdoor sports to young people. He lives on the banks of the Henry’s Fork River in Idaho in the spring and summer months and he spends the winter months in Big Bear Lake, California. Most of Jose’s offroad racing adventures are in Baja. Jose’s other hobbies include taekwando, and cumbia and bachata dancing. An interesting man, to be sure!

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Colonel Colt and Captain Walker are in the building…

Two beautiful handguns, the ones you see above are. The one on top is a Colt Walker, the one on the bottom the timeless Single Action Army. But neither are actually Colts. They are both Uberti guns, and both are magnificent.

The story is one for the ages, and it goes like this: Samuel Colt invented the revolver, but he and his factory in Paterson, New Jersey couldn’t make a go of it. Colt left the gunmaking business and went on to other ventures, but in the meantime, there were already a few Colt revolvers writing history in the American West. Captain Sam Walker and his Texas Rangers used the early Colts with great success in battles on the Texas frontier. Walker mentioned this to Colt, Colt asked for an endorsement, Walker said yes, and then he helped Colt design a new revolver to better meet frontier combat needs. Walker drove the design requirements as he took a new commission in the US Army, and the Army ordered a cool thousand of the new 1847 Colt Walkers. Colt was back in business, courtesy of Sam Walker, the Texas Rangers, and the US Army.

Thus was born the Colt Walker, one of the largest handguns ever made. Until the advent of the .357 Magnum in the 1930s, the Walker was the world’s most powerful handgun. It was designed so that if it missed the bad guy but got the horse he was riding, it would kill the horse. I can’t help but think of an old New Jersey expression (common when I was growing up and one I still use on occasion) that ends with “….and the horse you rode in on, too!”

The last of the original Colt Walkers that changed hands went for over a million bucks not long ago, so I knew that until the ExNotes blog goes more viral (than it already has, that is), I wouldn’t be getting an original Walker anytime soon. But there’s something even better from a shootability perspective, and that’s the modern reproduction Walkers offered by Uberti.

I always wanted a Walker, and a few months ago I acted on that urge. I had to wait several months because the Uberti factory in Italy was shut down by the Covid 19 pandemic. Uberti is back in operation again and my Walker recently arrived. It’s a good deal. Unlike a cartridge revolver, here in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia black powder guns can be shipped direct to your door.

I knew Uberti makes a quality handgun, as I had great experiences with my “tuned” Taylor 1873 Single Action Army in .45 Colt. That’s one of the two revolvers you see in the photo at the top of this blog. It’s a cool photo because it shows the relative size of the two guns (the Single Action Army is no pipsqueak, but it’s dwarfed by the Walker). And, I’m showing off a bit with the photo’s background (it’s the pig hide from my Arizona wild boar expedition with good buddy Paul, who ordered himself a Walker not too long ago).

Robert Duvall as Gus MacCrae in Lonesome Dove, the greatest story ever told (in my opinion). Gus carried a Colt Walker.

I’ve mentioned the Walker Colt before, most notably in the book review we posted on Revolver, the book about Samuel Colt. The Colt Walker also figured prominently in Lonesome Dove, and I thought I’d show one of the many great scenes from that movie here again.

Everybody wants to be Gus MacCrae, I guess, and I’m no exception. I suspect Paul feels the same way. So consider this a fair warning: If Paul and I walk into your establishment and order a whiskey, be quick about it. We don’t like surly bartenders, and we carry Walkers, you know.

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