Well after sleeping on it, I am starting to like the gun more! I polished the cylinder pin with 400 grit sanding paper and 0000 steel wool, it really seemed to help and the hammer is now easier to cock. I need to find a way to polish out the cylinder pin hole that the cylinder turns on.
Also, I'm going to embark on refinishing the grips on this gun. The weird red coating is just awful and has to go, there is decent looking wood under it, the backside of the grip panels are unfinished. Here are the grips you can see what I mean:
Not so pretty, eh?
I'm going for an authentic refinish... I'm not sure what would be period correct for the grips, so I'll have to do some research. If all else fails, I'll strip the grips, stain with Minwax walnut, and throw down a few layers of BLO. I also sent out an e-mail to gunsmith John G. Zimmerman (
http://harpersferrycivilwarguns.com/services) to see if he can defard the pistol, basically removing the unsightly Italian import marks and replacing them with period correct factory markings. I also want to do some basic polishing and tuning of the action, it's decent but is somewhat rough.
Oh, and when it warms up, I'll have to actually SHOOT the cotton pickin' thang!