Uberti New Model Army .44 UPDATE

[Norseman]

UPDATE: Well Dixie Gun Works came through and sent me another Uberti New Model Army .44! This one appears to be just fine workmanship is excellent, good trigger, no cylinder end play or rattle, fit and finish superb. Dixie Gun Works Customer Service is outstanding.
I do have one question though, conscerning the cylinder bolt stop. On this particular gun it appears to start to enter the recess in the cylinder a hair (less that 1/64 maybe)early. You can see a slight mark on the cylinder just before the recess. I am not really overly conscerned with this and would like to know if fine tuning is necessary or just leave it be? At half cock the bolt stop does not come near the cylinder and is basically out of sight within the frame so it does not score the cylinder. It's just at the final action of going to full cock as the bolt stop comes up to enter the cylinder recess. Whats up, don't sweat it? I don't want to be too picky :grin:

 

[montanadan]

Norseman-Sounds like your revolver is timed just about right.Give it a good cleaning,and go make some smoke.Be safe,and good shooting.Respectfully montanadan

 

[paulvallandigham]

check to see if the bolt has a burr on the top edge that is making that mark. If so, remove it. You want the bolt to enter the notch as soon as possible on a revolver, so this revolver seems pretty close to idea as far as the timing is concerned. You want the bolt to enter fully each notch, so slowly cock and rotate the cylinder and check each chamber. You also want each chamber to align with the bore of the barrel when the gun is at Full Cock. The way to check that is to use a polished metal rod, the diameter of the bore, or just a thousandth of an inch smaller, and run it down the barrel to check the barrel chamber alignment. If the rod doesn't enter the chamber in each case without a hitch, you need to either send the gun back, or get it to a good gunsmith to make repairs.

Finally, you want to inspect the throat of the barrel at the back end. Figure out what the bevel angle is on the throat, if it is throated at all. Btownell's sells a tapered reamer tool that can be used to throat and polish the barrel at an 11 degree angle. This angle has proven in the past to aid in accuracy, and reduce group sizes remarkably. The shallow angle allows the ball fired from each chamber to enter the barrel gently, so that the ball fills the grooves, and seals the gases behind it for more consistent velocity. Some barrels actually have a shoulder on the lands of the rifling, that literally tears chunks of lead out of the ball as it enters the barrel, and spits these bits of lead out the side of the barrel at the Barrel/cylinder gap, endangering the shooter and people standing next to him. Removing such shoulders is another thing which is done with the tapered throating reamers.

Tom "Mulie " Ball, a famous pistol shooter at Friendship, operated a business where he accurized revolvers for people. He has passed, but I am sure others have stepped in to do the same kind of work. You would be amazed at how far out of alignment some of the replica barrels are in relation to the chambers of the cylinders, and how crude the forcing cones at the rear of the barrels are. A little bit of TLC is all that is needed to turn these wrecks into shooters.