dixie gunworks stuff
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Tommygunn
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Dixie Gun Works sells Pietta, Uberti and a couple other well known and good makes of BP firearms.
I have 3 Palmetto revolvers.
One is a brass frame Colt 1851 Navy, what would be a Confederate copy, most similar IIRC to a Augusta Machine Works. When it arrived it was missing the screw in the front of the trigger guard, which was replaced by me with one I had on hand that fit. It works fine otherwise, but the bluing lacks the luster of better-made guns. It appears roughly equivelant to old "Armi San Marco" revolvers; a brand that is no longer seen.
The second is a repro of the Eli Whitney .36 Navy. Now, it works quite fine and everything, and the bluing luster seems good. The wood grips are what can only be described as "Pimply" and a bit uneven, but functional. Now, here it is short what might be found on Uberti.
The third is a repro of the Colt Roots Revolver. The cylinder indexes but is a little loose sideways, and the barrel is a tiny bit off-kilter. The sight is a tiny bit off to a side ... but this curiously doesn't effect accuracy... mainly because by the time there's anough distance to target it just isn't very accurate to begin with. It's .31 cal. The thing is a mechanical menace to get apart as replacing the cylinder is funky, the device that the bolt locks into is not part of the cylinder and can be replaced in a way that allows the cylinder to index exactly 1/2 way between cylinder. It's 50/50 to get it right! But this is a design flaw in the revolver itself, IMHO.
Original Roots had a engraved cylinder, lacking on the Repro.
Now, I have heard enough about Palmettos to be quite suspicious. If I wanted a Colt 1860, a Navy 1851, Walker, I would absolutly say go with Uberti, or Pietta. But they don't make an Eli Whitney or Roots and Palmetto does. I think the Eli Whitney is pretty good inspite of the less than stellar wood. The Roots .... OK. But I wouldn't pay that much again, really, and if Uberti made one I would grab it definantly.
The brass 1851? Well, that was a gift ... but hey, it works, and if I need a gun I don't mind gets roughed a bit for some reason I will take that first.
Palmetto is a gamble .... and the cheap ones may be worth it, the more expensive ones ... it's your money and risk, I can't advise you you must decide your risks based on your assets.
I have 3 Palmetto revolvers.
One is a brass frame Colt 1851 Navy, what would be a Confederate copy, most similar IIRC to a Augusta Machine Works. When it arrived it was missing the screw in the front of the trigger guard, which was replaced by me with one I had on hand that fit. It works fine otherwise, but the bluing lacks the luster of better-made guns. It appears roughly equivelant to old "Armi San Marco" revolvers; a brand that is no longer seen.
The second is a repro of the Eli Whitney .36 Navy. Now, it works quite fine and everything, and the bluing luster seems good. The wood grips are what can only be described as "Pimply" and a bit uneven, but functional. Now, here it is short what might be found on Uberti.
The third is a repro of the Colt Roots Revolver. The cylinder indexes but is a little loose sideways, and the barrel is a tiny bit off-kilter. The sight is a tiny bit off to a side ... but this curiously doesn't effect accuracy... mainly because by the time there's anough distance to target it just isn't very accurate to begin with. It's .31 cal. The thing is a mechanical menace to get apart as replacing the cylinder is funky, the device that the bolt locks into is not part of the cylinder and can be replaced in a way that allows the cylinder to index exactly 1/2 way between cylinder. It's 50/50 to get it right! But this is a design flaw in the revolver itself, IMHO.
Original Roots had a engraved cylinder, lacking on the Repro.
Now, I have heard enough about Palmettos to be quite suspicious. If I wanted a Colt 1860, a Navy 1851, Walker, I would absolutly say go with Uberti, or Pietta. But they don't make an Eli Whitney or Roots and Palmetto does. I think the Eli Whitney is pretty good inspite of the less than stellar wood. The Roots .... OK. But I wouldn't pay that much again, really, and if Uberti made one I would grab it definantly.
The brass 1851? Well, that was a gift ... but hey, it works, and if I need a gun I don't mind gets roughed a bit for some reason I will take that first.
Palmetto is a gamble .... and the cheap ones may be worth it, the more expensive ones ... it's your money and risk, I can't advise you you must decide your risks based on your assets.
Steve499
Member
I ordered a Palmetto from Dixie a year or two back, the Hartford .31 pocket Colt model, and had to send it back. There was so much wrong with it that there just isn't any way it could have passed the most basic of even visual inspections, much less mechanical ones.
