New Josey Wales pistol

Beagle333,

Love your new pistol and Auburn. I will be there next weekend for a wedding.

Good luck with it. I don't own a .36, but I need one!

TK
 
Maybe somebody at Traditions thought this was a converted 1861
600px-TOJWColtArmyC-2.jpg

and just called it that. Since the description on their website says: "This model is a replica of the revolver found by Josey after his family was killed and his house burned down by Northern Raiders. "

But maybe they were wrong, or the replica isn't exact, just like the Pietta replica of the Navy is the wrong caliber. :rolleyes:
 
Neither is Uberti, ASM, ASP, any of the providers for Navy Arms, Replica Arms (Texas or Ohio), Palmetto, EIG, et al.

The early providers/manufacturers in the late 50's and 60's were providing shooters, no matter the quality, for a new American market that few folks knew anything about.

Whether it be brassers or steel frames, all the shooting public basically wanted was a replica of a War that happened 100 years previous.

Here we are 150+ years hence and we are arguing/discussing what is or is not correct without really knowing what manufacturing happened back then.

I have two suggestions: Nathan L. Swayze's " '51 Navies" and P.L. Shumaker's treatise on 1848/1849 Pocket pistols. If anyone can produce something better, I am all ears.

If one thinks that the current replica crop of whatever flavor Civil War era pistols you prefer is correct, think again.

Jim
 
Beagle, that is a beautiful revolver, I'd love a '61, like Sam Colt, I think it's the most beautiful Colt.

In beginning of the movie, them rascally Redlegs attack his family and burned his house.

Here's the deal, Josey Wales is so awesome, that housefire didn't burn up, melt or harm his 1860. It sent it into the future and it came back an Open Top. He was pretty powerful you know. Never mind what a backwoods dirt farmer is doing with an 1860 to begin with, that would ruin it. :D

I read within the last few years, that Clint had some problems with percussion revolvers during the 1960's and was concerned about their usage here and didn't want to use them. Just like Hollywood, he was relying on the fact that 99 & 44/100ths of people wouldn't catch the fact they were not firing percussion but conversions.

I'm too lazy to look it up, but I read just about everything I can find about OJW movie. I saw the movie during my Freshman year of college and it kinda' stuck with me. Just one of those crazy things.

Even watching that movie dozens of time, until I got into black powder revolver shooting, I didn't even know how anachronistic most of the firearm were in the movie. Even owning firearms and collecting C&R weapons, I just never paid much attention to how percussion revolvers actually worked. Just ignorance on my part.

Heck, OJW's hip carried Walkers didn't even have sights on them, that's how good OJW is. :)

In the famous poster, OJW's Walkers are percussion.
 
Thanks OJW! My .380 mold arrived today and my powder will be here Tuesday. I'll get to fire it off soon. I should be recovered from yesterday's operation and be able to cast by sometime later this week too. It sure does look like a fun little pistol. My favorite is the '60 so I know this one will become a treasured one soon too. :) That sleek style is just so attractive to me.
 
It really looks like a nice pistol Beagle333. I have many cap and ball revolvers, but no model 1861s. I know the Pietta's don't have the short arbor problem that Uberti's pistols do, so you have inspired me to get one like yours.
 
buffalo arms has them, and they are imported by cimmaron for $307, but they are on back order now. Been thinking about getting one, might have too soon!

OJW, what did clint not like about the percussion revolvers? In the good bad and ugly he had 1851 navy, but was it converted through the whole film or just for shootouts? I noticed that van cleef had percussion caps on his remington in that film as well.
 
They don't want to mess around with loading a cap and ball revolver blanks, so Hollywood uses 5 in one cartridge conversions instead.

Cap and ball revolvers converted to cartridge is very common in Western films. In John Wayne's "True Grit" for instance the "Colt's Dragoon" in the movie was actually a Walker converted to cartridge for ease of filming. .
 
BP Ben,
I wish I could remember what he said. However, it wasn't just the fact that they are difficult to load for the "under educated." It seems it was some sort of accident or problem. But I'm using my "fuzzy logic" haha.

As silly as those spaghetti westerns were, with all that stupid fanning the hammer they did, I'm sure a percussion revolver just didn't want to do that stuff and protested :p
 
Think it's a safety thing - you need to get an amount of BP in there and compress it to go off, which that means putting some sort of projectile in front. Sure, could put vax or such but it's still launching a projectile and that's just not going to happen on a movie set.

You could configure a cap and baller to be safe for fanning with some internal work. I think Dragoon45 offers such a service.
 
A crimped blank cartridge with 4F powder makes a lot of smoke and bang and is very fast to reload for retakes or endless ammo scenes. Real cap and ball blanks get very complicated for multiple shots (something has to hold the powder in that won't kill anyone and yet prevent chain fire).
 
Very Nice looking '61 Beagle! I like that alot, it looks great. You will LOVE casting .36, our silver goodness goes so much further. The 36 will put a hurting on them cans too. :D
 
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