Cimarron Originals with Mike Harvey - What Makes Cimarron Different?

[llanerosolitario]

The steel used in post 1920s Colts and today's Italian clones is the same more or less.


About cap and balls, Ubertis cost more because they are much better built, good steel and forged parts. They are almost built like a Colt in the old times except for their inferior barrels and finishes.

Pietta, however, since the very beginning, decided to use a trick: to employ easy machining steel, which has an important % of lead n the alloy, to ease production of all his cap and balls...usually from previously cast parts.  That's why they are cheaper...it's a product miles away from an original in quality, but they shoot well and the finish is very good and the price excellent. Very good for having fun at the backyard.

Tuning the trigger pull is ok. The obsesión with ligth hammer pulls is a mistake. That comes at a price. But customers in the USA, and only in the USA, are demanding that, and they have became paranoid about it..

It is really paranoia. That's the word. And that paranoia applies to lever actions too, which is ridiculous....people didn't shoot fast in the old times...running out of ammo too soon in a figth and your days were over.

The revolvers were conceived to engage the enemy from a long distance, that's why powerful cartridges and long barrels in military revolvers....long guns were used from a hidden position,,,ammo was expensive..every round counted and people were trained for accuracy.

Harvey changed, for worse, all this concepts. He imagined a Far West that never existed, and built the guns around that wrong idea.

But the real West was far more interesting than all the Hollywood crap and Harvey's misconceptions and limited view of models employed.

[45 Dragoon]

 

[Coffinmaker]

  OK   

                  DON'T.     FEED.     THE.     TROLL.

[45 Dragoon]

Abzactly !!   

[Baltimore Ed]

I like this Cimarron .45 original. It's not quite a true 1911 as it comes with a too skinny hammer, incorrect safety and a nice wider notched rear sight but it's not a 1911A1 either as it has no scallops in the frame. It's a good looking mix. I didn't like the nickeled hammer, safety or slide lock so I replaced them with blue/black checkered GI parts. I like a wide hammer on a 1911. And of course the cute horsey isn't quite correct.

[greyhawk]

This is a curious argument
Last time I was in the US a resident could walk out of Cabelas with a cap gun and the ammo ready to shoot for under four hundred bucks - the thing would shoot good enough for any backyard plinker straight outta the box . As Coffinmaker and Mike 45 have often said here - if you are a tad bit serious these are KIT GUNS - they need tuning to perform! ... so tune em!!

I bought a ASM replica of the Colt SAA in 44/40 (lost it to the gun buy back after a couple years but thats another story) it cost me $550 aussie $ - at the time a proper colt was well over $2000 if you could find one - my ASM, 25 yards, off a machine rest at the local pistol club grouped well enough to hold the ten ring

Also got a ASM 51 navy cap and ball (still have that one its the "fake - gun they never made" a 45 cal stepped cylinder gun) second hand - it had been built right and tuned before I got it - and again off the rest ten ring group easy . That gun has nice clean shallow groove rifling and a cylinder that matches nicely to the barrel dimensions

My son has an early Walker and an 1860 army, both had deep rifling and misfit (undersize) cylinders - they would shoot ok with filler over the powder - but poorly with a full charge - Groove was .462 - cylinders .452 - I reamed the cylinder of both to .462 we bought a Pedersoli .464 ball mold (the availability of that mold off the shelf tells me this is a common enough problem) both guns now will shoot a good group with full house loads.  If you can hold them they both good enough to shoot high 80's on a bullseye target.   

We dont see Cimmaron guns downunder but we get the bywash - we have importers bring in Uberti, Pedersoli, and Chiappa  repros - the focus here is mostly rifles because handgun ownership is very restricted.

Dunno what mr whatshisname is grumbling about really .........

[llanerosolitario]

It's about contribution.


He, Mr Harvey', thinks that he made something great for the replicas. A great great contribution.

Some of us think, however, that he made something great for his company, but little neat contribution to the replica World, except a huge offer of different variations of the same gun, in the case of the SAA.

Many variations, most invented..

By the way I also owned an ASM Colt SAA...a good revolver that I miss.

At the end, the originals were much better....with exceptions. The ASM revolver could be one exception.

[Long Johns Wolf]

Well, that is an interesting discussion.
I feel, however, with due respect and from a European point of view this is kind of a comparison of apples to peaches.
I do not know Orbea S&Ws.
But I know (shoot) Feinwerkbau (FWB) Remmies and R&Ss, Santa Barbara (SB) Remmies and of course the famous Belgian Centaures (that were not mentioned).
The FWBs, SBs and Centaures are rugged and accurate C&B revolvers out of the box
They can be made into excellent CAS percussion and conversion guns ... at a price.
But this also applies to 2nd and 3rd gen Colts, Ubertis or ASMs.
I know because I owned them and had some action and conversion jobs done to them.
Piettas I don't know.
I love my Uberti OM SAAs in .44 Spec.  fed only with .44 Colt.
Out of the box they are my pair of reliable and accurate CAS pistols since 2011, never led me down.
And they are accurate up to man size targets up to 150 yards.
And yes, Cimarron FA made the replica industry manufacture their revolvers CAS ready and the contours of the Colt SAAs closer to the originals.
My 5 €-Cents.
Long Johns Wolf

[llanerosolitario]

I have a Centarure, by the way. 

