Curious Relics #141: Right On Time – The Remington Model 1875 Part IV

By Sam.S • Published September 16, 2026

Welcome, if you are a newcomer to this fun bi-weekly segment of AllOutdoor.com! Over the last three articles, we covered the history of the Remington Model 1875, the short list of variations it came in, and the dating and specification situation, which turned out to be about as frustrating as anything I have run into doing this series. Now we get to the part I have been looking forward to since the box showed up. The Uberti “Frank” has been standing in for an original throughout this whole thing, same as the Wild Bill stood in for a Richards-Mason and the little 1862 Police stood in for a Colt, and I finally got to take it out and put some lead through it. Let’s dive right in!

Recent Curious Relics Coverage:

Welcome to our recurring series of “Curious Relics.” Here, we want to share all of our experiences, knowledge, misadventures, and passion for older firearms that one might categorize as a Curio & Relic – any firearm that is at least 50 years old according to the ATF. Hopefully along the way you can garner a greater appreciation for older firearms like we do, and simultaneously you can teach us things as well through sharing your own expertise and thoughts in the Comments. Understanding the firearms of old, their importance, and their development which lead to many of the arms we now cherish today is incredibly fascinating and we hope you enjoy what we have to share, too!

Range Time: The Remington Model 1875

First thing worth saying is that this gun does not feel the way it looks. Pictures of an 1875 make it read slender and light and well behaved, and then you pick one up, and it is front-heavy. Not badly and not uncomfortably, but there is more gun out front than your eyes told you to expect. Seven and a half inches of barrel with that web underneath will do that (and my largish hands did not make it feel any smaller).

Here is the thing, though. That forward weight stops being a complaint about two shots into a string. At rest, the gun feels nose-heavy and a little awkward, and the moment you are actually running it, the thing settles right down. I do not know how to explain that except to say the gun behaves differently in motion than it does sitting in your palm, and the version in motion is the one that counts.

Remington Model 1875

Speaking of carrying it around, I bought a crossdraw holster specifically to shoot this thing with, and that turned into the answer to a question I raised back in Part I. Remember the sail, that triangular web under the barrel? I said then that some folks argue it works as a holster guide and others say it is purely decorative, and I could find nothing period that settled it. I still cannot tell you what Remington intended in 1875. But I can tell you that with a real holster on a real belt, the sail absolutely helps the gun find its way home. I had never once thought of it that way before it came up in research, and now I cannot unfeel it.

Now, the base pin. I spent a chunk of Part III being mildly annoyed that Uberti fitted a Colt-style cross latch instead of the Remington arrangement, since the tool-free base pin was the one place the original flat-out beat the Peacemaker. Having actually used it, I have to be fair about this. It works great. Easy, fast, and the cylinder spins free at half cock exactly like it should (which is more than I can say for a couple of modern single actions I have wrestled with). I still think there is something funny about the replica handing back the original’s best trick, but it is not a thing you fight at the range.

Remington Model 1875

I will say I mildly prefer the Colt ejector layout to this one, and I want to flag that honestly, because I have handled and worked on a whole lot more Colt pattern guns than Remington pattern guns. That might be a real preference or it might just be my hands doing what they already know. I am not sure I can tell the difference from the inside.

Remington Model 1875

Onto shooting! The trigger on this thing is remarkable, and I cannot give you a number for it, which is on me. I moved into a new house recently, and my trigger gauge is still sitting at the old one (unpacking is a process, folks). So no weight, and I am not going to invent one. What I can tell you is that it is extremely light with zero creep and zero stack. Nothing to take up, no wall to find; it simply goes. Every person I handed it to at the range threw their first round somewhere they did not intend, purely because nobody expects a gun that looks like this to break like that. Which was a lot of fun to watch…for me, anyway.

Remington Model 1875

I ran about a hundred rounds of Herter’s .45 Colt, 250 grain lead flat nose, all factory and no handloads. Zero malfunctions the entire day. Nothing bound, nothing dragged, nothing needed a knock or a nudge.

As far as holes in paper, I shot at fifteen yards and put six into right around two inches. My flyers were early, while I was still learning that trigger the hard way. I will be honest with you guys and gals, I do not typically shoot reproduction guns well. I love them dearly, and they do not love me back. So a two-inch group out of me with a 7.5-inch single-action says a great deal more about the gun than the shooter.

Remington Model 1875

Recoil is mild and pleasant. The gun does not roll in the hand the way a plow handle grip sometimes wants to, and the hammer spur never bit me on the recock. Two and three-quarter pounds of steel soaking up a standard .45 Colt load is a comfortable arrangement, and it is worth remembering the original was built around black powder pressures that were gentler still.

Remington Model 1875

Final Thoughts: The Remington Model 1875

Four articles in and I keep landing on the same thought. This gun did not deserve what happened to it.

Remington built a solid frame revolver with a top strap, a cylinder that comes out without tools, and enough quality behind it that the judges at the 1876 Exhibition singled it out. And it did not matter even a little. Colt had two years, an Army contract, and a name people already said out loud, and by the time Remington got to the table, the seats were taken. Twenty-five or thirty thousand guns against Colt’s hundreds of thousands. Then the receivership, then Hartley and Graham, then a couple of odd little follow-up models built out of leftover parts, and that was the end of it.

The frustrating part is that the gun is good. I got to spend real time with a faithful reproduction of one, and it did everything right. Reliable, accurate, comfortable, better trigger than it had any business having. Nothing about the way it ran suggested a design that lost. It lost on timing and marketing, which are the two things engineering cannot fix.

Remington Model 1875

That being said, I am glad the design is still out there in a form regular people can shoot. An original in decent shape is a gun you preserve, not a gun you run a hundred rounds of factory ammunition through on a Saturday, and I would not tell anybody to do otherwise. Getting to feel how the thing balances, how the base pin works, how the sail rides into a holster, that is the closest most of us will ever get to understanding why somebody in 1875 might have picked this over a Peacemaker. Turns out there were plenty of good reasons. Just not enough of them, and not soon enough.

So it was two years too late in 1875. A hundred and fifty years on, it showed up right on time for me.

A big thank you to the folks at Uberti for sending out the Frank. Getting hands on a Remington 1875 pattern revolver and actually shooting the thing turned this series from a research project into something I could speak to, and I appreciate it.

Remington Model 1875

This installment is part of the Curious Relics series, an ongoing archive of historical firearms documentation. Browse the full series here.

In closing, I hope our Curious Relics segment informed as well as entertained. This all was written in hopes of continued firearm appreciation and preservation. We did not just realize how guns were supposed to look and function. It was a long and tedious process that has shaped the world we live in. If you have a question or you are sitting on information that could sharpen up an article like this one, you can find me through my Linktree. Until next time!

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