Rem Vs. Colt - I Chose Poorly

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:05]Recently, we did a poll on the channel and asked the viewers, "What kind of captain ball revolver do you prefer? A Remington New Model Army or an open top Colt style, whether it be 1860 Army, 1851, 61 Navy, Pocket Navy, whatever it is." And for the first few days, it was 50/50 Colt versus Remington. And after about day three, the Remington took the lead. And as it sits right now, I believe it's 5248 with the Remington leading. Now, I asked in the poll if you could please explain why. And I had a lot of people say, interestingly enough, that they prefer the Remington because it's stronger.

[00:00:53]Now, I probably had that comment or something like that two dozen times, and I thought it was kind of interesting because people seem to think that the Colt is a weaker design due to its lack of top strap compared to the Remington.

[00:01:15]Now, I don't know what you guys are doing with these things. driving nails or using them as a club or something perhaps or maybe dropping them down the side of a mountain. I'm not sure. But I don't think me personally would call an open top colt necessarily weak, at least not in its original intended configuration.

[00:01:45]Now, what the hell does that mean? If you are planning on using a cartridge conversion, which I have for both of these, then yeah, I would say the open top Colt might be at a disadvantage.

[00:02:00]But Colt designed their revolvers without a top strap for a particular reason. Now, Colt did experiment and make prototypes of I believe it was the Dragoon with a top strap, but what they found is being that at the time the only propellant they had was black powder, the top strap did not do anything other than hinder the performance.

[00:02:30]Why? because the black powder fouling gets caught under that top strap and just keeps it all in there. So, what Colt found was the top strap really didn't do much of any good. It was easier to machine. You could machine the frames, the arbor, thread the arbor in to the frame, machine the barrel, have it go together with a wedge. It's easy to disassemble, easy to clean, easy to manufacture, and really a top strap is just not necessary. You can't fit enough black powder into one of these chambers with a conicle to harm this thing, top strap or not. So, I found it interesting that people were saying, "Oh, I prefer the Remington because it's stronger."

[00:03:19]Well, maybe in a modern sense it is. I I I suppose you could say that. But keeping the historical context in mind, the Colt is not really weaker, at least again, not in its intended form as a captain and ball revolver. Now, we have those horrible, godless, heathen black powder substitutes, which are generally more powerful than black powder, but not more powerful than my low density black powder. But I'll show you that some other time. If you're using trip 7 and you're using a full chamber worth and a round ball, you could fire this to where you might get a little excessive gap and it might need a little bit of a tuneup.

[00:04:07]But if it was 1865, I don't really think that's going to be much of an issue, seeing as how 7 didn't exist. Another thing people said that they preferred the Remington over the Colt for is its ease of disassembly.

[00:04:25]And I suppose that uh when it's clean, it comes apart pretty easy, right?

[00:04:32]Usually after I get a few shots through mine, I I struggle to get the cylinder in just right. And I certainly can't do it as fast as Clint Eastwood does in uh Pale Rider. But I don't think the Colt is exactly super hard to take apart either. You know, they they come apart probably just as quick, if not maybe a little bit faster than the Remington.

[00:04:59]Now, I suppose if your wedge isn't fit really good, you have to beat it out of there with a hammer. I try to fit mine as nice as I can so I can get it out of there with my fingers. You guys will still see me give it a tap with my short starter or something every once in a while, but as far as difficult disassembly, I don't know if that one really holds up.

[00:05:31]I think people's personal preference comes into it like most things.

[00:05:37]For example, I use a Remington when we're doing powder test for a few specific reasons. One, the cylinder gap doesn't change where if you push that wedge in, the cylinder gap on a Colt can change.

[00:05:53]It has better sights. There's one thing I dislike about a Colt. It's the sight being on the hammer. That's That's a bummer. I don't care how you slice it.

[00:06:02]If I'm shooting paper and I want chronograph data that I'm going to catalog and count on, I use this.

[00:06:14]One of the biggest downfalls, if not the biggest downfall when it comes to Remingtons versus Colts is Remingtons are susceptible to fouling much worse than an open top colt. The main reason why I did not care for Remington's back 20some years ago is I couldn't get more than 12 shots through one of these before the cylinder is jammed up and I have to beat the base pin out of it to take it apart and clean it. Now, to be fair, I was using Pyro decks with the Ox Yoloke Wonder Wads, which I'm almost convinced do absolutely nothing. But we'll test that some OTHER TIME. BUT I COULDN'T get more than 12 rounds through one of these things before it's pretty much jammed up and I have to take it apart and clean it. Where a Colt, even with Pyroex and the Oxoke Wonder Wads, I could shoot 50, 60 rounds through it before it really started to have trouble rolling.

[00:07:16]This has been my issue with the Remington since the beginning. I've owned five Remingtons, two Pietas, two Uberties, and one Army San Marco.

