A good part of my gun collection was made by Uberti. However, a pet peeve of mine is that the scews they use to build their guns are apparently made from cheese. For the price of these guns it's reasonable to expect that the screws will be hardened, not cross threaded, and not over-torqued, as they often are.
Today I detail stripped my 1992-vintage Uberti 1851 Navy. It was working fine but filthy inside and in need of a thorough cleaning.
One of the things I found was that the screw that holds the bolt/trigger spring in place was cross threaded at the factory. I lucked out and had an 8-32 tap so I was able to chase the threads in the frame, but I don't have an 8-32 die. (I ordered one from Amazon after discovering this.) However, the screw itself is trashed and even if I had the die I don't know if I'd be able to restore it.
So, I went to VTI Gun Parts and sent them emails to check stock on their set of properly hardened replacement screws, and also a spare hand spring while I was at it. (For whatever reason their website doesn't report live inventory.)
One of the other weaknesses of the Italian replicas is the spring for the bolt and trigger. It's flat steel and prone to breaking. I haven't broken one myself but prevention is good, so I went over to Wolff Gun Springs and ordered wire replacements for my Uberti and Pietta single actions. I'm told that Piettas use the springs for EMF Hartford guns, so I ordered 4 of those along with three Uberti replacements.
<grumble, grumble>
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment