Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns An old Navy Arms 1860 Army

Last week, I ordered a Pietta-built copy of the Colt 1860 Army from the 'bargain page' at Summitgunbroker. It needed nipples and a wedge, which I'm guessing a previous owner lost before he could put much wear on it. I'll have about $160 in it (about half the price of a new one, shipped) by the time it's up & running.

Today I installed a set of #11 nipples, dog-robbed the wedge from my BIL's 1851 and gave it a test drive. Load was 30 grains of Triple Seven, Ox-Yoke over-powder wad and a Hornady swaged .454 RB lit by CCI caps.

Like most of these guns, it printed 8" high at 20 paces; but that is easily corrected and soon will be. With the hammer notch being a fine groove and the front sight being a larger, brass triangle, it was impossible to acquire anything like a consistent sight picture. But he 60's hand-filling grip, great pointing qualities and icicle-crisp 4# trigger almost rendered these shortcomings irrelevant. Hitting man sized targets to 50 paces is effortless, simply by pointing the bead at the belt-line and pressing the trigger. The gun ran slick and handled spent caps much better than the 1858 we were shooting alongside it today.

You can rest assured if I was kicking an old black mustang around the countryside between 1860 and 1873, there would be a brace of 60's at my side. Jesus, what a sixgun.