Taylor Throating: for an old 58 Rem. replica

[junkbug]

Hi everyone;

It has been a while since I have posted, so I may missed some mention of this, if there was any.

I am interested in trying to have an Italian Remington 1858 .44 cal. cap and ball revolver Taylor throated. It is no gem of a gun, but I thought it might be fun.

I can no longer find the original article by JimT, and the search function found little for me. But if I remember correctly, JimT's father originally performed this proceedure on an vintage Remington 1858, either just before, or just after WWII.


So, I would like to try this on my 58 that I bought at a swap meet years ago. Anyone else do this?


Can I buy a single reamer from Brownells and do it myself. The steel on that replica is probably almost as soft as lead


Is there anyone out there that would do it as a gunsmith project? It will probably be more expensive than the gun is worth.


Anyone know of a reason why I should not do it.


Thanks for any help

[Ray]

Here is an excerpt from an article that used to be here on this site but I cannot find anymore.....I copied this from the article reprint included in the reference chapter of the excellent cumpston-bates book on percussion pistols......

Jim Taylor
Memories of Black Powder


Back in the 80's I picked up an Italian-made copy of the Remington 1858 .44 cap & ball revolver. My Dad had bought a shipment of originals when I was a kid and I was always fascinated with them. The Italian copy was quite a bit different than the ones Remington made in the 1800's. The original Remington's had gain-twist rifling and barrels were .454" diameter, though they were called ".44 caliber". Advertised velocities ran as high as 1250 fps. The Italian copy had standard twist rifling and the bore was .445".

Shooting it, the muzzle report was a nice big "BOOM" but I could never get over 800 fps with the heaviest powder charge. Most loads were in the high 700 fps range. It was quite unsatisfying. So eventually I started working on it. The first thing was decent sights. I removed the little bitty front sight and silver-soldered a Smith & Wesson target front sight on the barrel. Then I opened up the little notch in the frame, make a nice square rear notch. Finishing on the range I got it pretty well centered.

The next thing I did was ream the chambers so I could seat a .460" round ball in the chambers. Then, using a long taper reamer, I reamed a long tapering throat in the barrel. It was nearly 3 inches in length. Upon firing the gun with a .460" ball, the first thing I noticed was more felt recoil and a "CRACK" instead of a "BOOM". Shrinking that ball .015" really upped the pressure, resulting in more velocity. Over the chronograph I was getting close to 1100 fps.

Experimenting with various grades of black powder I found that a full charge of 4Fg would blow the hammer back to full cock. Doing that is sort of hard on the cylinder hand and all the lockwork. 4Fg powder is not recommended. I normally stayed with 3Fg. I also tried other types of loads and found with some I could get over 1200 fps for the elongated round ball. Accuracy at 50 yards was decent if I did my part. Good enough that I had no issues hunting rabbits and other game.

One Javelina season I took the Remington out on opening day. I hiked back into the hills where I knew Javelina lived and eventually found a herd. They were in a wash below me. I crawled up to the edge of the wash and there, about 40 yards away, was a Javelina rubbing its butt on a rock. It was quartering away from me to the left, so I put the sights behind its right shoulder and touched it off. Through the smoke cloud I could see the little pig was down. When I got to it I found the ball had entered behind the right shoulder, ranged forward and exited through the left side of the neck. Lights out!

I shot the gun for a couple years, then traded it off. Cap & ball guns are fun for awhile. Then you realize why cartridge guns were invented. The old blackpowder cap & ball guns will do the job though.

[junkbug]

Thanks Ray. I remember reading that article also. It has much useful information.

[Hawkeye2]

You are talking about a forcing cone modification that any gunsmith can do and for far less than the cost of a reamer. I have the kit from Brownells to do .36, .38/.357, 9mm, .44 & .45 but it is expensive and you can't justify it for just a handful of revolvers. Taylors & Co. ( https://www.taylorsfirearms.com/) used to sell a single forcing cone reamer tool which was much cheaper than Brownells but not as nice. i don't see it on their site now. If you have the reamer, rod & barrel bushing it is only a few minutes work to cut a new forcing cone but I recommend you just go to to a smith. Unless you are shooting in competition it probably isn't worth the $$ to have the forcing cone done. I cut a new cone in my revolvers and have the chambers reamed to .456" to take a .457 ball but they also get quite a lot of additional work too. For plinking just cutting a new cone won't do much for you.

[AmBraCol]

What are your barrel dimensions? That is, what is the bore diameter and what is the diameter back at the threads of the frame? The main advantage of the Taylor Throat is the ability to "clean up" a choked spot right at the threads. Sometimes when attaching the barrel to the frame the barrel gets squeezed in which results in a tight spot at the breech end, leaving a loose projectile through the rest of the barrel. Lousy accuracy and loss of velocity are the result.

You can run a soft lead ball down the barrel and swage it to the diameter by placing a bolt or something similar in the frame cut out. Then remove the bolt and pop the upset ball out and measure. Run a soft ball in from the muzzle half way down the bore and then back out the muzzle. This will give you bore diameter for the muzzle end of the barrel. Compare the two. If the forcing cone end is smaller than the muzzle end, a Taylor Throat will improve things substantially for you.

