GeoffC
Member
This is my 12 year old Pietta 1860, I "antiqued" the finish last night and took that picture this morning.
I sanded and put two coats of boiled linseed oil on the grips a week ago, and I plan on giving them another couple dozen coats over the next month or two.
I purchased this gun back in the 1990's from Cabela's, actually I purchased it and another one just like it. After a couple of trips out to shoot them, I'd say about 75 rounds each, they both got extremely rough. I couldnt tell you what happened to the other gun, but this one ended up sitting at the bottom of a box for the past decade or there about. I pulled it out the other day and took it apart to see what happened to it, because I've recently reaquired "the itch" to start shooting black powder again. Upon opening her up, I found that the internals(hammer, trigger, bolt, pawl, and springs) looked like they'd been through hell and back...then maybe dragged to hell and back a few more times just for good measure. I've read a good bit of postings about how these things are made of softer steel than most modern firearms are, and from what I've seen inspecting the gun, I must say this is the case, however I think that the culprit behind the destruction of most of these Italian revolvers is a combination of fired caps which become stuck in the area between cyl and frame, powder crud, and bad timing. I'd be willing to bet that even a S&W 29 would age quicker(internally speaking) if it had to fight fragments of caps and crud every time the hammer was pulled back, nowhere near as quickly as these softer metal guns do, but all the same, somewhat quicker.
I've ordered a parts kit fro Cabela's, due to not being able to find out about anything being available which one might consider an upgrade from factory parts for these guns, except for the trigger spring(i think thats what it's called, its the split one thats screwed in near the front on the inside of the frame), which i aquired a music wire spring from Brownell's as a replacement for. I really wish I could find out that somewhere out there someone makes some really solid high quaility replacement guts for these guns, and if anyone knows of such a bird, please, by all means enlighten me!
I have been told that a company by the name Treso makes a better nipple that I've heard(i dont know how it would, but hey, I'll try anything once) doesnt leave your cyl fighting fragged nipples quite so bad when it's time to rotate to the next chamber and fire.
Mind you that I'm in no way experienced working on these types of revolvers, however I'm pretty experienced with double actions, 1911's, all sorts of other autos, mauser rifles, AR's and so on.... More or less, what I'm saying is I'm no mechanically handicapped.
Being that this is my first blackpowder revolver to work on, any advice or suggestions of any kind would be greatly appriciated!!! Thanks, Geoff
PS, By the way, this is my first post here, I've browsed around the forum and can't tell you how many times this forum has helped me out, finally I decided to join last week as I figured having the ability to post might come in handy with this project and future ones....
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