I often get a chuckle when someone points out the “dirtiness” of some range ammunition over others. No matter how much you shoot at the range with “dirty” ammo, you will never get close to the level of filth and rust potential of black powder shooting. Cleaning black powder residue is a chore or therapy, depending on who you ask and there are various ways to mitigate it and still have fun. Sometimes it comes down the kinds of powders and lubricants used. Some guns simply handle the grit better. Recently, I ran into an offering produced for Taylor’s & Company that seemed to promise a bridge between tradition and the rust resistance we have come to expect as modern shooters. They’re offering an 1858 Remington revolver with their “Black Rock” finish—a nitride finished black powder revolver. I took the plunge and several days on when I opened the generic Uberti cardboard box I was greeted by a very subdued revolver. If there ever was a word to describe the Black Rock, that word is subdued.
Quirks and Features
The Black Rock, at its heart, is a Uberti-produced Remington New Model Army revolver. The Remington New Model Army, sometimes inaccurately referred to as the 1858 Remington, was introduced in 1863 and it became the second most popular sidearm of Union forces during the Civil War–second only to the Colt 1860 New Army. Sales of this robust .44 caliber percussion revolver rapidly waned after the war and the model was quietly discontinued before the introduction of a similar looking cartridge-firing revolver in the Remington 1875. Uberti has been making replicas of the New Model Army for decades. It is probably the most appealing to modern shooters, but also one of the hardest to keep running.
The solid steel frame and sights evoke a thoroughly modern design compared to Colt’s open top design. Those features stand in stark contrast with the eight-inch octagonal barrel and the six-shot unfluted cylinder. The grip frame is all steel except for the brass trigger guard. The walnut grips are well contoured but stained in that ugly Uberti red I never cared for. We can’t forget that distinctive webbed Beals patent loading lever that rides underneath the barrel. The loading lever also serves to retain the cylinder pin. As with most Uberti pistols, information on the maker and caliber is discreetly hidden under the loading lever while the necessary proof marks are sitting small on the frame.
The only difference between a stock Uberti 1858 and the Black Rock is the absence of the usual high polished blued with a nitride finish in its place. finish. This style of finish, first pioneered by GLOCK with their “Tenifer” finish in the 1980s, is made to resist rust and corrosion on a level that bluing can’t. The finish on the Black Rock is certainly duller and it the metal parts have a certain rougher texture to them. The gun has a subdued blue-black finish that surprised me when I worked the action.
The pistol had no oil at all on any of the moving parts and I could hear the squeak of the cylinder pin as I worked the pistol, yet the gun worked slickly as if it had been oiled. After a bit of cleaning and lubrication, I was ready to hit the range to see how nitride would stand up to a gun that truly shoots dirty.
Test Loads with the Remington New Model Army Black Rock
The Black Rock has the distinction of being the test bed for several velocity experiments, so it was made to eat a variety of powder and bullet combinations. The two primary projectiles used were Speer .457 inch diameter 147 grain round balls and home-cast Lee 220 grain conical bullets. I used my standard Graf & Sons FFFg black powder along with Pyrodex P and Triple 7 in my testing. For fire, I used my standby Remington No. 10 percussion caps. Black powder firearms need some sort of lubrication on the bullets to keep the powder fouling soft and maintain accuracy. For this task, I used plain Crisco vegetable shortening.
Loading Procedure
In the 19th century, the New Model Army was normally loaded with paper cartridges containing powder and bullet. Although I’m a big fan of using paper cartridges, most folks today shoot using loose components–which I did. The first step of loading is making sure we have a clear gun. This involves putting the hammer to its half-cock position and putting percussion caps on each nipple. Firing with caps alone will clear out any oil left over from storage and ready to gun for sure-fire results.
With that done, put the hammer to half-cock and drop a premeasured amount of powder down each chamber, following the powder with your bullet of choice before rotating the bullet under the loading lever and forcing the projectile into the chamber with the lever’s arm. Rotate and repeat the process until you are fully loaded.
I found the .44 caliber chambers easy to hit with loose powder and bullet. With a round ball, the cylinder has a capacity of over forty grains of powder but you will need to back off the charge when using the longer conical bullets.
The balls were easy to drop onto a chamber and seat, but the .450 inch conicals were easily started into the chamber mouth with a thumb before being pushed home. Using the round ball ammunition, I normally dabbed a bit of shortening over the chamber mouths, but in the case of the conical bullets, I pan lubed them so that the grease grooves of the bullet already had lube in them.
