QUALITY ?

[willy]

 Was wondering about  quality through the years.
I know Pietta has improved their guns. But when did this improvement occur?
Also  has Uberti quality improved any in the last 20-30 years?
I have Uberti revolvers now but they have all been made in the last 20 years.
I also have a couple revolvers over 30 years old that have been refinished with no makers marks on them, that are "supposed" to be Ubertis and the quality is no where near as good as the Ubertis I have that was made in the last 20 years.

[Coffinmaker]

As I read your "question(s)" you answered yourself.
There is however, no specific "date"  when the improvements occurred.  Just steady progress.

Coffinmaker

[willy]

As I read your "question(s)" you answered yourself.
There is however, no specific "date"  when the improvements occurred.  Just steady progress.

Coffinmaker

Even with Uberti?

[Virginia Gentleman]

It seems like in the last 15 or so years the quality really started improving and so did the materials used like forged steel rather than cast parts.  The standard case colors have improved little, but that is because it is a molten hot salt process rather than a charcoal/bone case color process that was used on original Colts and other 19th century firearms.

[rifle]

My first cap&ballers were an exercise in futility untill I finally began to learn about things like springs and chamber to bore alignment and soft wedges and all that.

The first two cap&ballers I bought cost $50 and $60 dollars. They were fit to be wall hangers and that's all. They were not Ubertis.
The  next two were Ubertis because I learned they existed and lasted a good long time. The springs broke all the time. Then wedges deformed all the time. They shot so bad I felt like I was shooting some kind of spray gun instead of a pistol.
I tested the first two Ubertis I bought shooting at a refridgerator box. Huge box. Shot at it from about 20 paces. Missed everytime untill I aimed so far to the left I was aiming lots of feet over to Kentucky windage enough to hit the huge box.
I thought that when people said,"you can't hit the broad side of a barn", with those guns it was true.

That was back in the early eighties. I learned to be a cap&baller revolver gunsmith to get the guns to shoot straight and stay together.

Believe me when I say that I know first hand that the guns by the major manufacturers have gone thru major improvements over the last 30 years . They are much better guns now-a-days. Much better.

Somewhere in the early nineties the Pietta corp. got new CNC machines and that was the "great improvement" industrial revolution for them. Pietta continues to improve. That's why the prices keep going up. Same with Uberti. They continue to improve.

It would be nice if the Pietta 1851 Colts had the proper grip frame shape like the newer "London" models do. Like the Uberti's always had. It would be a real plus if Pietta put the stamped lettering under the barrel out of sight as Uberti does.

It would be nice if the Uberti barrels had less of the rifling grooves too deep on part of the barrels and too shallow on the other part. I see that with Piettas too. Deep grooves on one side of the barrel and shallow on the other. The cartridge guns don't seem to have that problem as much as the cap&ballers do but I still see it. If yer gun has that problem it won't shoot as well as it should until.....it has the crown removed and the muzzle flat faced off concentric with the bore and a ball/bullet is used that fills the grooves (chambers may need reamed). That lets the gases release  at the muzzle from the grooves all simultaneously instead of one side goes first and makes the guns shoot like the crowns are bad. 

People getting into cap&baller revolvers now-a-days have the world by the arse.

Anywhoooo...the disadvantage to all the guns being improved is.....there isn't a real need to become proficient in ,"Kitchen Table Gunsmithing" to get the guns to shoot and stay together now. All there is to do anymore is to learn to load right and shoot well.  

[Virginia Gentleman]

With modern steels it is great that you can shoot modern smokeless ammunition out of the cartridge conversions and other cartridge reproductions.  To me that seems like a quantum leap that most of the originals sans the Colt SAA could never make.