Welcome
Mr. Hawkins,
Welcome to the forum, and thanks for posting your experience.
Uberti's quality control is generally quite high but there are some pretty glaring escapes.
Your complaint about the action is not uncommon, but I have to ask how many rounds you've put through the gun first. In my experience it takes a couple hundred rounds to smooth up an action on almost any gun before it gets to a point I like. This is my experience on new Rugers, S&W's, Berettas, Glocks, Ubertis, Piettas, almost anything except the very top of the line (and very expensive) weapons. On the Ruger forum, for instance, they will tell you to dry fire the weapon a couple of hundred times to smooth up the trigger. There are no reasonably priced guns that come out of the box with smooth triggers or action.
That being said, there is a lot you can do to hasten that process - especially the Colt reproductions. I put about a hundred rounds through each new gun, then strip it down and look at the wear points in the action. These are usually the same each time, so it's pretty easy to do. I polish the wear points with a very fine stone either by hand or with a Dremel tool, oil and reassmble and then shoot another hundred or so. I've found that the biggest improvement in the Colt repros can be had by polishing the channel that the hand and hand spring operate in; I also carefully polish the bearing points on those parts. It also helps to polish the sear and hammer bearing surfaces, although this must be done with caution as removing too much (almost any!) metal here can be very damaging and result in a very light trigger.
I know that many people think this sort of "extra effort" is not acceptable in a new gun, but it's what the original guns required, and unless you are willing to pay much more for your toys it's something that needs doing. Cimarron's Uberti Walkers are $100 more than what other sellers charge, but people do buy them because they have a reputation for being a higher quality standard. That tells me what the cost of that quality perception is; you can either spend the money or do it yourself.
I'm not trying to pump up Uberti's QA. I've had some stinkers from them. It could be better, but frankly, they don't screw up very often, and I think that for the price they're pretty much above the industry standard by a hair or two.
and have a question. The pins on the barrel-frame link are so tight that I have to rap on the muzzle with a soft mallet to get the barrel and frame together. Is this normal? My 1851 and 1860 slide right together with no problem at all.
