Mike I don't even own a cap and ball and you make this interesting enough for me to never miss an episode. 👍 Thanks for another excellent show.

I’m so sick of KZfaq and there bs narrative. I hope they know that! Thanks so much for the great content.

I bought 1/8” I believe brass rod from the hardware store . Remove front sight. Lightly drill with a appropriate bit. Add a little JB weld , install a taller front sight from the brass rod. I have adjusted the rear notch before.

Mike - check the cylinder throat diameters! If any of them are smaller than the bore diameter, that can cause oversize groups with lead bullets in cartridge revolvers, should affect cap n' ball as well...

👍 Nice educational video. Thank you. Very glad to hear KZfaq continues to feel we are all 5 year olds who will misuse horribly dangerous information like changing front sites on a Blackpowder cap & ball revolver from 1851. God bless KZfaq they certainly give me a warm & fuzzy. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Uberti all the way 100%. In cap & ball and cap revolvers & ball revolver conversions I have only owned Uberti products because I have never been disappointed.

No surrender brother

I thought you did okay with the Pietta as that short barrel sure makes it tougher to sight-in. I'm glad you mentioned the short arbor on the Uberti! I wanted one but was reluctant to buy because of all the "horror" stories concerning the short arbor. I like the clean barrel looks of Uberti guns without all the writing. I went with the 1861 Navy and love it!

I did the same on changing the front sight. I ordered a dovetail jig for the barrel and a new front sight for an 1860 Remington New Army. Filed a dovetail and installed the sight. Took it to the range and did exactly as you show. Took a while, but it’s spot on now. Touched up the sight with cold blue and it looks great.

Could u use callipers to measure from the top of the new sight to the bottom of the barrel as a measurement instead of counting file strokes??

I swear to God that Mike is the Bob Ross of cap and ball shooting, "The .36 caliber ball wants to find a home on the target and then he wants a friend..."

I have shared with all my friends how you answered my questions brother

Its a shame that you have to pacify KZfaq but I guess that's the world anymore. I'm just glad you are still here!!!

Nice video Mike. I replaced the front sights with Mauser sights in several of my Navy revolvers. They all shoot POA/POI now.

I would think that the much shorter barrel on the Pietta would make for somewhat wider groups. Love your videos Mike. It will be nice to see you at Duelist's Den again.

Lovin the come back bro!

Love watching your videos. Always learning something.

Excellent job on replacing the front sight! What are the dimensions of the blade after you trimmed it? Specifically the length between the top front of dovetail to front of blade and the rear of blade to top rear of dovetail. I know that the height of the blade will be adjusted accordingly as I sight it in with a file. I just ordered the nickel/silver sight that you previously recommended from Track. The sight was pretty tarnished when I received it, but I was able to get it shined up with some baking soda paste. My gunsmith can fortunately help me out with cutting the dovetail.

I have the same pietta with a .45 colt conversion and is a tack driver, lots of fun and a really neat looking gun.

Mike, I watched the full version on Rumble. Thank you! I do wish you'd mentioned how to remove the barleycorn, and how to fix the short arbor. Thank you for the video!

Good video, Mike.

great video Mike. Good working up the groups. I love your videos. Good luck with your den! Doc

I sighted in my 1850 Colt Navy 44's by going to the range with a set of mini files and filing out the rear hammer sight notch. Made them deeper and filed to center the windage side to side until they were dead on at 100 yards, with the bead front sight at the bottom of the notch. No room for mistakes, so go slow and start at 50 yards. But it works. I can nail items as small as a gallon paint can out to 100 yards with a Traditions Colt Navy 44 with a .454 ball and a spent 38 special shell measure of powder.

Great video Mike. Both are beautiful guns. Thanks for sharing and all your hard work and time Sir.

I shortened a 8" barrel to 3", in the process I had to cut the groove for the front sight and left it a little high. I cut the groove with a Dremel tool and stacked the thin cutting discs together and got a pretty good fit. I added a touch of solder to make sure it doesn't move. I took it to the pistol range and it is dead on at 10 yards, 4 " groups.

Nice job, Mike and another great video.

Nice work!!!

Wonderful video keep up good work, fun watch.

Thanks Mike!

Good morning from Syracuse NY brother and thank you for sharing your adventures and your information

Great video Mike! Love your hat 😀

Great video! Best of luck with your land!

As allways: time Well spent!!! Thank you for your videos!!!!

Bravo Mike.

