What is the worst revolver you have ever owned?

Status
Not open for further replies.
I do not own but had in my possession briefly a zinc framed Clerke First in .32 S&W. Someone had fired it with the higher pressure .32 ACP because I could read the cartridge headstamp impressed into the frame around the firing pin hole. The thin semi-rim of the .32 ACP gave the cartridge case a run-and-jump from the cylinder into the frame. Excessive headspace.
 
I bought a Dan Wesson in .357 magnum when they were first introduced into the market. The first time on the range the front sight blew off. Returned for repair. The next time on the range the trigger would not return to firing position. Returned the pistol to where I purchased it and bought a Ruger Blackhawk!
 
My worst was a Bulldog ordered new in 2005 from Charco. It had a binding cylinder right out of the box which I managed to free up with some oil.

At the range that day with 25 rounds or .44 Spl ammo I found it shooting 3 ft to the left and probably 2 feet high with the target at 7 yards. When I went to eject the fired shells jacket material fell out from somewhere. No difference on the rest of the box of bullets. I took it home, cleaned it and returned it to the LGS. The owner let me sell it on consignment but wouldn't return it as he warned me when I bought it that they were junk and he wouldn't stand behind the product. That gun was so bad I reasoned that the only way to use it for self defense was to throw it at your attacker.

I replaced it with a Taurus 445 that turned out to be 3 times the gun that the Bulldog was. To this day I still cringe when I hear of someone buying a Bulldog.
 
I had a Russian Nagant. It functioned okay, for a Nagant, but the DA trigger pull was ridiculously heavy. It had the worst trigger I have ever felt on any firearm.

Yep, same by me. Mine also had a cylinder hand that was worn down short and did not push the cylinder far enough forward. This meant the cartridge case mouth did not receive proper support, and cracked open on every shot. This meant you needed something to use like small hammer to knock the cases out with the ejector rod. Fun!
 
Last edited:
Yep, same by me. Mine also had a cylinder hand that was worn down short and did not push the cylinder far enough forward. This meant the cartridge case mouth did not receive proper support, and cracked open on every shot. This meant you needed a small hammer to knock the cases out with the ejector rod. Fun!


well, you could have manually indexed it, until you got it fixed, that would have made a better gas seal, and probably helped accuracy.....
 
well, you could have manually indexed it, until you got it fixed, that would have made a better gas seal, and probably helped accuracy.....

You mean pushing the cylinder forward hard enough to properly seat it against the barrel (in a normal revolver, that would be the forcing cone, but I am not sure Nagants HAVE forcing cones) with one hand, while pulling the trigger with the other? I am not sure I understand you, or that you understand me. I guess the problem is more difficult to describe than I thought.
 
Last edited:
You mean pushing the cylinder forward hard enough to properly seat it against the barrel (in a normal revolver, that would be the forcing cone, but I am not sure Nagants HAVE forcing cones) with one hand, while pulling the trigger with the other? I am not sure I understand you, or that you understand me. I guess the problem is more difficult to describe than I though.

I meant finish the rotation (if required) and then push the cylinder forward as I PRESUME the cylinder would stay forward.
No way would I hold it in place while pulling the trigger - that's a recipe for disaster!
 
I also once had 2 RGs. They both worked..... but they were the worst revolvers I have ever owned. My worst currently is an H&R 922....which isn't truly horrible but the double action trigger IS horrible and the sights are lousy. There is also a very old IverJohson Sealed 8 around here that suffers from the same faults(but unlike the H&R, the IJ shoots to the tiny sights).
 
I do not own but had in my possession briefly a zinc framed Clerke First in .32 S&W. Someone had fired it with the higher pressure .32 ACP because I could read the cartridge headstamp impressed into the frame around the firing pin hole. The thin semi-rim of the .32 ACP gave the cartridge case a run-and-jump from the cylinder into the frame. Excessive headspace.

