Uberti Walker

[Tabaquero]

Howdy Pards,

I recently got a new Uberti Walker for my birthday. I was curios when Uberti added a hidden loading lever latch to the barrel?

Tabaquero

[Roscoe Coles]

Are you talking about the little spring latch that holds the barrel up (called the loading lever spring)?  Back near the pivot bolt?  If you are, its always been there.  Without it the lever would flop down (well, in fact it usually does it anyway under recoil).  I have a new Walker at work and it does not have anything new on it.

[Tabaquero]

Howdy Roscoe,

The way the lever drops on stiff recoil, I assumed the Walker did not have a loading lever latch.
Thanks for the reply.

Regards,

Tabaquero

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[Roscoe Coles]

Yeah, its the weak spot of the design.  In the old days folks would tie things around the lever to keep them up.  Later, in the "waloons" (Walker/Dragoon transitional models) they installed the Dragoon style lever latch and stuck with it, with variations, until they went to cartridges. 

Be happy with your gun, they are nice and Uberti does a very good job with them.

[Grogan]

I've had a Walker for a number of years now...

Here's a few tricks  about owning/shooting one.

The first one is to load and shoot it with 2F powder vs. 3F.  It makes it a lot more pleasant to shoot by cutting down on the recoil considerably.  I shoot the same loads in my Walker as I shoot in my Dragoon, 45g.

The other trick is to take a stone and VERY Carefully stone a straighter edge on upper rounded surface of the spring's engaging surface.  This will increase the latching effect, but do this very carefully.  If you overdo it, your lever will end up getting stuck in the "up" position. 

[Flint]

The loading lever latch on the Walker is the same as the latch used on the Patersons that were made with a loading lever.  It was probably OK for a 28 to 36 caliber Paterson, but we know it can't hold up to the big Walker 44 recoil.

Colt must have been in too much of a hurry to produce the guns to have tested the latch for reliability. The (vertical) Dragoon latch even fails occasionally, and the horizontal latch of the 51/61 Navy and 60 Army is a better design..