S & S Firearms carries a "Competition" front sight.
http://www.ssfirearms.com/proddetail.asp?prod=58S148A&cat=87
[While you are at it, order a spare Sear Spring, Sear Screw, Mainspring, Stirrup, Hammer Screw, etc., and then put them away-sooner or later you will have a broken part that needs to be replaced. You are a lot better off if you have the replacements handy-like in your shooting box.] While you are at it, get a Musket Tool as those have two "screwdriver" blades that fit your screw slots on the Colt. NEVER use a regular screwdriver on your gun as a regular screwdriver will "bugger" your screw heads.
You have to have either a competent gunsmith with a milling machine who can heat and take the old front sight off (it is soldered on) and then cut the dovetail for the new front sight in exactly the same place.
Here is a trick on installing the Front Sight-
1. Flip the front sight over and put it in a Vise of a Drill Press, with the base of the sight up.
2. Then drill a shallow hole in the base.
3. Heat the base of the sight up to red hot and run some silver solder in the hole in the base.
4. Wait until the front sight fully cools and file off the excess silver solder until the base is flat again.
5. Use a brass hammer to tap the front sight into the dovetail slot.
[If you still want to be able to fit a bayonet on your Colt, then have the machinist/gunsmith mill a slot in the socket portion of the bayonet so it can fit over the higher, new front sight.]
6. Cast up your Minie Balls out of PURE LEAD-nothing else will do.
6.Weigh your Minie Balls on an electronic scale. Separate them into "Lots" of Plus/Minus 1 Grain. Your underweight Minie Balls get remelted into the lead pot because they have hidden air holes.
7. Hint: A small amount of TIN in your casting pot of molten lead, like a short piece of 50/50 Lead/Tin Soft Solder Wire, will make it much easier to cast perfect Minie Balls. The Minie's will also come out "brighter."
8.Run your Minie Balls thru a sizing die, YOUR MINIE BALLS SHOULD BE SIZED 2 THOUSANDS OF AN INCH UNDER YOUR BORE DIAMETER,[Very Important.] Any competent gunsmith can determine your true bore diameter by "slugging" your bore or using a special micrometer that can measure the inside diameter of 3 Groove Barrels.
9. Then load up 5 rounds of your weighed bullets with 40 Grains of FFFg Black Powder, 5 rounds with 32 Grains of FFFg black powder right on up to about 54 Grains of FFFg powder. Be sure to "Lube" your Minie Balls in their grease grooves. I recommend a mixture of 60% real Beeswax and 40% Bore Butter melted together. Avoid paraffin like the plague as paraffin in your lube mixture will produce a nasty "sludge" fouling.
You can use plastic cartridge tubes that can be used over and over after a trip thru the clothes washing machine:
http://www.ssfirearms.com/search.asp
10. Before heading to the range, make sure your Tang Screw is TIGHT. A Loose Tang Screw will kill your accuracy. Another option that will greatly improve the accuracy of your Colt is to have a gunsmith Glass Bed the breech and tang using Brownell's Acraglas Glass Bedding Compound. If done correctly, it will be impossible to tell from looking at your Colt that the breech has been glass bedded.
11. At the 100 Yard Target Frame put up a fairly large white poster board with a 5 or 6 inch black aiming spot in the center.
12. Go back, put your Colt "On the Bench" and fire your five 40 Grain loads, aiming carefully. At this point you don't care where the bullets hit in relation to the aiming spot-YOU ARE ONLY CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR GROUP SIZE IN THE PAPER.
13. Of course after every 5 shots, go down range and measure your group size and then tape it over with white freezer tape.
Shoot all of your different loads.
14. What you will find is that there is one particular powder charge your Colt likes best and rewards you with a very tight group.
15. Go home and load up a bunch of rounds using the powder charge that gave you the tightest group.
16. Go to the range, this time to "Sight In" your Colt. With the S & S Front Sight you will find your bullets hit low, below the aiming point. Well, bring along a file and FILE DOWN your front sight until your bullets come up on the target and are hitting on the same level as the aiming point.
Of course, file down your front sight when the gun is unloaded and Never,Never, Never stand in front of the muzzle! A well known gunsmith by the name of Freund ignored that rule and killed himslef while he was adjusting the front sight of a Sharps rifle!!!
17. To take care of your Windage, you are going to have to tap your front sight over in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION to get your bullets to hit the aiming point! When your Colt is "Sighted In" to your satisfaction, i.e., the bullets hitting the aiming point and producing small groups-then make sure your Colt is unloaded.
18. Then sit it on the bench where it will not fall over with the front sight level and on top. Heat the BASE of the front sight on both sides with the flame of a propane touch. The silver solder in the base of the front sight will melt and when it cools it will "lock" your front sight in place.
When you have your Colt "Sighted In" IF YOU LIVE EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER, then go to:
www.n-ssa.org/
Thru the website, contact the "Recruiting Officer." He can put you in touch with several N-SSA "teams" in your state. Shooting your Colt in rapid fire, N-SSA target matches is a lot of fun, plus it will do wonders for your marksmanship abilities!
Oh yes....STEEL barrels. Most Civil War era guns were made with iron barrels. The government had been experimenting with steel in gun barrels before the Civil War. Matter of fact, Remington made up some experimental barrels out of steel in the 1850's for the Ordnance Department.
It was the invention of the Bessemer process of producing steel in the 1860's that made the mass production of steel practical. Colt did make some of their Special Model 1861 barrels out of steel and so marked the barrels. Whether those barrels were barrel blanks made in England and imported by Colt, I do not know.
Interestingly enough, the British NRA held target matches all though out England in the 1860's and 1870's using Enfield Rifles and later Snider-Enfields. There was a belief in the British NRA that iron barrels were more accurate than steel barrels!!! Regardless, thanks to the Bessmer process, steel barrels in firearms became the norm by the turn of the Century in 1900. The development of smokeless powders required that gun barrels be made of steel.
One of the current favorite steels from which to make barrels is good 0ld 4140 steel. This steel has been around about a Century now and will probably remain a favorite barrel making steel for a long time!