I never heard of one of those until now. That thing looks like it should only be a starter pistol. :eek:
 
The clerke 1st (there was never a clerke 2nd for obvious reasons) I mentioned at the beginning of this thread was the first one I'd ever saw. I googled it back then and found nothing but bad news. One gun magazine called it "quite possibly the worst firearm ever made". I also read that it sold new for 25 dollars, not in the 50s but in the early 80s. All the guys talking about bad triggers had it good, these guns wouldn't be safe, even when new.
No matter how bad taurus/ rossi/ heritage/ jennings/lorcin/ bersa etc may be, they were/ stil are, in business for a while. Long enough to make multiple models. The clerke didn't have bad triggers/ bad quality control/ bad customer service..... they were just an awful design made by a terrible company with substandard materials. It's not that "you got a lemon" there truly were no good ones apparently.
 
My worst revolver was a blues 2” Model 10 S&W that I bought off GB. The seller (a regular GB seller from the Houston area) listed it as a .38 Spl.

When I got It I didn’t realize this was one of the .38 S&W Victory models that had been polished and reblued.... and unbenounced to me also had the cylinder punched out to accommodate the longer .38 Spl cartridge. The chambers weren’t all “bubbaed” so the rechambering job wasn’t obvious.... until I fired the first six rounds and each shot split the cases to fit the .38S&W chamber diameter and wedged them in the cylinder!

I bought a new cylinder/ejector for about 25 bucks off flea bay, had it fitted and sold the gun pronto. At least the new owner won’t get split cases.

The worst built one was a stainless Rossi snub .38 that had a crookedly cut cylinder face. After about 10 shots it would bind up solid and fail to rotate.

Stay safe!
 
My worst revolver was a blues 2” Model 10 S&W that I bought off GB. The seller (a regular GB seller from the Houston area) listed it as a .38 Spl.

When I got It I didn’t realize this was one of the .38 S&W Victory models that had been polished and reblued.... and unbenounced to me also had the cylinder punched out to accommodate the longer .38 Spl cartridge. The chambers weren’t all “bubbaed” so the rechambering job wasn’t obvious.... until I fired the first six rounds and each shot split the cases to fit the .38S&W chamber diameter and wedged them in the cylinder!

I bought a new cylinder/ejector for about 25 bucks off flea bay, had it fitted and sold the gun pronto. At least the new owner won’t get split cases.

The worst built one was a stainless Rossi snub .38 that had a crookedly cut cylinder face. After about 10 shots it would bind up solid and fail to rotate.

Stay safe!

I would have just stocked up on. 38s&w and kept it, but I can see why you wouldn't.

I also had a Rossi (post interarms) snub .38 in stainless with the same issue. It went away and now I have a blued interarms version of the same gun which just runs and runs without problem.
 
Worst one I ever had was a beautiful, brand new in the box, Uberti, 22 LR, 5" barrel. Oh, how I wanted to love that gun. It was beautiful.

Problem was it would lock up. Lock up as in had to pull the cylinder to free up whatever the problem was. It wouldn't work through the cylinder one full rotation. Never did fire it.

I sent it back twice. It came back twice and locked up the first time I drew the hammer back, both times. After that the dealer said to heck with it. They didn't have another to just exchange, so they gave me my money back and I moved on to something else.
 
Rossi 46103 3" .357 magnum revolver I bought from Academy. Kept breaking firing pins, kept having to deal with Rossi/Taurus to get it repaired. I think I had it in my possession for a total of 4 actual days in the few months that I owned it, the rest of the time it was in Miami. I really wanted to like it and for it to work because it would have been perfect for carry. I sold it at a loss with a full disclosure of the issues that I was having with it.
 
A RG , Colt / S&W clone .. It was a 6 shot 38spl ... I'd say its frame size was "D" size ? .. I bought it for $50.00 as new in the box in 1984 .. I kept it for close to a decade ... Brass would stick in the cylinders, light hammer strikes , lucky out of six rounds 2 or 3 would fire ..I owed just over $100.00 on a layaway .. I asked the LGS if he would take this revolver for the balance .. He said .. Sure ! I gave him the full history of the revolver.. He was positive he could easily "fix it " ! ;-)
 
Let me preface this with the factual statement that I absolutely love the Charter Arms Bulldog .44.
Had owned many of them, through the years, and only ONE iteration of that revolver EVER gave me any trouble.
I had a Charco or Charter 2000, forget which, Bulldog Pug .44. You could revolve the cylinder by hand when the hammer was down.
Clockwise, counterclockwise, it didn't care. You could spin that sucker either way.
I bet it was the Charter " Charco "
A buddy of mine had one ,It was a beautiful , polished stainless steel .. exposed ejector rod .. , the sight was almost as long as the barrel , DAO , but had a hump like on the hammer .. He had all kinds of timing issues with that revolver... Sad thing .. I talked him into buying it ...
 