Nice video! As has allready been suggested (unless you’ve allready done this) slug the bore and measure groove to groove diameter, then measure chambers. If chambermouths are smaller than bore groove diameter, then you’ll get lousy accuracy, PLUS you’ll get a lot of blowby since the bullet/ball does not ”seal” the bore, nor will the bullet be able to ”scrape” the residue from the previous shot off of the grooves. Thus; excessive fouling. If the bore isn’t polished enough, that might contribute even more, but generally, lack of polishing shouldn’t result in more fouling (it might look worse though) if the bullet is correctly sized by the chambers, but it does make it harder to get the bore clean.

Nice. I always had to just get used to wear to aim.

Hi Mike; check the muzzle, mine was wiped by the polisher and had to redo it.

Great episode Mike. That’s my favorite hat!

I enjoy your videos my friend and I shared your videos with my friends

In my 36 cap and ball pistols. ( five 36 calaber and Two 44 calaber) they don't like the conical bullets. The 36 calabers, don't have a pointy bullet mold for 44. I get better groups with round ball. Each pistol shoots a tad different spot on the target . I have adjusted the front sight. Shorter and taller. Being that the rear sight is a notch in the hammer. This can be adjusted right to left a tad by opening up the notch one side or the other. Or vertical by cutting a tad deeper. Some times you just have to know where the pistol puts the ball and hold accordingly. With practice you can get rather good accuracy. Surprisingly good in some pistols. I have a matching pair of 36 calaber with consecutive serial numbers. They shoot really well.

Chamber should be slightly bigger than the lands in the barrel and the cone should be 11 degrees.

Mike always a good watch

GOD Blessed you and your family brother

I love all of your shows. I am disabled and one of my arms and you told me what to get rifle wise. I got A. 50 caliber Rifle with a 23 inch barrel.. I am going to test it out today because dear season for muzzle letters opens saturday. Thank you for your help.

I wonder if the piettas chambers are smaller then the bore. Making the bullet loose in the barrel.

I watched on Rumble to learn. It is unlikely I'll ever take on such a project but now I know.

Mike, the Piettas you got were made after lunch, LOL. I'm watching on KZfaq and Rumble.

Looking forward to seeing how much you can tighten the Pietta’s groups.

That was fascinating to watch. (I watched both). Thank you. Mind you, makes me appreciate a laser boresighter and red dot all the more.

Great video, as always! Will you do a video on correcting for windage by filing the rear sight? Watched the KZfaq version.

Yeah, I did a similar thing to my 1895 8x56r straight pull so my slower cast boolits hit the gong at 100, I modified an old Mauser sight

Good Video

I see the new ride, from the ol blue f-150 that has been in the background for years 😊

I could almost smell the smoke. Great video. Thanks, Mike.

I never thought of using file strokes. I take a scribe and make a mark like about 1/64th at a time. I have an 1851 spare barrel and found that the front sight is threaded.... real fine and real shallow.... I was thinking of using 3/16th brass rod and turning down the threaded part to fit. then I could file down the sides and face to get a little better sight picture and still look somewhat original.

I expect you know this. I've been shooting cap and ball revolvers since 1976 when I got my first one. A Colt 1860 Army by Lyman. Still have it. And when I started shooting. Round ball was all you could get. So I kept adjusting my powder charge to the point where just a bit of smoke comes out the muzzle, and there is a great deal less fouling. I started with a 30 grain charge, but took that down to a 25 grain charge. and the fouling was not nearly so bad. So with that short barreled 1851 you might want to adjust the powder charge down a tad. That is the joy of Black Powder Firearms. Any ways, stay safe and keep up the good fight.

Thanks for the video, I sure like your hat.

I have an old Euroarms Remington Army that has chamfered cylinders. It’s the only one I’ve seen with that feature in all my years of shooting bp revolvers. The front sight is also much lower than the Uberti I have, and it pretty much shoots on point. I’m curious if anyone else has noticed this on the Euroarms guns from the 1970s.

I guess I missed it but can you say what distance your targets were at for the sighting Loved the video DJ

Nice! Definitely polish the barrel on the 4". Have you tried round ball? It seems that in more of the videos I've been watching, round ball shoots better.

Thanks Mike for another no bull video. I know I can always count on you to give me the real unbiased truth.

I had a 36 cal with the 7 1/2 barrel. I shop 2 1/2 inch groups at 30 yard and never saw the sights. I shoot instinctively and fast draw .

What about the notch? Deeper notch?

Great video!! Where can I get the cartridges?? Or materials to me my own???

