The Manhattan Conversion

My first cowboy shoot was with anew pair of 1851 Colt Navy clones. They were gifts last Christmas and I had spent along three months fondling and drooling over them just waiting for spring and a chance to shoot them. The time had finally arrived and I couldn’t wait for my turn to clean the nefarious Doolin Gang out of the local saloon. At the buzzer, I drew my first pistol, brought it to full cock and pulled the trigger. I was awarded with a boom, a cloud of smoke, and the happy sound of lead hitting steel.

The first outlaw had bitten the dust. Second plate and another steely-eyed desperado was pushing up daisies. Thumb back the hammer again the Bottom gun without conversion, as supplied. pop of the cap, the roar of the gun, a cloud of smoke, and a hearty "Hi-Yo Silver." The fourth plate drifted into my sights and I squinted through the smoke cloud. Oh, he could hide but the outlaws days were numbered as I drew a bead and pulled the trigger, only to hear a faint click.

I cocked the gun and again got nothing more than a click as the hammer fell. I pulled the hammer to half cock and reindexed the cylinder only to be met with two more clicks as I tried to get those last two chambers to fire. They never did. Cap and ball revolvers can be a lot of fun to shoot but they can also be frustrating. One of the most common problems that plagues the Colt style of revolver occurs when pieces of a fired cap find their way into the inner workings of the revolver.

That was exactly what happened on the fateful day I was theoretically gunned down by the infamous Doolin Gang. There are ways to prevent, or at least minimize, the possibility of this happening. Rotating the gun 90 degrees to the right as you pull the hammer back is the most often used way but the problem stems from a design flaw and a little known modification can help you in your efforts to rid the fictional West of steel outlaws or just have fun shooting a cap and ball pistol.

I don’t know where the name "Manhattan Conversion" came from and even the Internet couldn’t sup-

The left is before the conversion, right is after. ply the answer. It seems a strange name for a modification to a cowboy or Civil War gun. In essence, it is simply a reduction of the space the fired cap has to fall into. The Remington cap and ball revolvers have a firing pin as part of the hammer and a window in the frame only slightly bigger than the firing pin for it to pass through on its way to ignite the cap. The older Colts have a flat faced hammer entering a slot in the receiver as wide as the hammer.

The width of this slot is the root of the problem. After firing, the percussion cap has been crushed and flattened and no longer is held tightly by friction to the nipple. As the hammer is cocked, the pressure holding the cap in place is relieved and the cap is free to fall off the nipple. Unfortunately, the only place the cap has to go is to the right where a trough in the face of the recoil shield gives it room to fall free of the frame or straight back down the hammer slot.

The Colt design leaves a gap between the hammer and the frame where the cap can and does enter the action, either locking the gun up or wedging between the hammer and the frame keeping the hammer from striking the next cap. To minimize the problem, some bright lad determined that if you narrowed the nose of the hammer and put a slotted piece of material just wide enough for the narrowed hammer to pass through, it would eliminate or at least minimize the chances of the fired cap to get into the hammer slot.

To install a Manhattan Conversion, the revolver is completely disassembled and a plate is cut from sheet steel (if your gun has a steel frame) or sheet brass (for brass

framed guns) to the same width as the hammer slot. You can leave it longer than the depth of the slot to make it easier to hold and position during the next step. After making sure the plate fits the hammer slot closely solder the plate in place. The nose of the hammer is now thinned. If you have a mill it’s a pretty simple process. If you do not own a milling machine the job can be done with a Dremel tool.

You can thin the entire nose of the hammer or, to maintain the appearance of the hammer, narrow only the lower part to a height that will clear the top of the plate. Keep in mind that the rear sight is a "V" cut into the top of the hammer. Narrowing the hammer to its entire height will all but eliminate it. The plate that was soldered in the slot is now cut to fit flush with the top of the frame and slotted in the center to a few thousandths wider than the hammer nose.

The hammer is now screwed back in position in the frame and checked for proper clearance. It must pass cleanly through the slot to a depth that will allow the nose of the hammer to strike the percussion cap. All that is left to do is to polish the frame where it was discolored by the heat of the soldering operation, refinish it if necessary, reassemble the gun and test it. Puttin’ On The Ritz If you’re going to go to Manhattan you might as well put on your top hat.

Looking at the Manhattan Conversion I was concerned that the fired percussion cap could still fit sideways through the slot and jam the gun. To make the conversion even more effective I decided to put atop on the narrow slot and make the nose of the firing pin more like a firing pin by cutting a slot between the top of the hammer and the narrowed section. I reduced the height of the conversion plate and soldered atop over the slot and polished it flush to the top of the frame.

This left a square hole for the nose of the modified hammer to pass through. I don’t know if this modification has ever been done before as I have been unable to find any mention of it. So perhaps I have added something to the firearms world, no matter how unimportant. I might add one other thought I have had on the project. Should you be concerned that the narrowed and shortened hammer nose might be unable to handle hard usage it would be possible to simply short- Far

en the face of the hammer by cutting it back and then drilling it to take a steel pin and actually make a firing pin having contact with the cap through a drilled hole. With close fitting, that should be even a smaller hole for the fired cap to get through. So far, both the original conversion and the top hatted version Complete your American Gunsmith collection. Or read up on a special subject! A limited number of the following