wedge problems on pietta colt army

[M. De Land]

You will need stock lengths of annealed 0-1 or A-2 and a heat treat furnace to do it right your self.
I get mine from MSC industrial supply, Granger's and Brownell's has a good supply of spring steel, fatique proof steel and O-1 tool steel.
The first two probably are the cheaper suppliers.
You could whittle out the parts and fit them your self and take it to a Buddy or perhaps machine shop to get it heat treated.
0-1 is the easier of the two to heat treat.
If you don't have a heat treating source than you could build it of Brownell's fatique proof steel which is pretty hard but still workable .
I've never made a wedge of this alloy but have made firing pins of it and I love that steel. I'm pretty sure it would work fine for a wedge as it is very tough and moderately hard. It's about like a scope mount screw for modern guns in working character, can be worked with a file and hack saw but still tough and pretty hard.

 

[don hepler]

You can also add a piece of brass shim along the edge of the wedge, to see if this cures the problem.

I used the shim, until I got around to making a new wedge.

Piece of old feeler gage, makes good shim stock.

 

[M. De Land]

CNC guided equipment is only as accurate as it's maintains schedule and calibration precision.The tooling still needs sharpening, minimum tool tolerances followed, slack taken out of the feeds and re-calibration of the system as a unit, just as when manually driven.

 

[Mean Gene]

Hi Dennis, got what your saying, I only added the measurement with the cylinder in place just because. I have done it the way you mentioned and came up with a 2 mm difference.
I plan to look at which method will work best for me to make up that difference.
Thanks for pointing it out.

 

[Mean Gene]

Hi M. D. I'm planning to look at filling that gap between the arbor and the arbor-channel, I may try using another pietta wedge after that and see if it works correctly.
Thanks for all your abvice, if this doesnt work then i"ll look an making a hardened wedge too.

 

[don hepler]

I agree, I was a machinist for 33 years and CNC group leader for 15 years. CMM measuring and other measuring equipment, can tell if things are going bad. In the end, it's the company guide lines and quality control, to produce quality products. But regardless of who is building these pistols, it always becomes a discussion on how to get these black powder pistols functioning correctly. Somewhere, it would seem that this would be corrected.