C&B Acceptable Cylinder Gap ??

ckid

ckid

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Quesnel, B.C.
What is acceptable for cylinder gap on a cap and ball revolver? I was fitting a wedge pin on Pietta Army and found the gap was 0.025", which I felt was acceptable. Then for curiousity I checked a fellow shooters .36 1851 Navy (unknown Italian Mfg.) and it had a cylinder gap of 0.061", you could slip a dime in the gap !!:eek: :eek: The frame and the barrel where seated snugly together too. This amount of gap seems totally unacceptable, and looks like it would take more effort and money than it would be worth to tighten it up.
 
I bought an Italian kit some years ago and it advised a gap of .040" which I strongly believe is a typo. It should be more like .004" and in my case I had to file a notch in the bottom of the (Colt) barrel portin to set the barrel back.
I think those big gaps are screw ups in metric conversion.

cheers mooncoon
 
I have two Italian 1851's.
One (Uberiti) has a very tight gap,
the other had a very large, and unexceptable gap in my opinion.
I removed the pins and carefully filed the end frame
were it meets the barrel assembly,
thus making gap smaller.
Reinstalled the pins and all is better now.
You may have to work on wedge pin, or fit a new one.
I used "JB Weld" to slightly shim up wedge
with full success.
Easly filed to fit.
Then lightly sanded and painted it black.
You have to look hard to tell what I did.
Has been fired many , many times at cowboy match's,
and has not fractured at all.
 
leadslinger said:
I removed the pins and carefully filed the end frame
were it meets the barrel assembly,
thus making gap smaller.
Click to expand...

leadslinger, how did you remove pins? Are they srewed in?
 
I have a .44 dragoon that had excess gap and I just put a washer made of shimstock under the bace of the cylinder. That was many thousand shots ago and it works extremely well.
 
Thanks guys. I had contemplated both fixxes (shortening frame and the shim). I will talk it over with the fella and see what he thinks. The pistol seems to shoot acceptably, but you get one helluva a flash out the top!!
 
Do the shim first. You can always take it out and modify the frame later.
Just remember if you file too much off the frame, you are then going to have to adjust the cylinder/barrel gap by filing the barrel. Also remember that some frames are case hardened and you are going to have a tough time filing off metal through the case hardening.
 
The cylinder gap on my 1851 Navy is .002-.004, the gap on my Uberti 1851 Navy is .003-.004. It would seem that, as mooncoon stated, .004 would be a good average.KD
 
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