hi, wass jusst curious what problems you found with the pre-2002 piettas. i have a 1994 navy. it's ok but not great shooter.
Hi Len,
Primarily what I did on UnCivil War guns at NSSA Spring and Fall National Championships over half the years between 1974 and 2005 was "trigger jobs" and general gunsmithing that Skirmish Shooters needed or wanted. (Basically I was always there when the Marine Corps did not have me too far away to attend the Nationals and then after I retired from the Corps.) However, BP revolvers require an additional level of inspection for mechanical function that also affects accuracy, beyond what is needed for other UnCivil War firearms.
I was not "factory trained" to work on BP Revolvers, but since in modern times the only factory in the U.S. who at least assembled BP revolvers was Colt, most gunsmiths aren't. I was factory trained at S&W on their modern revolvers, though, and a surprising amount of that training was applicable to BP revolvers.
One extremely important mechanical aspect for accuracy is the diameter of the cylinder holes must be slightly larger than the bore diameter. If the barrel diameter is larger, there is no hope the revolver will shoot accurately as the ball or projectile won't engage the rifling. Now, this problem is not common on repro BP revolvers, but it happens often enough that one learns this is one of the first things that must be checked. You need at least precision calipers to check these diameters and better still precision button head gages or precision pin gauges. When this is the problem, most of the time you can only send the revolver back to the factory, as it is too costly to fix this otherwise.
The second mechanical aspect that is not super common but still found too often in repro BP revolvers is the cylinder holes don't align properly with the barrel when locked in place to fire. When that happens on one or more cylinder holes, the ball/projectile "shaves" lead on one side when it hits the rear of the barrel, before it can enter the bore. S&W trained Armorers have a tool called a Ranging Rod to check for this and I had some made for BP revolver calibers in various sizes to fit a wide range of BP Revolvers. This tool has a precision ground "Head" that precisely fits the barrel diameter and a rod that allows you to check how each cylinder hole aligns with the barrel, by how the precision head fits into each cylinder hole. Most of the NSSA teams had at least one Team Member or knew of someone who could look through the barrel when light was shined on the cylinder face to check for this misalignment. If you can easily see misalignment by "eyeball," then you have a real problem that is going to be expensive to fix, if the cost of the fix can be justified compared to buying a properly made revolver.
Minor misalignment can be fixed by using a special "pull through" tapered reamer in the rear of the barrel. I thought about purchasing the tooling required for doing it, but then T.F. "Muley" Ball began setting up at the Nationals and doing this service for the shooters. So when I found unacceptable misalignment when everything else checked out that was not causing the problem and that could be fixed using that technique, I sent the Shooters to him to have it done. "Muley" was convinced that was a good thing to do on all BP revolvers shot in serious competition, btw, and I pretty much agreed with that, though many accurate BP revolvers never needed this technique done.
Other things that can cause that misalignment is when the notches in the cylinder for the "cylinder bolt" were cut in the wrong place at the factory (very uncommon) or the bolt itself did not properly fit into these notches. Sometimes this could be corrected by working on the cylinder bolt or fitting a larger or oversize cylinder bolt, though not all the time.
Actually when "Muley" Ball began setting up at the Nationals, I often referred most revolver work (except trigger jobs) to him, because I was the only Armorer at the Nationals who did trigger jobs on
Smith Carbines at the Nationals and got swamped with that work as well as trigger jobs on long arms.
What I found most often on the "Pre 2002 Pietta Revolvers" was the parts and frame were often full of sharp edges, which meant they did not correctly do basic deburring of the parts after machining. Also, the parts involved with doing trigger jobs often didn't fit well and sometimes not hardened and annealed well, so it made doing trigger jobs much more difficult and expensive than other revolvers.
Actually, there was so much additional work needed to be done on Pietta Revolvers back then, that was not required on other revolvers, I got tired of taking the time to explain why it cost more to work on them and just told shooters I did not work on them.
Gus
