I read somewhere that Taylor goes through them and smoothed any burrs etc.
One other thing I'd like to ask. We know that most of the clones are made by Pietta and Uberti. I have looked at several of the gun companies that import these pistols and mark them as their own and sell them like Cimarron, Navy Arms, Taylors and so forth. They are all pretty much selling Uberti revolvers that might have had some tweaks here and there to smooth them up or make them look better.
How do you decide between just buying an Uberti from UBERTI or an Uberti from Cimarron or Taylors? Mechanically they are the same....aren't they? If we are talking about the BASIC versions, the ones that haven't had any other work done to them, how are they different from the standard Uberti revolvers?
Howdy Again Folks
Please listen up because I am only going to try to explain this once. There are two things to bear in mind.
The first one is,
You get what you pay for.
The second one is,
Down inside where it really matters, they are all the same. There are a couple of customized, hand fitted models that are not the same, I will get to that in a moment.
For years, the scuttlebutt in Cowboy Action Shooting circles was that Cimarron was marketing a better product, and they were all hand fitted. It turns out this was simply not true. These stories were based on Cimarron's clever marketing copy, and gullible shooters were repeating it as gospel. I can tell you for a fact that I used to have a Cimarron Cattleman with the pretty charcoal blue finish. I bought it used back when I did not know a whole lot about cowboy guns and I bought it mostly because it was so pretty. That gun had the absolute worst trigger of any revolver I have ever owned. Once cocked it had creep and a very noticeable roughness. Extremely rough. To make matters worse, I discovered that the barrel was not screwed in correctly and the front sight was leaning over to one side. So much for Cimarron's reputation of selling better guns than any of the other importers. If I knew then what I know now about revolvers, I may have been able to correct these defects. Or I would not have bought it in the first place. As it happened, I sold the gun and used the money as a down payment on a Ruger.
Folks, nobody is opening up the boxes and fine tuning these guns. That takes time and time costs money. Uberti cannot keep up with the demand for these guns, and they are cranking them out as fast as possible trying to meet the demand. Anybody who has been inside an Uberti revolver knows that as beautiful as they are on the outside, inside they are full of rough machined surfaces and burrs. This is because Uberti is running the CNC machines as fast as possible, with feed rates that leave behind burrs and rough surfaces, to turn out as many parts per hour as possible. That is why the springs are so heavy on these guns, to overcome the friction generated by rough parts sliding over rough surfaces. And that is why there is a flourishing trade in the CAS world of gunsmiths doing custom action jobs to these guns. Because as pretty as they are on the outside, down inside where it really matters they are all rough as a cob and will benefit from careful smoothing of rough parts AND lighter springs. Uberti is turning these guns out as fast as they can, and that does not include custom fitting of the parts. Custom fitting takes time and costs money.
I had a conversation with the gunsmith at Taylors a few years ago. Yes, Taylors did employ a gunsmith back then, I do not know if they still employ him. He told me he would open each box, cock the gun a few times to make sure it worked properly, then put it back in the box and put it on the shelf. That's it. Now he did mention that with a few of the problem guns he would take them apart and find the problem and fix it. But doing so takes time and costs Taylors money. If they did this with every gun, you would be paying more than you are.
Within the last few years Taylors and Cimarron realized they could supply a better gun to discerning competitors. Cimarron partnered with Evil Roy, who is a very well known CAS champion. Roy came up with some specifications for the Evil Roy revolver that Cimarron sells which included a wider, square rear sight, wider front sight, and slimmer grips. The Evil Roy revolvers are actually gone over by a couple of gunsmiths here in the US to smooth them up and lighten the springs. Remember what I said about you get what you pay for? Yup, the Evil Roys cost more because they have more labor invested in them. Same with the custom Smoke Wagons from Taylors. Extra labor means they cost more.
Folks, I do not mean to slam Cimarron or any of the other importers. They are doing the best they can to meet the high demand for these guns.
But remember what I said,
Down inside where it really matters, they are all the same, and you get what you pay for.