[00:07:30]All of them have had this issue. The only way I have ever been able to keep them running longer than 12 shots is to use an obscene amount of black powder lubricant in the chamber mouths just to keep the fouling soft to where you can get more than 12 or maybe if you're lucky 18 rounds through it.

[00:07:56]Not the issue with the Colts, at least not my experience with the Remington and the Colt. Another thing people brought up several times was Colts cap jam. I have cap jams in my 51 Navy, my 60 Army.

[00:08:12]I can't get through a whole cylinder without it having a cap jam. Therefore, the Remington is better. Unfortunately, that is an issue with open top cap and ball revolvers. Now, that's not to say that you can't have a cap jam in a Remington. You can, but generally speaking, it's a little bit more serious to clear, but it is certainly less frequent. Now, in my experience when it comes to reproduction cults is the Uberties have way too light of a spring and they're certainly not made to the original and they're certainly not made to the standard of an original cult.

[00:08:54]There are several videos and uh forums and all kinds of things that you can find to tune up your cult to make cap jams almost non-existent.

[00:09:06]But if you don't want to jump through those hoops, and I do think it's a bummer if you spend $300 something dollars on one of these, actually I think they're $400 now. It would be nice if it just worked right out of the box and you didn't have to do a bunch of fixing and tweaking on it in order to get it to work, but that seems to be the way it is. But I think what it has done is it has given people a false impression that the original Colts cap jammed as often as the Uberties do nowadays, which is like, you know, one and six or sometimes worse. The the worst one I had was my 1851 Navy about a year ago and it cap jammed every other shot. It was absolutely bloody awful.

[00:09:57]And that one I ended up having to Well, this was the wrong one.

[00:10:02]That one I ended up having to weld up the safety notch on the hammer because it was way too wide and the cap would get stuck in the safety notch. And it wasn't until we welded it up and then filed it flat that it works all the time with almost no cap gems. In fact, I don't think I've had a cap jam in it since that's happened. So again, for anyone who hasn't handled an original Colt and felt how heavy the hammer spring is compared to one of the Italian reproductions, it's easy to get the wrong impression that the Italian reproductions jam that bad. So, it stands to reason that the original Colts would cap Gem that often, too. But if you were to buy one of these, whether it be Petta or Remington or I think that's probably the only outfit that makes it. No, Po Peter makes a really nice one. Some target gun or something.

[00:10:54]This thing runs right out of the box.

[00:10:56]Shoots pretty damn well. And I didn't do any tuning up on this at all. Absolutely none. Still haven't to this day. I've owned it for I don't know probably going on two years now. I really like it where most of my open top cult guns need some work right out of the box just to make them somewhat reliable. Personally, the way I look at it is any cap and ball revolver has a possibility of having a cap jam, whether it's a Remington or a Colt. Colts just might be a little bit worse. Now, something people bring up often when it comes to running uh an obscene amount of lubricant in the chambers and all of that business on a Remington or a a cult for that matter too, doing it at all, I suppose, is that's not historically accurate. They wouldn't have done that in 1865. And yes, I absolutely agree. But are they going to put 50 rounds through their Remington in one go? Back then, people had to carry these for self-defense and they had to use them for that.

[00:12:05]Nowadays, we're not doing that. I have hunted with cap and ball revolvers, small game, coyotes, jacks, and cotton tails. And I don't lube the chamber mouths on any of that stuff because I'm only going to get one shot off, maybe two, I suppose. Uh I've never had to reload, I don't think, uh when I was ever hunting with a cabin ball revolver.

[00:12:29]I'm pretty confident I can say that I've never reloaded while I'm out in the field doing that.

[00:12:35]Not to say that I couldn't have, I suppose. So, when people say things like, "Oh, well, you can't shmear lube on the Chamber Miles. That's not historically accurate." Well, sure, but no one's out here fighting the Yankees or the Rebs with something like this.

[00:12:51]I'm not going to get more than one or two shots off when I'm carrying it. It's only pretty much, at least in my case, I can't speak for everybody, when I'm at the range and I'm going to put more than 12 shots through it. Now, I've said multiple times in powder test videos, I intentionally do not use lubricant on this when we're testing powder because I want to see how dirty it is and how it's going to affect this thing. Because again, this will just run because I want to see how it affects the revolver. I get a better idea of how hard the fouling is on this because it's more susceptible to fouling without using any lube. So, we do that intentionally.

[00:13:40]Something else people mentioned was, "Oh, I like the, you know, I have big hands, so the Remington's grip fits my hand better." which um I thought was kind of interesting because I got big old fat fingers and I don't care for the Remington grip. Now, it's mostly just right here where the trigger guard meets the grip because if I'm not holding it, it almost have to overgrip it to keep my knuckle flat.