I've bought quite a bit of merchandise from Dixie over the years and will continue to do so, but I'm fairly sure their standards have slipped considerably since Turner Kirkland passed away.
I left a truthful, unfavorable review about the Palmetto. It has been deleted. I also left a truthful, very favorable review on the patina finished Pietta Remington (RH0489). That one is still up and since I bought the Pietta before I bought the Palmetto, I've got to believe the deleted review isn't a matter of age of the review, rather of the content.
I will never buy another Palmetto, myself, unless it's really, really cheap and I can personally dismantle and inspect it prior to the sale. Just to illustrate a little, one of the reasons I returned the one I had was it had a void in the bore. It looked like an air bubble in cast metal, as if the bore had been drilled with half of an air bubble removed by the drill and half remaining in the bore. One of the lands stopped at the void and continued on the other side. There was plenty of void left over to make a depression in the grooves on either side of the land, too. I haven't a clue how the barrels are manufactured or how such a thing could happen, but the one I got sure shouldn't have made it out of the barrel section, much less getting assembled and sold. There were other issues also, any one of which would have disqualified it for me.
If the Palmettos sold for half the price of the other makers, I might be tempted to try again, but they don't, so I'm not.
Steve
I've bought quite a bit of merchandise from Dixie over the years and will continue to do so, but I'm fairly sure their standards have slipped considerably since Turner Kirkland passed away.
I left a truthful, unfavorable review about the Palmetto. It has been deleted. I also left a truthful, very favorable review on the patina finished Pietta Remington (RH0489). That one is still up and since I bought the Pietta before I bought the Palmetto, I've got to believe the deleted review isn't a matter of age of the review, rather of the content.
I will never buy another Palmetto, myself, unless it's really, really cheap and I can personally dismantle and inspect it prior to the sale. Just to illustrate a little, one of the reasons I returned the one I had was it had a void in the bore. It looked like an air bubble in cast metal, as if the bore had been drilled with half of an air bubble removed by the drill and half remaining in the bore. One of the lands stopped at the void and continued on the other side. There was plenty of void left over to make a depression in the grooves on either side of the land, too. I haven't a clue how the barrels are manufactured or how such a thing could happen, but the one I got sure shouldn't have made it out of the barrel section, much less getting assembled and sold. There were other issues also, any one of which would have disqualified it for me.
If the Palmettos sold for half the price of the other makers, I might be tempted to try again, but they don't, so I'm not.
Steve
dwave
Member
I mainly buy Pietta myself and I have not had any problems at all. However my next BP revolver will be a Uberti 1860 Army.
Roswell 1847
member
Are Plametto guns investment cast?
I saw a Remington New Army at a shop years ago and the cylinder had a void with cut into two chamber mouths. There was a light colored metalic looking substance in the void that looked sort of like solder or cerosafe though it could have been some sort of clinker.
I saw a Remington New Army at a shop years ago and the cylinder had a void with cut into two chamber mouths. There was a light colored metalic looking substance in the void that looked sort of like solder or cerosafe though it could have been some sort of clinker.
wow, is that for real? I don't browse Dixie's site that much, but I did notice they don't have many reviews of their guns. Maybe because they remove all the unfavorable reviews...?Steve499 said:
Midway, on the other hand, has tons of reviews for their stuff, including many "bad" ones. That's the main reason I buy from Midway mostly, they have many reviews to browse thru...
sundance44s
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A friend of mine bought a used Palmetto Remmie ..or should I say his wife bought it for him as a gift ... He got lucky , although I wouldn`t have bought it myself Because ...fit and finish was Crap and the action was as clunky as they get ..it did lock up tight and cylinder line up was good ..and it is a good shooting gun .
I buy a lot of stuff from Dixie, just spent $120 before I came here. I read a lot of reviews on their site. They have a bunch of one star reviews that `sound very bad for what they are selling. But some of them are good reviews also. I suspect the reason your review was removed had to do with something other then content. I'm not privy to the inner workings of their web site but I can think of a number of reasons why data would be lost that has nothing to do with what that data was about. I'm sure a site as big as theirs is spread over many servers and many hard drives. Each one is a place for data loss.
dwave
Member
I am going to chime in from a networkers point of view here. Even with the data spread across several drives, it is redundant information. RAID keeps information secure in the event of a HD failure. However there are other things that can prevent data from being kept or saved. Someone deleting it is a very good example, or a server error that caused the data not to be saved. Not saying those are it. I do not believe that having multiple HD's or Servers will cause the deletion without either interaction or a software error as both are meant to be redundant in case of failures. Alright, network side off.
