58 Remington in .45 Colt

I have a few firearms. I enjoy shooting all my guns; simply because the act of squeezing a trigger and sending rounds downrange makes me happy. Doesn’t matter if it’s a .22 or a .45, I’ll shoot it. It’s no lie to say that I enjoy some guns more than others, for instance my Walther P22 gets shot a lot, as does my Taurus Tracker .357. Today I’m going to talk about one the guns that just gives me a very unmanly case of the giggles every time I haul it out to the range. That gun is my Cabela’s purchased <a href=”http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/templates/product/standard-item.jsp?_DARGS=/cabelas/en/common/catalog/item-link.jsp_A&_DAV=MainCatcat602007-cat20817_TGP&id=0006195210082a&navCount=2&podId=0006195&parentId=cat20817&masterpathid=&navAction=push&catalogCode=UG&rid=&parentType=index&indexId=cat20817&hasJS=true” title=”’58 Remington clone, fitted with a Kirst Konverter. The Kirst allows me to fire .45 Colt out of the revolver instead of the traditional loose powder and ball you’d have to normally run through the pistol.

Some folks like to remove the black powder loading lever, replace it with an ejector rod, and then cut a loading gate into the powder shield on the frame so that you can load and unload the revolver like a single action Colt. I was going to do that, until I saw Pale Rider for the first time in a while. If you haven’t seen it, Clint uses a ’58 Remington cartridge conversion, which he reloads by dropping the empty cylinder and placing a fresh cylinder in the frame. I figured “If it’s good enough for Clint Eastwood, it’s good enough for me.” So, to reload the ’58, I have to partially lower the black powder loading lever, put the revolver at half-cock, pop the cylinder into my hand, and dump the empties. It sounds more complicated on paper than it actually is. While it’s not SUPER DUPER FAST, it takes me less time to reload the ’58 in this manner than it does to shuck the empties out of my SAA clone.

Now, all of the above makes the gun fun and interesting from a historical/western fanboy point of view, but what makes it so fun to shoot? I am rather glad you asked. The first time I rolled the gun out to the range, I was marginally worried that the Kirst Konverter was going to blow up in my face (it didn’t); I was also pretty sure that the pistol wouldn’t group worth a damn.

I was wrong on all counts. Not only did it not blow up, but it groups fantastically well.

Link to image of group (warning – huge image!)

As you can see from the above photo; it groups really well at 10 yards. It also has hardly any recoil to speak of, the long barrel and plow-handle grips really do quite a bit for compensating the pretty mild buck of the .45 Colt cowboy loads. I’d love to try it out with some decent .45 hollowpoints, but I’m only supposed to use it with “cowboy” loadings, and I don’t really feel like blowing up one of my favorite guns.

All in all, it’s a gas to shoot, makes a lot of noise and smoke, and better yet? It shoots right where I want the bullets to go.

Oh, and it’s hell on marauding pumpkins.

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