Okay, so we all know that Uberti doesn't make a '61 conversion. OR DO THEY? We all know that Pietta makes some Frankenstein guns that never existed. Well, so does Uberti. Starting back with the 1860 Richards-Mason years ago, after being out in .44 and .45 for a few years, they added .38. Now, they already had the '51 R-M in .38, so why make the 1860 conversion in .38? Beats me, unless some people just liked that style better. But when they made it in .38, it actually has the '51 R-M frame and cylinder (non-rebated) with the Army barrel and grip. Why they didn't just bore a rebated cylinder to .38 so the gun would actually look right despite the caliber is beyond me. The pictures on Cimarron's website only show the rebated cylinder version.
So several years ago they come out with the 1860 Type-II, or Transition, Richards. Same gun as the Richards-Mason but with the Richards-style barrel and ejector (which is a better looking barrel than the R-M barrel, IMO). But they did it again, I mean the version of it in .38 has the '51 frame and cyinder. Dang. Except for the different conversion ring, looks like an Armi-San-Marco Richards (and every conversion ASM made was wrong). HOWEVER! The '51 frame and cylinder are the same as the '61. And the 1860 Army and 1861 Navy barrels look the same. Essentially, a Type II in .38 is simply a '61 conversion with an Army grip. Well, that can be changed easily enough!
So I had to wait about a year for Cimarron to get in a CA9063. I happened to be there when a shipment came in with 5 of them. I picked the one with the nicest case colors
Not a bad looking pistol...but just plain wrong!
The Navy gripframe and Bar-S Tru-Ivory grip I borrowed from my engraved R-M's
Voila! An 1861 conversion!
And here it is with its shooting partner, a '51 R-M I've had since 2001, with 3000 rounds through it, and sporting a new 4 3/4" barrel.
I've owned it one week. I put in a lighter mainspring and an Evil Roy (I think) trigger/bolt spring. The cylinder ratchet teeth were very sharp. I just took some very light sandpaper and with my fingers rubbed across the edges a bit to deburr it. Having done only that, the action feels really nice and smooth. I tried to use Coffinmaker's "quick fix" of dropping a #10 split washer down the arbor hole in the barrel, but it was too thick and I couldn't get the barrel to mate to the frame. So, I left it out for now.
How do it shoot? Debut was today at Tejas Caballeros' new range near Blanco. Shooting gunfighter with the '61 in my right hand, I had one miss (last shot of the match). The '51 in my left hand didn't fair so well. This was the first time to shoot it with the short barrel. Four misses on the 1st stage taught me it was shooting high
. Had about two more misses with it later, I think. I don't practice with my left hand
. I was shooting smokeless because the '61 has essentially zero cylinder to barrel gap, even with the wedge in as little as it will go. It shot fine with the smokeless. I brought 5 rounds of BP to try in it after the match, and by the third shot it was taking extra effort to cock. So I'll work on that later.
Now, to be fair, Colt did not produce any Richards Type I or II (like this one) in the 1861. Only the 1860 was converted as a Richards Type I and II (and later R-M, of course. And yes, I'm ignoring the Thuer). Both the '51 and '61 were only converted as Richards-Masons. And the '61 Richards Mason had a different barrel that didn't have the large underlug area for attaching a rammer. However, I've heard of the existence of a Colt tool-room conversion like this one. If anyone has the McDowell book and can see if that is mentioned, I'd appreciate it. So you could say that this is a copy of that experimental model, or you could say it was a gunsmith conversion with the BP barrel, or you could say that a '61 Richards Mason had a damaged barrel that was replaced with a BP barrel with a Richards-style ejector. I don't care. It's a '61 and I like it.