On The Range with the 1858 Remington Black Rock
If there ever was a revolver that would benefit from a nitride finish, it’s the “1858” Remington design. The enclosed solid frame that endears it to so many also traps black powder fouling around the cylinder and cylinder pin. Almost without exception, I can only go about eighteen rounds before the pistol becomes harder and harder to cock and manipulate. After thirty, the gun will usually need to be taken down and the inside of the frame wiped off before the dirty business can continue. I tested the Black Rock for a solid month firing about two hundred rounds with no cleaning.
For the sake of full disclosure, I did smear Crisco on the cylinder pin on three occasions, however this is very little lubrication given the time, the number of rounds fired, and the neglect I ultimately put the pistol through. It’s worth noting that finishes like nitride and cerakote add some inherent lubricity so even if the steel parts are bone dry, the pistol will still work for a little while.
I shot the Black Rock at distances ranging from ten and twenty-five yards. The gun points naturally, making one-handed offhand shooting easy with the longer eight-inch barrel balancing out the heft of the steel grip frame. The sights seemed to align organically, and the front sight was thin enough to take a fine bead on small bullseye targets while still being easy to pick up.
The grip fills the hand well, though it may be a little much for those with small-sized hands to keep a firing grip and cock the hammer, which is a little further forward compared to a Colt design. Recoil is tame with the Black Rock, given that the pistol weighs over 2.5 pounds and you can tinker with your loads. The lowest powder charge I tried was a sedate 20-grain load with the bullets seated quite deep in the chambers. The gun barely jumped at all. Maximum loads of with a round ball over forty grains or a conical bullet over 35 grains produced much more recoil and blast, but nothing snappy.
A .457-inch round ball over twenty grains of powder, regardless of powder type, proved to be the most accurate loading for me, though the heavier charges weren’t too far off the mark. At ten yards shooting offhand with one paw, I could predictably peck a four-inch bullseye.
Taking as much of myself out the equation, I managed to get consistent 2.2-inch groups at twenty-five yards off the bench. The sights helped, as did the trigger pull which breaks at just over five pounds with no take-up. The Black Rock was fun to shoot and it’s always encouraging when you can hit what you are aiming at, too. Through the test, it powered through black powder fouling without cleaning or rust issues. That doesn’t mean shooting was always perfect.
There is a downside to every pistol, and the Black Rock is no exception. I’m not talking about nit-picking details like the stain on the wood grips or the scratches that eventually came on the nitride finish. The grips are passable in presentation and no scratches got to the bare metal, unlike the blued guns it shared a range bag with. The gun and the finish are tough, but there are some observations.
I noticed while shooting loads higher than thirty grains that the spent caps would blow back against the recoil shield. This binds the action somewhat, but every time this occurs, a determined cock of the hammer cleared it, and I was onto the next round without any real delay. One redeeming quality of Remington replicas is that their solid frame mitigates much of the cap jamming issues that plague Colts. This isn’t a problem as much as it is a minor inconvenience when trying to shoot quickly and I concede that going beyond a thirty-grain charge is really entering handgun hunting territory.
The only other issue consisted of the loading lever’s retaining screw working loose and the loading lever itself came off while loading. A handy screwdriver took care of that problem, but I was reminded of the value of Loctite. A drop on the relevant screws and those screws won’t go anywhere, especially relevant for a field pistol.
The Taylors & Company Black Rock: A Good Buy?
Today there is a big emphasis on guns that can be rode hard and put up wet. Taylor’s Black Rock Remington is one of them. Life has a haphazard quality and that extends to maintenance and TLC for our black powder guns. Chances are that your blued steel gun will be perfectly fine until you get back to civilization, but it’s nice to have more forgiving options. I’m rather surprised that cerakote and nitride finishes didn’t catch on more in the black powder world until recently.
The Remington, for all its strengths, is more sensitive to fouling and debris than other designs due to its enclosed solid frame. Yet I was able to put many rounds downrange with minimal lubrication, some abuse to the finish, and no cleaning along with less-than-ideal storage in humid east Texas air. The gun never rusted out and it never got so fouled that the gun was unusable. And it did it all while still looking the part. Though the Black Rock costs a bit more than a standard New Model Army, the extra change is worth it for the added protection and lubricity the finish offers. It opens the role of the black powder revolver from curiosity at the range to a serious field tool.
This feature originally aired at The Truth About Guns in September 2019. You can see the original copy here.
For more information on black powder revolvers, see Meet the Cap and Ball Revolver.
For more revolver content, check the following reviews:
The LeMat Revolver | WCW | Breach Bang Clear
Head-to-Head: Colt Official Police and Smith & Wesson M&P | Breach Bang Clear
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