I think I've got my Uberti 76 where I want it.

[Roscoe Coles]

Last week I got to fixing the trigger pull on my Uberti 76.  As I said in an earlier post, it had a very strong trigger pull, more than 10 pounds.  I started out by polishing the Hammer spring and lightening and polishing the trigger spring.  But, since the hammer actually moved back when I pulled the trigger, it was clear that the notch on the hammer would need some attention a well.  I used a Sharpie to blacken both sear surfaces the pulled then trigger a few times to see where it was touching.  This showed that the hammer notch was only wearing on the very tip, so much so that the tip was being forced outward.  The trigger showed a fairly good/uniform engagement.

In theory, the best angle for the sear on the hammer will be in alignment with the center of the hammer pivot hole.  In practice, its a good idea to make it just a little more closed than that to insure that the gun does not jar off.  I checked this with a straight edge which confirmed that the hammer sear angle was much too closed.  To fix it I used a "safe edge" square file (where one edge has no teeth) and the sharpie.  The sharpie shows exactly where you are taking the metal off and by careful filing I was able to get the angle of the sear where I wanted it.  I remarked the sear and reassembled it.  After pulling the trigger a few times it showed that I have good sear engagement and the trigger pull was down to about 5 pounds.  Whats more, it no longer had the gritty creepy feeling it had from the factory.  I will point out that the sear, and in fact the hammer, are not very hard; I could cut it quite well with a file.  This is not all that uncommon, many good guns have relatively soft sears and run for a long time.

I took it out to the range yesterday to try out my latest fireforming loads and it worked great.  I am very pleased.

As for the fireforming loads, I have been trying all kinds of smokeless loads to get it done but after repeated firings, I still had some ones that looked like coke bottles (fat at the shoulder with a thin waste).  I took the worst 25, filled them with 3F under a 320 Gould bullet and that did the trick.  I won't use anything but BP for fireforming from now on. 

My only problem is that I think I need a harder alloy for the bullets as I am getting a bit of leading.  This was a bigger problem with the smokeless loads but there is a touch with BP as well.  This might also be a lube problem.  Now that I have shells and a decent trigger pull, its time to get to the range and see what "Betsy" can do (all my long guns are named "Betsy" and every handgun "Roscoe").

I'm waiting for a cartridge belt as well.  I ordered a leather looped "Fair Weather Christian" belt in 50 cal from Carrico's Leatherworks and it should be here in a couple of months.  It will work for both my Spencer and the 45-75 as they are within a few thousandths of being the same size.  Won't I be "king of the plains" when it arrives!