Pancho
Member
Steve499, I've been to their store once when Turner was still active and just this last July. There was a definite difference. It seems the enthusiasm has gone.If you notice in their catalog they're adding new items but there hasn't been an addition to their "helpful hints" in years.
AntiqueCollector
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I've noticed reviews disappearing there, one day the review is there maybe a week or two later when I'm still thinking about getting something it's mysteriously gone...and it's only been negative reviews too. But that said, I've always had good experiences with DGW, including a palmetto derringer kit...
Not all of them but definately some of them. A guy posted an unfavorable review of the Palmetton Lincoln Derringer and it lasted a week. On the other hand, my extremely unfavorable review of that gun in kit form was still there the last time I looked.
One guy even put five stars in front of his review and explained that the gun actually sucked in all respects but, being aware that somebody was culling unfavorable reviews, he five starred it as camoflage.
Steve499
Member
Well, guys, as I said, I still am a Dixie customer. If you get something unacceptable from them, they seem to have a no questions asked return policy, so getting bad merchandise is easily remedied.
As far as deleted reviews are concerned, I know less than nothing about managing a website. There may well be explanations for missing reviews other than willful removal, all I know is that my bad one is gone and my good one isn't.
When Turner was running things, his management style was apparent even in the catalog's entries. I recall an offering for some miquilet locks where it was stated the locks weren't the best quality but if "you want them, we've got them", or words substantially to that effect. I think Turner would either run away from Palmetto or tell you up front they were better for display than as shooters.
The older I get, the less sure I become about my own infallibility since I'm so frequently encountering evidence of past mistakes. I'm beginning to suspect tendencies toward overt stupidity at times, even. So......
Steve
As far as deleted reviews are concerned, I know less than nothing about managing a website. There may well be explanations for missing reviews other than willful removal, all I know is that my bad one is gone and my good one isn't.
When Turner was running things, his management style was apparent even in the catalog's entries. I recall an offering for some miquilet locks where it was stated the locks weren't the best quality but if "you want them, we've got them", or words substantially to that effect. I think Turner would either run away from Palmetto or tell you up front they were better for display than as shooters.
The older I get, the less sure I become about my own infallibility since I'm so frequently encountering evidence of past mistakes. I'm beginning to suspect tendencies toward overt stupidity at times, even. So......
Steve
Pancho
Member
I hope Dixie doesn't go the same way as Walmart after Sam died. I read a book about Sam Walton some time ago that said that Sam would build his stores near little towns that were failing to bring prosperity back to the area. After he died Walmart would want to build near prosperous little towns and the local merchants could just go to hell.
This is true if ALL of the data is on a raid array. (Redundancy doesn't eliminate lose it only decreases it's occurrence.) But if one is looking to save money what data would you array and what data would you not? Especially if you want to lose the data. I know HDs are getting cheaper but they still cost money and they still do fail. The last time I managed a system it was an IVR system. That's interactive voice responce and it predates the internet. That's when a ten megabyte hard drive was a lot of money.
Now it could be true that there are some removal of reviews. But if that is so why leave any bad ones? I think there are better answers than the "Oh they are evil" answers that so often come up on the net. On the net, and with many people in general, the worst case is what is presented first. Maybe because it is the most feared or there could be some other reason but I will pick the most feared reason. Just look at the comparisons with Wall Mart on this thread. It is the "most feared" that is driving the posts.
So far nobody has anything bad to say about Dixie Gun Works. So I think this is just fear mongering. I feel I should add something here for those that don't understand what I am saying. I don't really care if some reviews are removed or not. What I care about is the quality of service and product that Dixie sells and, most importantly, the reputation of Dixie Gun Works. To have people misrepresenting Dixie Gun Works intentions to the worst case scenario is unfair to Dixie and damages their reputation. I think a civilized person should always offer the lest damaging reason for an event until evidence to the contray presented. How would you like it if someone you didn't even know started saying things about you that damaged your reputation? And did it on an internet forum of your friends and customers.
You know we are supposed to be Americans. We are supposed to stand up for the rights of others. But I fear America is going very far down hill. Nobody is standing up for other people these days. Well except me maybe. So many people want to cloth themselves with the flag but so few want to do what freedom demands.
