1873 Percussion Revolvers
We have a '73 knock-off percussion, unfired, in fact never capped or charged. It came from Dixie some years back and it is a very nice piece of work but an
agent provocateur extraordinaire. We invite your consideration.
Metal-to-metal and wood-to-metal fit are all very correct. The screw heads are uniformly and properly countersunk. There's no lost motion anywhere in the little gun. The cylinder has really good, consistent lock cuts and leads. The flutes and chamfer are right. The chambers are as good as any you'll find on high dollar guns. The cylinder gap and pin axis play is minimal given that it was set up for BP percussion.
The frame and hammer are color case hardened and good enough to pass muster as a custom order finish. Everything else is high finish blue steel, including the strap and guard which set this apart from the Cabela Uberti 1873 Cattleman gun.
We have handled a comparable Uberti at a Cabela's store and it is, like all Uberti's, a nice replica gun. This Dixie was made by Pietta and so marked, and to quote old Will, "Aye,there's the rub!"
By comparison to the Cabela's '73 Uberti and our house Uberti's - '58 Remington, Walker, Navy Colt, and 1860 Army replicas, this Pietta is an anomaly. (The only production revolver I've ever seen even close to it in fit is my S&W 1955 Target, and it is exceptional by comparison to two others of the same gun I have had)
From what we read at French and German gun forums, the introduction of these guns created something of a stir. They, like the Ruger Old Army, are not replicas of anything that went before. Unlike anything else in the European menu of availability, they share enough lines and pieces with cartridge guns to have drawn the ire of regulators as a threat. My example has a removable striker set perfectly in the hammer face and an offset EDM cut for it that could easily be replaced with a primer striker setup, leaving only a swap of the available .45 Colt cylinder. Oddly, individual European buyers seem to have been able to legally import these guns from U.S. distributors within their own "replica rules" when the guns were made unavailable to their domestic markets.
Dixie has been selling its (presumably all along) Pietta 1873 percussion for at least five years.We have no idea how long Cabela's have been selling their Uberti gun. What we do know is that none of these guns is newly manufactured - when we asked some of the supply shops in Gardone VT about it last year, we were told that none of them had made parts for the guns for at least five years. Any coincidence with Dixie's time frame is nothing more than that.
The gun is no less expensive to make than Colt percussion replicas, so we can only guess that Cabela's is liquidating inventory Beretta no longer wishes to find on its Uberti books and Cabela's has managed to work a favorable price out of its considerable volume with Beretta. (Uberti became a component of Beretta in 2000) Beretta's cartridge replica guns have all been made since by the same team that put Uberti's label on them. My best guess is that all the 1873 percussions assembled and sold as Uberti's are composed of older inventory components unsuitable for assembly as cartridge Beretta's. The English folks, Brocock's, tell me this is the case with their Uberti "Texas" air cartridge SAA replica. If it keeps prices down for Cabela's and Brocock's, so much the better.
This damn Pietta remains an anomaly, though. Our correspondence with the few other folks we've been able to connect with who have them say exactly what we've told you about the one here - a lot better made than just about anything, and (please don't get offended) a lot better made than is described by the name, Pietta. So, did they do a "backroom article", knocking off a few by hand just for the purpose? Or what? Dixie folks aren't fools - their price point for their Pietta '73 percussion is $100 higher than Cabela's for the Uberti. If fit and finish were the determinant, Dixie's price is certainly justified - kind of like what Hege gets for their Remington hot dogs.
I haven't shot this one - I don't want it, so I want it to stay near new as it is. But I remain curious about it. If you look at our website, you'll see we're getting rid of the last of the '58 Remington stuff we had lying around - about enough to make two guns - and all of it is Pietta, none of it is anything short of okay, and better than most of what came out under the marketing banners of the here-today-gone-tomorrow labels, most of whom saw their tomorrow some time back. But even the best finished screw or lever in that parts batch is up to this Pietta.
Some of you undoubtedly have experience with Pietta's cartridge gun which sells for less than the Beretta or the ones still marked Uberti. Is the difference there as well? My experience with the comparison has always given the nod to Uberti and Beretta. And saying this is eating crow for me - Beretta paid my ticket for a few years and I like them - but except for their hand built doubles which give up little to anyone's 'best' guns, Beretta doesn't sell this sort of quality and Uberti never even tried to.
My photography certainly does none of this justice, but here it all is - excess inventory - If you want any of this stuff, email us at classicballistx.com as it will be going to classified everywhere pretty quick -
http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/...ta BP Perc Peacemaker/PiettaPeacemaker008.jpg
http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/...ta BP Perc Peacemaker/PiettaPeacemaker009.jpg
http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/...Pietta Rem 58 New Army/Rem-piettaparts003.jpg
http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/... 58 New Army/Remington-Piettaparts001-1-1.jpg
http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/...etta parts/NAA Companion/NAACompanion2002.jpg
http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/...etta parts/NAA Companion/NAACompanion2004.jpg
Regards,
Wisent
Classicballistx
