Pietta Parts Mix N Match

[Good Cheer]

Harkening back to the gun shop scene in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly...

Anyone have experiences to relate with swapping out parts on Pietta revolvers?
Their QC has been coming way up over the last few years and that should go a long way towards improving the parts interchangeability.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

A related snippet which might be of help to some, is that in the www.gunpartscorp.com (http://www.gunpartscorp.com) website some Pietta and Navy Arms parts have the same code numbers, distinguishable only by a letter prefix.

Here is Charles Dickens writing about Colonel Colt's London factory in his magazine, "Household Words" for the 27th May 1854. It would be a shame if we have become any
less modern than that:

"No one part belongs,as a matter of course, to any other part of one pistol; but each piece may betaken at random from a heap, and fixed to and with the other pieces until acomplete weapon is formed; that weapon being individualised by a number stampedupon many of its component parts. The advantage of these contrivances isobvious. In every case of revolvers are placed, when sold, a number of suchparts of a pistol as are most liable to accident; and, with these, any soldieror sailor may, in a few minutes, repair his own weapon. Seventy-odd out of ahundred of the injured revolvers picked up on the battle-field during theMexican war were repaired with bits of other pistols on the spot."

[johnson1942]

i wish i could tell you about piettas but i can how ever mix all the time with my ubertis.

[Multigunner]

Ordered some parts for a Pietta Navy sized .44 from Taylors recently and the hand they sent was way over sized. I suspect it may have been meant for a Dragoon rather than the Navy sized frame. The tip is an odd looking angled sharp pointed bit extending perhaps 3/16 past where it should end.
The Navy .44 has basically the same frame as an 1860 Army Colt with octagonal barrel and hinged lever like a Navy Colt.

I can grind and stone this hand to fit, but its not even close to a drop in fit.

I had to order some more parts yesterday, a bolt , trigger and screws. I hope these aren't going to be over sized as well.

[jimb16]

I have a much older one as well as a newer one and I found the same situation. The hand didn't fit the older pistol. TOO THICK! I ground and stoned it down and so far it is working, but I'm expecting the spring to break at any time. The least little flaw in the stoned side of the spring will leave a weak point where the spring can break and then you are back to square one. I'd like to find a source for those thinner hands myself.

[Multigunner]

Luckily the hand isn't too thick, just way too long. It moves up and down in its slot easily.
When mounted on the hammer it turns the cylinder way past where it should, near midway between chambers. Its visibly way too long.
I'll have to grind the tip down quite a bit. The old hand seemed to work okay aside from its broken spring, I'll use it to go by in reshaping this one.

The trigger and bolt screws were badly bent, and the leg of the bolt was ground too thin and both bent and chipped. I suspect someone had tried fanning the gun. The C&B revolvers just don't hold up to fanning, in fact most cartridge SA revolvers can be damaged by fanning.
The trigger might have still been useable but the tip is rounded too much for me to trust it. Might as well go whole hog and start with new innards.
I ordered a new mainspring when I ordered the hand, the old one was missing along with its screw, luckily I had a spare main spring screw in my parts bin. That screw came from a Navy model with the female threads in the frame stripped, I tapped that one for a slightly larger screw, the screw itself was undamaged and fits this frame okay.

Externally the gun looks great, not a scratch on it, as new appearance wise. The innards were beat to death.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Those hands may be made overlength, for filing or grinding to make a perfect lockup in one particular revolver. I think that was quite common in other firearms and other times, although if Dickens is to be believed, Colt themselves didn't do it that way.

[johnson1942]

the hand never ever fits on most of piettas or ubertis, buffalo arms has a note about this in their catalog. you have to hand hone them to fit. its a pain in the ---- but thats the way it is. cant figure out why they send them out that way. if the spring on the hand pops out in stead of buying a new hand with a spring in it just put it back in the original with red or green locktight, it will stay in that way. some use superglue but red or geen locktight is better. the trigger spring that affect the trigger, not the main spring, and also pushes the part that comes up to the cylinder through the bottom of the frame needs to be repaced by a wire spring on all piettas and uberties. aside from checking the cylinder throats for undersized and redueing the forcing cone it will be a tack driver after all of this. ive had to do this to all my uberti colts but now they are smooth, reliable and shoot holes in holes.

[Multigunner]

I've repaired hands with broken or missing springs by making a new spring from a piece of the spring from a messed up stripper clip and securing it by drilling a hole through the piece of the hand that holds it and driving a pin into it. Making the hole in the base of the new spring isn't easy. When I found the spring steel was too tough to drill with the small diameter machinist bits I had at the time I instead put a dimple in it with a hardened punch and ground the high spot off the other side leaving a tiny hole.

A couple of hands I've replaced had the metal broken away from behind the spring, so there was nothing there to secure it.

I've repaired bolts by cutting a leg from a piece of hacksaw blade filing away enough of the bolt that the new leg could be secured in part by the bolt screw and by a pin just in front of that.
My Afro Engineered bolts and hands have never needed to be replaced even after many years and thousands of rounds.

I really just didn't feel up to doing that sort of close work, winter got me down a bit, but apparently fitting these OEM replacements is going to be very nearly as much work any way.

[johnson1942]

thanks multigunner for your info. on the colts the hands are the only pain in the----- that ive run into also. the rest are easy fixes and with doug guys teaching, the rest of the colt is easy to tune. some put wire spring in the hands with a hole drilled like you did and others put a coil spring behind the hand like ruger. that is probaby the best way to make them last forever. its seems the wire spring last way way longer than the ones that are originals.i really really like my uberti colt baut they have done one thing for me. i can take them apart in my sleep and put them back together in my sleep also.i could apply at the factory and pass any test on them they gave me. the grip to frame on the army grips are a pain also. the navy grips not so bad. i hate ill fitting grips and had to refit my army one and then reblue the grip frame. i did a rust blue on it and like it better than the original. also while im at it, why cant they polish the metal inside of the trigger guard at the factory. to lazy or something. the brass framed ones can be taken apart and polished but the steel ones require rebluing or re nickel plating. i have a hint how to make you nickel plated revolvers really shine brighter and last longer(the finish). cryo treat your nickel plated revolvers. this makes the nickel shine more and last longer on the gun.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Why, oh why couldn't everybody attach hand springs like Mr. Tranter in the 1850s? I fretted for days whether to risk more force on a spring which resisted what should surely have required only slight sideways pressure. Then I spotted a very slight pimple on the top of the hand, and found the spring had a cylindrical extension all the way through. It was slightly curved to lock itself in the straight hole, not crimped, and drove out very easily.

The hand spring scraping up and down inside its tunnel is a drawback on the Colts and Remingtons, but far worse on the cheap Belgian bulldog revolvers, where I think hardly any are found in good order.

189711

[Good Cheer]

Looks like I've got an unfired Pietta brass .44 coming for $150.
Might swap out the frame but will see what works... could be a surprise.
One really old Pietta (remember the .36 1851 they made with the Stars & Bars on the grips?) won't swap out with anything. The factory put it together by force and total custom fitting was required to salvage it. It took many hours to even get the distorted parts dis-assembled. Say, as I remember that was one of those $150 NIB deals too! Now it's a great shooting revolver but boy howdy was it ever a puzzling to get it there.
Any how, the new great bargain is a 1860. Might swap out the frame with an iron one from another Pietta if the dimensions match. Reckon I'll know what it looks like when I sees it.