Another function of the Taylor throat is to provide a gentler transition from cylinder to barrel, especially if there is misalignment. That's what I did with my Llama Cassidy years ago. There was a noticeable misalignment that showed up when running a cleaning rod along the side of the barrel towards the cylinder. It would catch on the edge of the chamber mouth on one side. There was a lot of lead shaving on that side of the forcing cone as well. I obtained a Taylor Throating reamer from Brownells and used it on the Llama. No more lead shaving and the groups tightened quite a bit.

What JimT describes in the article above is NOT a Taylor Throat. You're not going to get the results he did with a Taylor Throat job. What he's talking about is pulling the barrel and running a taper reamer into the barrel from the forcing cone end. Essentially he produced the same effect that the long, tapered forcing cone on a shotgun does, only in a rifled barrel. He'd first reamed out the cylinder chambers to accept a larger ball (.460 diameter) and then a three inch taper that went (one supposes as he does not mention the diameter of the forcing cone at the breech end) from around .460 to the .445 diameter of the barrel. Actually, now that I think about it, he talks about a .015 reduction of the ball so his tapered throat went from .460 to .445 in three inches, a nice, long taper that would swage the ball down and prepare it to engage the rifling at the end of the taper.

Is it worth it? Well, you'd have to be the judge of that. I'd not pay a gunsmith to do it, but would be tempted to try it if I could find a tapered reamer that would do the job. In the end, you'll have to make the call.

[tray]

This discussion was going good until Hawkeye 2 posted his definitive statement that Taylor throating was a forcing cone. It was said in such a matter-of-fact way it sounded like he knew exactly what he was talking about.
I cut forcing cones and I have a Taylor throating reamer. I also remember when Jim Taylor first told me and others about it. He even went to the trouble to post a drawing with dimensions of it. It was for a .45 caliber and mine is for a .44, but I was able to ask enough questions to design mine from the information and order it from Clymer Reamers. I ordered extra barrel bushings and used the handle and shaft from the Brownell's forcing cone cutter kit. The throat I cut was definitely not a "long forcing cone" and anyone who claims that it is; has never cut one. If they used a forcing cone cutter to the extent that it appeared to be a long throat then they destroyed any hope for accuracy that barrel had before they got their hands on it.
"That's all I have to say on this matter."

[AmBraCol]

"That's all I have to say on this matter."

Since you've had the chance to chat with JimT about it, it'd be a service to the rest of us if you'd elucidate a bit on the subject.

[piller]

I don't know anything about this topic, and I find it interesting. I would like to hear more.

[tray]

Let me begin by saying I am not a gunsmith nor have I played one on TV. I use my tools on personal guns that I personally own.
The forcing cone is the taper, cut at the rearmost part of the barrel by the factory. It is usually five to eight degrees depending on the revolver. I re-cut mine to eleven degrees. The forcing cone is the first part of the barrel a bullet contacts on it's journey down the barrel and is there to help direct the bullet to a correct alignment with the center of the bore.
The throat or leade into the rifling is cut on a long taper to smooth out the bullets entry into the lands so it is not such an abrupt process of swaging the bullet to the lands and grooves.
A Taylor Throat is cut with a custom reamer. The one I use has a one degree taper and is used to cut that taper a caliber and a half long. For instance, if I slug my .44 barrel and it measures .430, a caliber and a half would measure 0.645. To get that distance I insert the reamer into the chamber until it engages the lands and mark it using the rear of the barrel as my gage. The reamer is removed and another mark is added 0.645 farther up the reamer toward the larger end. Next the reamer is reinserted into the barrel and with plenty of cutting oil and never turning the reamer in any direction except the direction used to cut, it is used to cut the throat until the caliber and a half mark is reached. These dimensions are not chiseled in stone according to Jim. That is to say the length of a caliber and a half has worked for many and barrels cut this way have always shown improved groups or in the worst case stayed the same but so far it has never produced a worse group. Also the angle has not been explored to see if say a degree and a half would work better or worse. So it can be different for different calibers and different guns. Most people are not willing to gamble on the results so that is why so little is known about it.
At one time there were people selling Taylor Throating Kits. One used a Dewey pistol cleaning rod to attach the reamer to. I would not recommend using that set up. Brownell's sells a forcing cone cutter kit with a T-handle and rod. They also market barrel bushing in different calibers to keep the rod centered in the barrel. I use as many bushings as will fit the length of barrel. The rod in that kit was threaded with the correct threads to use on the reamer Clymer was marketing at the time I purchased mine.
I did encounter a Ruger Vaquero .44 magnum once that had the bore pinched so tight at the frame it prevented me from being able to insert the reamer to cut a Taylor Throat. I had to lap the barrel until it would accept the reamer in order to cut the throat.
One more thing I would say is this procedure is not the only factor in addressing the ills of a gun that shoots poorly. The cylinder throats have to be the correct size for the bore and each the size of the others. The center line of these cylinder bores have to line up with the center line of the barrel reasonable well. The barrel shoots better if it tapers in size from the breech to the muzzle and has no tight spots from one end to the other. There are many other factors that go into consistently shooting tight groups. A Taylor Throat can help to achieve the end goal but is only one component of the mix.