[00:14:09]But, you know, you get used to it, I suppose. But if you don't, if you're holding it how I want to hold it, my knuckle gets hammered right there every time. So, I have to really overgrip it.

[00:14:20]And then my finger sticking way out here and I I'm pulling the the trigger funny.

[00:14:25]So, I either have to overgrip it or undergrip it. And typically what I do is I undergrip it just so I can get my finger around there on it and keep my knuckle away from the trigger guard. I find the Colt grips much more comfortable. Again, just me. Now, this is an 1860, so it has a much bigger grip. Let me show you the 51. So, if you compare the grips between the 1861 Colt and the Remington, I think I would go with the 51. It's a smaller grip, I think, but I have a lot more room here for my big old knuckle to shoot this thing and be quite comfortable doing it. That's just my opinion with my fat fingers. If somebody asked me what I prefer, a Colt or a Remington, I don't know that I'd be able to give a straight answer without having some kind of what about or preface or something. If I'm just going to go out to the pasture and load up my revolver and shoot at a steel target at 25 yards or whatever, I would go with a Colt Colt rather because it's just going to run. Sure, it might not be as accurate as the Remington, but I'm not going to have to contend with the fouling. I'm going to be able to put 50 60 rounds through it and not worry about it at all. It'll just run. If I'm testing powder, I would run my Remington, which we do, and you guys see us do that all the time. It has better sights. The cylinder gap isn't going to change with the with the wedge.

[00:16:06]That's why I like the Remington for that. Now, I have hunted with Captain Ball revolvers, uh, but I've never hunted with this. I've hunted with my 51 and 61 Navy, but again, I'm only going to get a couple shots off. Well, that means you could probably use that, right? Sure. But I guess if I had to pick one, I think I'd go with a Colt.

[00:16:32]They're more comfortable.

[00:16:36]They're accurate enough for me anyway.

[00:16:39]Maybe you consider it combat accuracy.

[00:16:42]And after tuning them up to get them reliable, they are quite reliable.

[00:16:48]Again, if you want to bring up the historical context, the Remingtons were popular during the Civil War, but they still were not as popular as cults. There are documented accounts of cults cap this I keep holding up the wrong one of cults cap jamming but there are also documented accounts of entire units saying we won't take these take these things back and give us cults. Now I understand that folks have a personal preference. I I don't like to use the word bias, but I there was a time when I was biased about things uh in my life.

[00:17:31]In fact, I can tell you exactly.

[00:17:34]When I was 17, I bought a 1970 Plymouth GTX with a 440, a four-speed, a Dana 60 rear end with 410 gears, and it was a pistol grip four-speed, too, with the air grabber hood that came up. And the car was kind of ratty, but it was fast.

[00:17:49]And certainly for a 17-year-old kid, it ran really, really good. And I thought I was hot [ __ ] Now, I was sold on Mopars from that point, right? There's no car that's faster. The 440 is the best big block engine that ever was built and all of that stuff. And I whooped on my buddies that had small block Chevys and, you know, 389 Pontiacs and stuff like that. Firebirds, a 400 Firebird. Um anyway, and I thought I was hot [ __ ] I thought I was.

[00:18:23]And then I kind of worked my way up the line a little bit and uh a guy down the way had an El Camino with uh supposedly it was a 350. I mean, it looked like a 350 on the outside and he put a whooping on my car, which I just couldn't understand. I mean, how does that work?

[00:18:38]I got a 440 with a four-speed and 410s and he's got a stupid El Camino with a small block Chevy, a turbo 350. And I don't know what kind of gears he had, but that was just I I I couldn't wrap my head around what that was because in my head there was no better engine than a 440. And I had a four-speed with a pistol grip, man. I mean, there's no bitching or [ __ ] on the planet than that right there. But because I was biased and I couldn't understand how a small block Chevy just whooped my 70 Plymouth GTX, it wasn't until some years later when I realized, I had an epiphany, a moment of clarity, if you will, that maybe maybe Mopars aren't the fastest cars out there. And just because I like them doesn't mean they're any faster or better. I don't mean to come on here and give you guys a hard time that you guys picked the wrong gun or anything, okay?

[00:19:37]That's why there's different guns, different cars, and different colors because people like different stuff. So, no need to come at me all been out of shape because I'm picking on the Remington. Again, I like the Remington.

[00:19:49]I've owned five of them. Two Piatas, two Uberties, and one Army San Marco. And I've beat on them pretty hard, as you can see. Look at that poor thing.

[00:20:00]Nothing is indestructible.

[00:20:02]Clearly, overall, I like them both. It just really depends on what it is I'm going for. That's all. So, for those of you guys that asked me the question, there's your answer. I I think that's an answer.

[00:20:16]Anyway, so, as usual, folks, if you thought this video didn't suck, do me a favor and hit the like button. Consider subscribing. And if you did think it sucked, go make your own damn