My quite critical position does not apply to importers only. In my opinion, some companies have made huge contributions to the replica industry, like, for Instance, Pedersoli....who changed for better the replica World by not inventing anything, but by recreating muzzleloading guns as they really were in their time.

Traditions, a Spanish company ( Ardesa is the owner), however, has been making the same crap for 40 years...nicely made, historically innacurate, mediocre mechanisms, good barrels. Have them really contributed to the replica World? No...because they didn't raise the standard. They just sell affordable BP guns..but we could live witouth their replicas.

By the way, I talked to them about manufacturing a new replica, as they have the means to make it, I was supplying the engeneering . They were not interested.

in short, I could live without 90% of the  huge list of Cimarron SAA models. They added nothing of value to this field.

Orbea Smith Wesson russian revolvers were the clones of their day. Orbea was not a workshop, but the biggest firearms company at that time in Spain. They made a HQ exact copy of the SW Russian. By closely observing one piece,  blued, I could see no diffferences in quality to the original product. Fine machining, fine blueing.

The owner was shooting it, by the way, a 44 russian revolver. The accuracy, thanks to its progressive rifling, beat the Italian copies.

It is the third time already that I shoot basque and Belgian clones, and they were more accurate than my Ubertis and Piettas that I owned at that time.

I prefer Belgian and basques copies to Ubertis or Piettas.  I stopped some years ago buying them. Mediocre shooters. When they make a new replica, I will buy it, however.


The Schofield and SW russian copies by Uberti have been a bit dissapiointing, in my opinion. The Starr by Pietta too. The steel was too soft in the latest, much better steel in the originals..that compensated the faulty design.

[The original bad bob]

I own a few Cimmarons a few ASM's and a few real 1st gen colts.. being a nut case for authenticity my perfect Italian Colt saa replica would be one that has a very heavy beveled cylinder, base pin with the dimple, black powder frame with screw holding in base pin, cone shaped firing pin and authentic roll markings..none of the Italian replicas have all these features .

The ASM Hartford models I own claim to have parts that are interchangeable with original Colts.. this is not true.. I have tried it.. the ASM frames are larger than the colts and Colt back straps and trigger guards don't fit correctly.. Colt base pins won't fit the ASM either.. cimmarons have a cylinder that is about twenty thousands of an inch larger than the colts... I have taken to modifying  a few ASMs and Cimmarons to give me the classic features of the old colts that made them so special.

[Big Bear Lowe]

I've been shooting Cimarrons for many years.  I like 'em.  Mike Harvey and his crew make some fine (and aesthetically pleasing) firearms.  When I go looking for a new gun, the Cimarron name is a big selling point.  Thanks, Mike, for all you've given to this sport (and lifestyle).  I'm your Huckleberry!

ML

[Big Bear Lowe]

...........and yes, I know they are made in Italy (mostly)😜!

[OD#3]

Most of my replica SAA's were Cimarron guns, mostly because they were easily sourced for me at the time on "Grabagun" and weren't noticeably pricier than anything I saw at Taylor's and Co. or some of the other places.  I thought they looked nicer than the average Stoeger imports at the time, but I never got one that was ready to go out of the box.  I had to tweak every one of them to get the timing as precise as any of my USFA's or Colts.  My 1871/72 open top from Cimarron was abominable, and I cursed myself for not sending it back as I labored in the shop to correct its many mechanical faults.  The action was the least of my worries.  It would have been absolutely unusable as received.  Turned out nice in the end, and I learned a lot though.  Next was one of their Thunderer models, which was unevenly timed on several chambers due to someone's presumably having dropped the cylinder on a hard surface which peened up some of the ratchets.  It works well now, but it has the largest cylinder gap of any revolver I own. 

My Cimarron 1866 lever-action was also a disappointment.  I suppose the finish and markings are nicer than other Uberti imports (I have no experience with other importers on the '66), but the action had no evidence of any special attention and was actually worse than an older '73 lever-action I had that was imported by Stoeger.  It was full of machine swarf and polishing compound residue, and the rough internals and heavy action springs looked certain to wear the whole thing out through normal use unless I attended to these. 

If Cimarron charged a real premium on their offerings, I'd really be complaining.  But they do look a bit nicer, and I buy them with the understanding that, as Italian clones, they'll all need tweaking.



   

[Cliff Fendley]

In my opinion, the answer to your question is that you could not afford a modern reproduction made to XIX century specs.  Me neither.  I could afford about 2 or 3 versus the 17 or so that I own.  And the company could not be successful.  Pretty simple, really.

Honestly with todays machining I'd say little things like changes to rifling twists and fit could probably be done for very little additional cost but as you say the companys are trying to be successful and keep up with supply and demand and find a point that is just good enough and that is what we are getting.

I personally am pretty disappointed in the accuracy of new Uberti rifles and have 150 year old guns that will out shoot them and I'm convinced it's nothing more than the depth of rifling and twist rate that makes an old dark bore outshoot a new shiney one. It would be just a matter of some research and caring a little for the makers to just set their tooling up right the first time.

I think the ones of us on this and other boards in these discussions are such a small percentage of their overall sales and most people that buy them shoot them very little and most of those just think that's all the better the originals shot. I've even heard people make comments assuming the old ones were inferior to the new ones assuming modern production just makes it better.