First shoot - the good, the bad and the ugly plus a few questions

[Wagon Wheel]

I finally got some time to take my Taylor's Spencer out to the range today.  The subject of this thread says it all.  The good part is that the Spencer fed rounds flawlessly one after the other.  The bad news is that the sights are way off.  Shooting at the 50 and 100 Yard ranges gave pretty much the same results, high and to the right.  I attribute the high to the crappy rear sight that barely has a notch.  Looks like I will have to find a way to drift the sight to the left a bit to get it centered left/right and file to rear notch some too.  Any suggestions on a tool to move the rear sight and what type of file to use on the notch? 

The ugly part is that while cleaning the rifle I removed the lever/blocks and noticed that the upper block has a small chip in the shell channel next to where the hammer strikes the firing pin percussion plate.  Has anybody seen this on their Spencer?

WW

[geo]

while i don't have a taylor i found i had to replace the front sight completely. the rear sight i took a triangular file and drew it through the notch one stroke at a time until the sight lined up with the front sight. usually you can move a dovetailed sight with a bronze drift (mallet). tap it, shoot it, tap it, etc. i think you will find much of the internal metals to be of indifferent quality. i had the half cock stop on mine wear out completely after a hundred or so rounds. find a good black powder gunsmith and have the internals checked for soft metals. this seems to be a common complaint. i know i will be back to my gunsmith because the hammer is impacting the receiver housing and pounding it hard enough to flatten it. this will eventually cause trouble cycling the rounds. good luck, geo.

[klw]

I really appreciate the post.  Sounds like they have liked the feeding problem but that the quality of the overall gun hasn't improved much.  Since I was almost willing to try another one, this saves me a bunch of money.  Thanks!

[Black River Smith]

Wagon Wheel

Go to page 6 and look for a posting that I make in July/August about this same subject.

Mine did this within a hour of having it home.  I saw 2 other Taylors that also had chips.

Ultimately, mine went back and they just polished it out/down and moved the hammer/lock out a little.  It looks fine and functions alright.  They also stated that they would inform ArmiSport about the design flaw.

Black River Smith