9245,
I have to ask why you are so hung up on being able to load 6 rounds in your period style revolver, what ever it turns out to be? None of the shooting organizations allow carrying 6 rounds in the gun and historically most folks didn't either. Kind of like your desire to "speed reload". They didn't swap cylinders in the old days, they carried a second pistol. And again, I know of no competition that regularly calls for reloading under the clock. If they did, swapping loaded cylinders shouldn't be allowed. To bloody dangerous.
Dave
Two reasons:
I just mentally don’t like the idea of having a “six shooter” that can only load 5.
I don’t JUST want the revolver for competition, while that may be the main and intended purpose I’m a “working gun” kind of guy and like the idea that if I HAD to I could carry the revolver for defense as originally designed or hunting if I were so inclined.
I’ll take you through my mental journey so far:
This started because of the ammo crisis, ammunition is near impossible to find, especially in the more popular modern calibers, but less common calibers and “cowboy” calibers are occasionally available. I DO have ammo for my modern guns, but not enough to feel comfortable that in an extended scenario I would not run out and I do not have enough to go to the range, ammo is gold and irreplaceable.
My first move was to start getting in to reloading, I’m setup with a nice progressive press, ultra sonic cleaner, brass processor, lead melting pot, digital scale, and everything else I need. Except die sets are as impossible to find as ammo, I can reload .38 special, .357 Magnum, and .45 ACP, that’s it. Likewise, bullet molds are impossible to find, I have a 20 pound capacity downward pouring lead pot but not a single mold except for an ingot mold. Primers are also completely impossible to find unless you pay a scalper, which I refuse to do, I have been hunting for primers since fall and in that entire time I have found exactly ONE box of primers, a 1,000 count box of small rifle primers which I only got last week, I found it by luck. I have only fired brass, and no bullets but gunpowder is oddly readily available. I can make primers one at a time if I have to. So reloading did not solve the issue.
I next looked at cap and ball revolvers. I can’t find percussion caps and they seem to be sold out of every store in the entire country, but fortunately I can make them. I have gun powder but I can make that too. I have no bullet molds and they are sold out everywhere, but theoretically if I can find one I can make my own bullets, so a cap and ball revolver gives me theoretically unlimited ammo. I researched it and found the 1858 Remington to be the best choice because of the hot swappable cylinder and less cap jams. However all cap and ball revolvers were also sold out everywhere. In desperation, I bought an Armi San Marco’s one from gunbroker not realizing that it was out of production and spare parts and extra cylinders were impossible to find. I then started looking for others again, I called EMF to see when they might be back in stock and found out that I got lucky and they just got 100 in, I ordered one.
I now had two 1858 Remingtons and decided I liked them, not only did they solve my issue of never being able to go to the range and having no way to resupply ammo (provided I could continue to buy bullets as I still lack a bullet mold) they were fun too. I became interested in the period and other designs and started thinking about cartridge conversions to use some of those occasionally available cowboy cartridges. As I researched that it renewed my interest in the old west in general and of course got me thinking about cowboy action shooting. I then realized that I already had two revolvers so already had a good start on what I had to have and I became more interested, and now I’m here.
So that is my thought process, yes I intend to use it in competition but I also will be using it as a range gun and it could conceivably be pressed in to service for other uses as well so I want it to be as capable as I can.
And I am aware of the irony that I am interested in a hobby that requires crap loads of ammo during a time when I can barely find 1 random box and only became interested because of attempting to find a way around the ammo shortage.
Unfortunately I do not anticipate the ammo shortage ending for years, the manufacturers have about a two year back order and as things destabilize more and more new gun owners are created that have to get ammo and existing ones continue to prep for even more. And it isn’t even riot season again yet, and the media has not yet created a panic for a new made up virus variant to justify more power grabs. Not to mention looming war. Hell I almost bought a flint lock and would have had I actually gotten an answer about where to get an antique Brown Bess lock fitted to a reproduction stock that was not inletted instead of a bunch of people telling me how it was perfectly “reasonable” to pay $3,000 to have that done. I got fed up and bought the cap and ball revolver.