Ships through the mail direct to your house, since it's "not a firearm" according to the Feds. Should be fun.

That's one good looking little gun!

Looks like it's about the size of a Ruger BearCat.

Virgil B.

Put a 32 S&W cylinder on it.

I'm a percussion revolver guy myself and the Remingtons are great guns. If it shoots to the sights or can be made to, I would be severely tempted to take that squirrel hunting.

Sound like it would make a great little gun.

What I keep hearing is that they tend to come set up to shoot high. Might need a taller front sight.

Yeah, I'm tempted to get that conversion cylinder. Too bad it's not for .32 S&W Long instead of standard .32 S&W. Longs can be had pretty easily. Not sure how available the shorter .32 S&W rounds are, though.

I sweat soldered a taller sight to my old 1860, but I'd be tempted to have that little Remington dovetailed for the taller sights found on '58 Ubertis. Bet that would get you right in the ballpark w/o looking out of place on the gun.

As for Remingtons, they are actually much better guns than the Colts of the same era, regardless of model. They had several superior features over the Colts, such as a full solid frame around the cylinder (keeping bits of fired caps from getting into the mechanism) and notches cut into the cylinder for resting the hammer, permitting them to be safely carried with six instead of five. In the case of the pocket .32, that would be a full five rounds, since that's the capacity on this little revolver.

Good thought.

32 S&W is just a click away.

You're right. It's a sure thing, then. I will definitely order that conversion cylinder. Link

This guy seems to have discovered a cure for cap sucking, a common problem with open top cap and ball revolvers, i.e., Colts.

If you raise the muzzle, cooking the gun while it is pointed up in the air, the cap will fall clear.

Got one as a Christmas gift 8 years ago, fun little gun and once you add an eighth of an inch to the front sight height pretty accurate as well!

How did you add the height?

On Colts and copies another method is to cut down the sighting notch (with the hammer at full cock) and refile the notch when necessary, to lower POI and even adjust windage a tad. This has the dual benefit of reducing the overhang of that part over the nipple. Generally this allows the cap to explode up and forward and they fall right off when the cylinder rotates.

We shoot a half dozen Colt and Remington copies here once or twice a month through the summer. The Colts will invariably run longer without residue tying up the cylinder. This is subjective, but IMO there's never been a revolver grip to compare with the grace and pointing qualities of the 1860 and its Open Top progeny.

But I do love me some Remingtons and a 5 1/2" 58 Uberti is on my short list of 'gotta haves. The 58's sighting arrangement leaves Colt in the dust. The safety notches on the Remington are all but foolproof; though Improved Fools have always been produced at a greater rate than 1858's.

I wonder which has better ballistics, the .32 S&W or the powder and ball loads.

I checked a couple of references and essentially, the 32 S&W gives you twice the bullet weight and within 100 fps of the best ball load you can concoct.

Hard to believe its type were popular personal defense guns in the pre-cartridge, cap and ball revolver, era. I guess if it will poke holes in you, it will work well enough in most cases, though.

Nice. Congrats on your purchase.

I've got a little smooth-bore, brass 31 deringer that I bored out to accept 00 buck. With a heaping 22 LR case of Triple Seven it will just bury a buckshot in the bark of an elm tree out back. Mike Cumpston wrote of the pocket 31's 'In the realm of personal combat it is a frail reed indeed'.

Hard to imagine today that the little S&W Model One, in 22 short, was in such demand at the outbreak of the civil war that it outstripped the factory's production capabilities.

Any old port in a storm, I reckon

"Back in the day", as many or more people died from infections as they did from actual lead poisonings. Those little balls would cause as much infection as any bigbore. The clothing dragged into wounds (probably filthy clothing, at that) were bound to cause some kind of infections.
It's poor policy to get shot with anything, of course, but those little guns could cause a long lingering death as well as anything else.
That doesn't fit well with the "one-shot stop" thing we think of today, but you're still dead, whether you take the opponent with you, or not.

It is interesting how things have changed. Wild Bill Hickok used a 1851 Colt Navy .36 black powder gun that had about the same ballistics as the modern .380 cartridge. Wild Bill had a reputation as a deadly pistolero so I'm guessing most of the guys he shot had a hard time shaking off those lead round balls. Wonder when felons got so tough that .38's and 9mm's bounce off them.

I wonder that too. Perhaps the lack of stopping power in those rounds is exaggerated.

PS Until fairly recently, most of the Western world considered the .32 S&W, S&W Long, and ACP to be appropriate police rounds. US police forces, for the most part, abandoned such weakling rounds by the 1940s, but they continued on in European police forces for many years after WWII.

What makes the difference is a truly determined attacker, either drunk or high on drugs. That's when modern bullet design in accepted serious chamberings (or old-style big-bore lead rounds) comes into play, actually shutting a person down due to rapid blood loss. Likely most people will collapse upon being shot in the chest with a .22 Long Rifle if not highly determined and/or intoxicated.

The effectiveness of plain old lead RN and SWC ammo is underrated. When I first shoved my nose under the LE tent it was not uncommon to see guys still carrying 38/158/RN. I clearly recall two shootings each with those and 38 wadcutters wherein the shootee was on the ground instantly or within five seconds tops.

I'm all for progress but the old stuff worked better than most people can or want to remember.

I'm thinking there were some pretty tough hombres back in the wooly old times. Whiskey flowed pretty cheap and that was just the white guys. From what I've read Indians were pretty motivated when they wanted to be and were probably as tough as old boot leather.

If the Feds don't consider it a gun is it legal to carry into a bar and get wasted in states that prohibit such with a firearm.

That's all I want to know.

That's about how I figured it, too.

Most states' laws classify them as handguns once loaded up, so handgun laws would then apply to them. Some states even consider them handguns if the owner also owns the materials to make them shoot, even if not loaded up. New York, for example, says they aren't firearms, but they become handguns once the owner also owns the materials to make them fire. At that point, New York requires that they be registered to a licensed gun owner. If you don't own the materials to make them shoot, New York considers them mere collectables, like antique or reproduction swords. Odd inconsistency.

It arrived today. Amazingly tiny. Someone here compared it to a Ruger Beatcat. It's actually a good bit smaller than a Bearcat.

Here it is next to my Glock 17.

Its kinda cute. Be fun to shoot a lion with.

I'm pretty sure every state, and the feds classify it as a firearm, but not a regulated firearm. So carrying it, all the same rules apply.

Don't go messing him up with facts...

The Feds categorize them as "antique firearms," not as "firearms." Those two terms have specific legal differences as far as the Federal Government is concerned, the latter being federally regulated, the former not being federally regulated. According to them, in other words, an "antique firearm" is not a "firearm."

That's my understanding on the matter, at any rate.

States are all over the place on their classification.

TRUMP!

Word.

There was a retired DPS Trooper in Palestine Tx who said pretty much the same thing about the 38 RNL. He shot one guy in his career- used that load and killed the guy drt. In his retirement, he carried nothing but a baby browning and was doubly careful not to shoot anybody.