Breech Face Peening

[Fox Creek Kid]

I was cleaing a buddy's Open Top the other day (I had borrowed it) when I noticed that it now has the problem mine had a few years ago: breech face peening to the pont where he will have to wait after a shot for the primer to cool & contract in order to cock the revolver. I had a fellow machine in recoil plates on two Uberti Open Tops for me but here's the kicker: the breech face is too thin to support a regular Colt recoil plate (approx. 0.090 thick) so he fashioned some for me, but he made them out of steel that is not really hard as he said he was afraid they would be too brittle & break. I also had him fill in (weld) up the face on a RM conversion that had peened as well to the point that it was cratered severely. He said the RM breech faces are too thin for plates and to send it back to him every couple of years for a "re-weld".    Only REAL Colt SAA's & USPFA have recoil plates to the best of my knowledge & no Ubertis have them. Funny thing I never read much of this topic anywhere.    It's no wonder as it takes a skilled machinst to do this.

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

I have had this problem with a couple of Uberti made Cimarron Cattlemen that I have owned. I have been told this can be caused by dry firing, but I never dry fire my guns. I bought these guns used, and both exhibited the problem. On the first one, the problem was so severe that the first time I loaded live rounds into the gun, it totally locked up. A burr had been raised where the firing pin peeks through the recoil shield. The burr was scraping across case heads and primers and totally locked up the gun, like a really severe case of high primers. I could not get the hammer to half cock to remove the cylinder. After a lot of cussing and shoving keeping it pointed in a safe direction all the time, I finally got the cyliinder out and was able to unload everything. My first solution was just a light filie job to bring the burr back down to the level of the recoil shield. But just routine shooting without any dry firing at all started to raise the burr again. So I took a very long drill, totally masked the flutes with electrical tape, and carefully inserted the drill down the barrel until the tip was in the hole in the recoil shield. I very carefully twisted the drill by hand just a little bit to put a very slight chamfer on the hole. This cured the problem. I did not make the chamfer big enough to allow the primer to flow into the hole, no more than about .010 of chamfer. Yes, technically I created a cratered firing pin hole. But it worked. Any new metal that was dragged through the hole by the firing pin built up in the chamfer, not on the surface of the recoil shield.

Ultimately, I was very unhappy with that gun for a number of other reasons, and sold it. I took a chance on another Cimarron a few years later, and sure enough, it exhibited the same problem, although not to the extent of the first one. I performed the same fix. I just keep this one around as backup, but it seems to have cured the problem.

I agree, a hardened insert in the recoil shield is just one of the many reasons that Colts ans USFA guns are superior to Italian guns.

P.S. The rounds that got locked into that first Cattleman were some factory PMC 45 Colt rounds. Two or three of them got some very severe scars across the case heads (and the primers) from that burr. Those scarred up PMS pieces of brass are still in my inventory and I usually come across them once or twice a year when reloading. I always know it's the same pieces of brass and I always remember the fun of trying to unload that gun that day whe I come across them.