I got to say when I champerd my cylinder on my 51 pietta it made it harder to load conicals instead of cutting a ring the witch was very difficult to shove in but that pieta is much more accurate than most of my ubertis

1:13 Harper's Ferry, again.

I feel like I need a file strokes to mm conversion chart. I always do some preliminary math to guide sight changes. A little bit of trigonometry goes a long way. My Navy repo (Pietta) has a pin type sight, and it's remarkably not all that far off in approx. 15 yard use. Maybe a half inch to kentucky. Hold that value low. Ned Pepper stays away from my place now.... The Pietta you have there, effectively appear to be a stubbie. I wouldn't expect similar performance from those two arms. There's also a man holding each of those two pistols. 😉

Hopin' for good news.

Interesting videos. I have a Pietta 1860 Army 44 that functions well but I'd like to get a capper and nipple wrench and a spare cylinder and .454 lead balls and whatever else I can think of. And maybe even a 36 caliber cap and ball revolver. I live in western PA. Are there stores that you know of that normally stock these things? Or websites that have them. I'm retired and can travel to the stores or order from them online or over the phone. Keep making the great videos.

That’s crazy about KZfaq n sights. Didn’t know that

Great work. Also, how do you keep your beard so neat?

Maybe I'm confused, but this vid still contained clips of you filing down the sights...

Kinda reminds me of that Lizzy Borden poem. Mike gave one gun 40 strokes and when he had it on he gave the other 41.😂

Good morning 😃

Have you considered using a file on the rear sight to open it up a bit for easier sighting? It would make it have a more square, target, sight picture.

its simple put a drop of jb weld on your front sight bead problem solved. i did this as soon as i fired high a few times. make the front sight taller and you will be forced to aim lower and yes you can file the metal weld you added to make it exact. make sure you score the front sight before applying the jb weld.

It appeared to me that the short barrel Pietta was slightly behind the front of the rest by various distances. Is it possible that the padding on the gun rest slightly deflected the bullet via air resistance?

can we get a link to what exact sight you used at Track of the Wolf? There are a bunch there.

Mike. Where are you finding the RWS Caps ?They are my favorite buy I haven't been able to find them in over a year and a half .

I know uberti crowns their barrels, and pietta didnt in the past. Ive not bought a pietta in a long time, so I dont know if they do now.

Back in the "day" did people change the sights to shoot more POA? Or did they just learn to use Kentucky windage? By people, I'm thinking more along the civilian line. I'm sure the military had to use what was issued.

What would you recommend more for the average Joe? Cutting the rear sight notch deeper, or replacing the front sight like you did?

Chambers are likely too small. Ream to 0.375. Undersized balls won't seal the gasses and you'll get more fouling.

also, I went to rumble to see how you made the gun shoot to point of aim, and there is only 1 video for the 1851, and it is of your Robert E. Lee commemorative pistol, of it's first shots.

AWSOME VIDIO SIR I HAVE A LITTLE BEAUTY JUST LIKE YOURS HAVENT SHOTT IT YET GIVES ME OME IDEAS NOW THANK YOU SIR

Did you have a caliper to give us the front site height?

What are the dia.'s of the two guns chambers? My buddies Pietta 44 had really really really tight chambers.... you couldn't load the gun using the rammer.

kinda funny tho.. I never move the sights on my adjustable sight guns. I only have a few real pet loads for any caliber so once I get the most used load sighted in I never touch em again with fixed sights the windage can be filed a bit and if the gun shoots low I can file the front sight. shooting high is a problem tho

do the springs break easy in these 1851s?

Mike, question... My Pietta 1858 shoots extremely high. I have to use where the front site mounts to the barrel as my aiming point on target. What would you do to correct this as I am practically not using the sight.

I have several open top colts 36..I recently bought a 38 special in a open top converted..my question is my 38 special has a 3 inch barrel..can I safely interchange 1 of my 7 1/2 barrels to it just for the shit and giggles

Would you mind adding the link to Rumble? I cannot locate. Thank you

Maybe I am mistaken but looking at the holes in target, it appears the bullets are tumbling. What kind of charge are you using under those conical bullets?

Most, if not all my c & ball revolvers hit high. The only solution is to install a taller front sight. I have a nos taller sight for the old army, but it will require someone other than myself to drill a hold through it.

Cant find it on rumble yet.

Well done (×2)!

What was your distance. Mike?

Short arber? Burnish the cylinder? You SOUND like you've done it for 40 years, but when you use terms, could you please do a quick "aside"?

I’ll go to rumble

What the heck how did you take the barrel off like that?😅

What happened to Mike I have not seen him in any new videos