I wasn't exactly slamming on the Nagant revolver...

It did go bang every time. The design seemed sturdy. It's just that the trigger was SO stiff, and I also didn't like that the cylinder would rotate freely whenever the hammer wasn't cocked. It was a cool historical piece, but not fun or accurate to shoot. There have doubtless been many revolvers that were much worse.
 
RG10 in .22 Short.
Fortunately, the universe stepped in & it was stolen out of my car before I wasted too much time on it.
Denis
 
Mine is a Mitchell Super Single Action in 44 Magnum, which I believe was made by Uberti. I bought this in the mid-1980s. It can go out of time, but just every once in a while. There I was in the guns store wanting a .44. They had a nice Super Blackhawk and this Mitchel. The Mitchel has really nice bluing and case hardening, so I went for the purty one. I sure wish I had gotten that SB instead. Later I picked up M29, so it worked out in the end.
 
Tie between a Colt Lawman MKIII, and a Ruger Redhawk .44 mag bought new in 2007.

The Colt Lawman was .357 magnum with a 4" barrel. This issue was that it had a severe bullet pull problem .357 magnum rounds would unseat and by the 4th round tie up the cylinder! I was able to fire these same rounds in my S&W 686 4" and 6", highway patrolman, and my 627 PC with no sign of bullet pull at all! I tried different loads in it and even some factory winchester .38 spl. and it did it with everything I tried shooting in it. I could never figure out what the problem was with the Lawman so I sold it with a warning, and the folks who bought it didn't believe me!

The Redhawk had a 20lb trigger pull in DA, and a 10lb SA trigger pull! I tried polishing and changing springs and it would have failures to fire with any springs lighter than the factory springs. I even sent it back to Ruger and they returned it with a note saying it was in Spec! I sold it on consignment and took a $150 loss. Two years ago I bought a used Redhawk made in 1985 and it has a great trigger pull and has been flawless.
 
This could have been a great little revolver. I love the size, the grip, the trigger, shoots to point of aim, but

Q0RkEUC.jpg

the front of the crane was improperly fitted to the cylinder. I guess you could call the offending part a flange, it is multiple purposed, it asks as a stop, and it functions as a blast shield. The assembler had to file the flange to clear the barrel cone with the crane closed. That created a gap which allows combustion residue to accumulate between the crane arbor and cylinder.

S1IAcLh.jpg

When the thing was new the cylinder would bind within 25 rounds. I had to rotate the cylinder by hand as residue accumulated. I sent it off to Interarms Product service, talked to the Gunsmith, he did something to the forcing cone, as he claimed, but the only improvement is that it took less than 50 rounds to bind the cylinder. To make the thing functional, the crane has to be removed, the crane shaft cleaned, and the cylinder hole cleaned as best as possible.

I noticed on disassembly of the pistol that the internal parts were hand fitted. And they looked like parts that had been filed from soap chunks. About as bad as a late model Colt Detective. You could tell Colt's production line equipment had rotted away by looking at the lock works. Early Colts show nice, precise internal parts. It must have taken the assembler only a few swipes of the file to get the parts fitted. Late, as in 70's and 80's Colts, production line equipment had to be decrepit or non existent, the parts handed to the assemblers must have been closer to an unfinished blocks of metal, as these late model internal parts look like they were filed from soap chunks. The poor assembler had to file metal chunks in three dimensions to make a usable part.

Rossi and Taurus later combined and a serious production equipment upgrade happened. I talked to Taurus around that time, Taurus spend about a half billion dollars buying new CNC equipment and the internals of the new Taurus pistols I own look as precise as a S&W. But the old stuff, filed from soap chunks.

This little Rossi is fine for the first couple of cylinder fulls, and so is adequate for anything short of an extended fire fight. It will go bang. But I am disappointed in the thing.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top