Originally Posted by
tacfoley
ASM firearms have a mixed reputation over the years, some were okay and some were dire - here's hoping your Walker is one of the good ones. The date code stamp will tell us when yours was made, BTW if you have a look and tell us - Roman numbers or a two letters...You'll also need an elastic band to hold the loading lever up - it drops on recoil, jamming up the cylinder - a well-known foible. Another well-known foible is the problem of loading it with enough powder to give some degree of compression - in one ASM 3rd Model Dragoon I saw it was impossible to put less than a good stiff 40gr load as the loading lever just did not go far enough into the chamber to give a good compression. An air-gap in the chamber WILL blow your gun up - be warned not to use reduced loads without a lot of filler of some kind - cous-cous or smeolina is fine for that.
Ball for the Walker are usually .451" diameter, and loads are anything up to 55-60gr of FFg - seriously. I shoot fifty in mine, BTW. You'll need six nipples, as they are sold in sets of six. Henry Crank usually has them in stock. Only the Ruger Old Army uses anything except a metric thread - just tell them waht you have and they'll do you fine.
I have no experience of owning the Scottish pistol - but, assuming that it HAS been proofed for use and is not a wall-hanger - some are - you'll have a real problem finding ball to shoot in it without a custom mould. You MIGHT get away with using a .50 calibre ball and slightly thicker patching over 40gr of FFg...trial and error are your friends here.
If and when you get it shooting, don't expect Olympic-style accuracy - IIRC a Scottish pistol of my acquaintance groups like a garden hose set on 'shower'.
Good luck.
tac