But I didn’t know it was a lemon to start. So, short story long
, after I made up my fantasy “Ysabel Kid” Dragoon with a Kirst Konverter cylinder, I wanted to do another for the 1860 Army, which, as much as I love the Dragoons, is the best balanced and best-looking Colt percussion revolver, in my humble opinion. But I have an Uberti “Colt 1872 Open Top” in .44 Special, so it was hard to justify the expense of the project. Then I figured out a way to justify it (more on that in a moment).Step one, acquire a base gun for the project. Given the cost of the conversion cylinder and the porting, I wanted to keep my costs down. So I went to Gunbroker and patiently waited. And waited. And, well that didn’t take long – I found one, so I bought it.
Then I waited for Kirst to run a special, and they literally did so the week after the revolver arrived. That was easy. So I purchased the conversion cylinder, waited for the shipping box, and shipped it off.
This is what it looked like before the conversion:
Then the “lemon” hit. Bill Kelly (a great guy), Kirst’s gunsmith, called me to let me know that when he disassembled the gun, it was in tough condition. He sent me a picture, and it looked like the parts had been dragged out of a sewer! Bill asked what I wanted done, and offered to clean up the parts to see if it was just surface rust and crud. He did, and I got lucky – it was surface stuff.
So, I got the gun back and couldn’t be happier. Here is what it looks like:
And a close look at the Kirst Konverter cylinder:
So, how did I justify the project?
Well, I remembered I had a few Pietta 1860 clones, including one is a “Sheriff” barrel length, and one in a snub-nose. So I thought, if I convert the full size model, I should be able to put on either the Sheriff barrel or the snub-nose barrel and essentially get three conversion guns in one. After all, I can only shoot one at a time, right?
Here they are:
And I am happy to report, with a little fitting for the snub-nose barrel assembly, it worked! I keep the grip, grime frame, channeled-receiver, and Kirst Konverter cylinder and just flip out the barrel.
Here’s what the Sheriff looks like with the Kirst cylinder installed:
And here’s what the snub-nose looks like:
And finally, proof that it is me!
I can’t wait to get these out. Range report coming (as long as I can keep Y2K from swiping these!)!
I particularly like the snubbiie for something different! 
