FYI: Differences in Armi-Sport Spencers

[Drydock]

Due to fortuitous circumstances I now own 2 A-S Spencers.  One is a first year production .45 S&W, the other a brand new 56/50.  Having stripped both down, there are interesting differences.

Principly this: The block and tumbler in the early gun are case hardened, with the latter being blued.  The Italiens have never gotten a handle on Case coloring as a metalurgical treatment, with results being hit or miss at best.  Usualy too thin, too easily worn to the "Soft" metal beneath.  Mine actualy appears to be one of the better ones, but that would be a matter of luck.

A-S seems to have figured this out, and gone to conventional modern heat treatment on these high stress parts.  As such I would reccomend those looking at these guns to look for that blued block.  As the tumblers in my 2 are interchangeable, upgrading to the latter blued tumbler would be a good idea, once wear is noted on your case colored one.

The external Case Color on the later gun is much darker. Almost looking oil quenched, though the color patterns still indicate water quenching. Perhaps A-S is leaving them in the case longer, for a deeper treatment.  Have to see another recent gun to judge.

In addition, though these 2 guns are over 3 years apart in production, the serial numbers are just less than 1000 different.  Evidently this is a rather low production item. 

[Fox Creek Kid]

The early case colored sears are crap as I went through three in less months. The later blued sears are properly hardened and will hold. My early production block has some breech face peening but if it gets too bad I'll have a machinst buddy machine in a hardened recoil plate. All in all nothing serious. Most Italian guns are like this IMHO. Then again, have you seen the crap Colt is turning out lately? 

[Black River Smith]

The only problem I have seen is peening of the hammer nose with 94 rounds fired.  The firing transfer plate is harder than the hammer nose.  Probably will have the nose ground an re-case colored and hardened.  I have seen other carbines that did not have this problem.

So it must be situation to situation.