Finally! A warranty repair report for my Charter Professional

Finally got my Charter Arms Professional in .32H&R back, and tested it this morning.

First, here's the timeline for all the little events:
05/02/20 Ordered it from Davidson's
05/07 Took delivery at local shop and paid remaining balance
05/08 Took revolver out for a test drive, discovered that it was shooting 6" low and 2" right at 10 yards. Wrote an email to Charter asking if I could send it in for warranty repair. Got a response very quickly saying a box would be sent. (This was a Friday.)
05/11 Received box for pre-paid return. (Monday.)
05/12 Sent package to Charter.
05/27 Didn't hear anything from them for a couple of weeks, so I sent an email to make sure they'd gotten it. Got a response the next day saying it had arrived on the 14th.
08/17 Got an email saying that yes, it was indeed shooting low, and that they'd replaced the barrel and it was still shooting low, and that they thought maybe they'd gotten an inferior batch of barrels.
08/19 Another email, saying they were still working on it and were getting a new vise to help with the repair. (?!)
09/03 Email says new vise has been mounted and that further work will now commence.
09/21 Email saying that repairs were complete and gun would be shipped.
09/22 Package received!
09/23 Test firing done this morning. Here's the result:

Well, it ain't six inches anymore, so that's good, right? This is 11 rounds of commercial Federal ammo fired single action, seated, from a rest, at 10 yards. Group size is 3 3/4", and that little cluster there is 2 1/2" low and 2" to the right. That green circle is 2" diameter, if that helps your perspective.

The gun arrived with a test target, which looks like this:

That recommended sight picture seems odd to me. Yeah, I guess if I could learn to not have the front sight level with the rear, I wouldn't have had to have it fixed in the first place, right?

And here's the technician's report:


I notice there's no mention of the shooting-to-the-right issue, but so it goes.

I don't fault the company for taking so long with this, as I know parts were hard to get what with the pandemic situation, but I am a little disappointed with the outcome. When I got the email saying that the new barrel didn't help any, I mentioned that I'd be okay with a regular blade sight on there as I could then file it to suit, but didn't get a response to that suggestion. That makes me suspect the barrels come to them with this silly sight already there.

I guess I could pad the right side of the notch on the rear sight some way to take care of the to-the-right problem, as it's wide enough. And the rear of the optical fiber is slightly conical, so making the top level with the sight would get it a teensy bit closer. Beyond that, I'm out of ideas-- I don't think I want to invest in it enough to stake a new front sight (or adjustable rear) on it. If it grouped tighter, I might have considered one of those fixes.

On the plus side, my CA Pink Lady (also .32H&R) shoots much better than this! (Though it did need a bit of filing on the front sight).

WestKentucky said:

I’m surprised at how poorly the “professional” is being recieved, and how dismal the performance seems to be. I have an old Undercover that I like well enough to consider other Charter products, but it seems the ones I am interested in are the ones with issues. I have worked my action well enough now that I want to make my gun more useful by rebarreling it, and since I can’t find a longer Charter barrel I’m considering other options. If the Professional guns were performing better I would just go get one and trade in my Undercover, but not with reports like yours being plentiful.

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I like my 5-shot .32 enough that I have the 6-shot one on order, so maybe that's an option to consider.

lincen said:

I milled my barrel down to fix the problem when Charter Arms wouldn't.

AZAndy, I would really like to see a couple good pictures of the barrel from the frame joint and the front sight.

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Here you are:

I don't remember how high the barrel rib looked in the mount to the frame before. The sight mount area does look flatter to me than before.
By the way, the pitted look in front of the ejector rod, and inside the cutout for the rod, really do look like that; it's not dust. Where the top rib meets the barrel also.

Haywood said:

You said you bought the gun from Davidson’s. Doesn’t Davidson’s have their own warranty where they will replace the gun?

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They do, but what other 7-shot .32 H&R would they replace it with?

mnrivrat said:

Wow, you are either a lousy shot or Charter did a lousy job of building that gun. I have a Taurus M731 Total Titanium 2" 6 shot .32 H&R that makes that Charter look like a smooth bore with a bent barrel for accuracy. Fit and finish on my Taurus is also much better. I will keep what I have, would not trade it for a pair of those Charters made like that.

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I think you'll find the post after I discovered a fix to be less horrendous.

mnrivrat said:

As a side note I have for some time considered revolvers chambered in .32 caliber to be somewhat inherently accurate.

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That's what my experience has been too, despite all the stuff I've read about .32 Long being a great cartridge for accuracy. I have three S&W .32 Long revolvers and can't get better than about 2.5" groups at ten yards with them, maybe 2.25" on a lucky day, regardless of load and projectile. .38 Special, .357, and .45ACP (revolver or 1911) do better than that for me.

As the target in the follow-up post shows, the Charter is a lot less terrible now, with 6 out of 7 within 2", and the one that isn't inside that group was a failure on my part, not the gun's. It's not good enough for Bullseye competition, but all I wanted from it was to be a self-defense carry option, and it's good enough for that. That said, I surely don't recommend anybody buy one of these until they start putting blade sights on them so they can be filed to suit. (Or an adjustable rear, which would be really cool, but I doubt they'll go to that expense.) It really is a shame, because the Professional struck me as a great idea for Charter, and I like it when anybody does something that helps keep the underappreciated H&R cartridge alive.