I want to see bad reviews as well as good reviews. I decide who sounds like they know what they are talking about, and who doesn't. Reasons for deleted reviews could be something like, advertising for a competitor company (for example: "this gun ain't that great, but XYZ Company has it way cheaper, so you should buy it there instead"), inappropriate comments or language, etc.
If they just purposely delete negative posts about their products, then that would be a problem with me.
If they just purposely delete negative posts about their products, then that would be a problem with me.
dwave
Member
This is going off topic but,
I can't see the company loosing bad data and not the good data easily. I guess the point is that a good setup will have data across several HD's for redundancy. And even if they don't, they should have backups or whatnot. My personal guess is someone deleted it. I went to college for this stuff and it just doesn't seem Kosher that bad reviews disappear but good ones seem to stay put. You are right, RAID doesn't prevent data loss, but it really cuts down on it and combined with backups data loss should not be a problem.
Did the company put the bad reviews on bad disks and good on RAIDS?
I can't see the company loosing bad data and not the good data easily. I guess the point is that a good setup will have data across several HD's for redundancy. And even if they don't, they should have backups or whatnot. My personal guess is someone deleted it. I went to college for this stuff and it just doesn't seem Kosher that bad reviews disappear but good ones seem to stay put. You are right, RAID doesn't prevent data loss, but it really cuts down on it and combined with backups data loss should not be a problem.
You know we actually have the man power here to do some research into what their pollicy is. So far the only report is a negative review has been removed. But we don't know if any good reviews have been removed.
Before trashing Dixie gun works we should do some testing. I just looked at Dixie's web site and they have 275 percussion handguns and longguns. If ten people wanted to help, or even five for that matter, we can each be assigned a set of percussion firearms to watch the reviews. The first time copy the main page of reviews and copy every review. Save this information in something like work or in a spread sheet. Then every week copy the main page of reviews. Then when a review is dropped we can check to see why and see if it is only bad reviews are what is causing them to be dropped.
If we did this that would be due diligence in forming an opinion about Dixie's review practice. And I think it could be fun and we could learn a great deal about the inner workings of Dixie. Maybe they are dumping only bad reviews but I don't see the logic in that with all the traffic on the internet these days. They know that there are forums like this that talk about their business. Dumping a bad review would be very bad for business. I think they are much smarter then that. Especially when I see many bad reviews on their site.
I just did a random viewing of reviews for percussion long guns. Most have no reviews at all. What struck me was the time period that some of these reviews cover. Some are many years ago and some are current. The most reviews per item that I saw was eight. But five of those where from 2005. So I think there probably is a policy of review control but I don't see what it is. The only way, I think the only way, is to do the test I suggested.
So do you want to be a detective??
And by the way. Before the internet I was an independent consultant for IVR systems. I did some very interesting stuff. As far as I know I wrote the first chat room. It was not based on a console but was done over the phone through linking of lines. When the internet took off I stopped getting calls for my services. So in my mid forties I went to school to get a degree in Comp Sci and Mathematics. I was even invited to join an international honors society. Not bad for an old fart.
Before trashing Dixie gun works we should do some testing. I just looked at Dixie's web site and they have 275 percussion handguns and longguns. If ten people wanted to help, or even five for that matter, we can each be assigned a set of percussion firearms to watch the reviews. The first time copy the main page of reviews and copy every review. Save this information in something like work or in a spread sheet. Then every week copy the main page of reviews. Then when a review is dropped we can check to see why and see if it is only bad reviews are what is causing them to be dropped.
If we did this that would be due diligence in forming an opinion about Dixie's review practice. And I think it could be fun and we could learn a great deal about the inner workings of Dixie. Maybe they are dumping only bad reviews but I don't see the logic in that with all the traffic on the internet these days. They know that there are forums like this that talk about their business. Dumping a bad review would be very bad for business. I think they are much smarter then that. Especially when I see many bad reviews on their site.
I just did a random viewing of reviews for percussion long guns. Most have no reviews at all. What struck me was the time period that some of these reviews cover. Some are many years ago and some are current. The most reviews per item that I saw was eight. But five of those where from 2005. So I think there probably is a policy of review control but I don't see what it is. The only way, I think the only way, is to do the test I suggested.
So do you want to be a detective??
And by the way. Before the internet I was an independent consultant for IVR systems. I did some very interesting stuff. As far as I know I wrote the first chat room. It was not based on a console but was done over the phone through linking of lines. When the internet took off I stopped getting calls for my services. So in my mid forties I went to school to get a degree in Comp Sci and Mathematics. I was even invited to join an international honors society. Not bad for an old fart.
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