I see that there are various kits for converting the Old Army and some other cap and ball rigs to shoot cartridges. Does anyone here have any experience with these and care to comment on their function and usefulness?

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"A gun is like a parachute.



If you need one, and don't have one,



you'll probably never need one again!"

unclepaddy,

A few guys at my local gun club have gone into the cartridge conversion business with mixed results as far as I can determine with their Remington New Army .44 revolvers. It seems the first consideration is cost and secondly, the fixed sights on the 1858 did not correspond to where the guns shot. None of the guys recommended I try that route for my M1858.

Hope this helps.

Webley

UnclePaddy,
I've got two ROAs and they are just too much fun to shoot. Wasn't that yours? The hig polished with faux ivories I saw? Very nice either way.

I bought two R&D Conversion cylinders to be able to shoot .45 Colt cartridges through mine. They are a near 100% drop in fit. One will fit in either frame, one will only fit in one frame. Easy enough. It's just the one cylinder is a hair long for the frame. I could fit it to the frame but I decided I had it fixed by swapping them to the ones they fit without hand fitting.

They need to be dropped out of the gun to load and unload. Pull base pin, then the recoil plate of the cylinder pulls off the back of the cylinder. It locates to the cylinder by an indexing pin. The firing pins are mounted in the recoil plate. I use a small dowel, the base pin, or a pencil to push out empty cartridges and then reload.

R&D makes a solid product. I bought mine from Buffalo Arms and I'm very happy with them. Enough that a buddy bought one for his 1858 Remington Repro and when he bought an ROA, he bought one for it as well.

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Be popular? Heck, I have enough friends.
and...
"That way lies madness".

I ran across a funshop that wanted to get rid of a blued R&D .45 Colt conversion cylinder for an ROA, that they had for over a year & couldn't sell.

I gladly gave them $150 for it, box, papers & all - and liked the two-tone look when it dropped into my stainless ROA.

The POI was different with the R&D mandated Cowboy ,45 Colt loads, but my ROA has adj sights, so no biggie.

I like that it's E-Z to tell at a glance which cylinder's in the gun (blue/silver).

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