I recently put Jim March's excellent post on buying a used revolver into practice when I purchased a used 1970's vintage Colt Frontier Buntline in .22lr. As I will relate, there is a not-so-obvious item that I would humbly include with his list.
This was a single action and the condition was very nice. I methodically went through the procedure of checking the cylinder/forcing cone gap, the alignment of each chamber, timing, cylinder play, trigger crispness and pull, and bore. Everything checked out great, so I paid my $300 (probably a little high, but it was a nice gun) and headed immediately to the range. That's when the problem started. I benchrested the gun, and at 25 yds, was seeing my groups sitting at about 8" to the right. I adjusted my rear sight to the left a lot and it still was way off to the right. Went through this interation a couple more times and then realized I had reached the limit on rear sight travel and was still getting groups 2" to the right. At this point I knew something was wrong, but could not for the life of me figure out what. I kept looking down the sights and everything seemed fine. I then decided to turn the gun around and look down the barrel (yes, I checked twice to make sure it was unloaded!). That's when I saw it - the front sight was canted about 5 degrees to the left. The barrel was literally twisted. Overtorqued is probably the right term. It was not something that was obvious at all when I went through my checklist and handled te gun for a good 15-20 minutes. Furthermore, I don't think many folks would have caught it either since it was so subtle when viewing from the rear, but glaring when looking at it from the muzzle. Anyway, I talked to the guy I bought it from and he was quite understanding. He had not fired it in 8 years, and even then had only fired it once or twice. He has agreed to have the gun repaired, or if too expensive, to buy it back for my purchase price. A gentleman indeed! Anyway, I wanted to add this in as another item to check for when buying used. The gunsmith I brought it to said the gun probably came from the factory like that (very disappointing - I expected better from Colt) and that the repair could easily require cutting the shoulder and replacing the forcing cone, and might run upwards of $150-200, which is over half the cost of the gun. Buyer beware!
This was a single action and the condition was very nice. I methodically went through the procedure of checking the cylinder/forcing cone gap, the alignment of each chamber, timing, cylinder play, trigger crispness and pull, and bore. Everything checked out great, so I paid my $300 (probably a little high, but it was a nice gun) and headed immediately to the range. That's when the problem started. I benchrested the gun, and at 25 yds, was seeing my groups sitting at about 8" to the right. I adjusted my rear sight to the left a lot and it still was way off to the right. Went through this interation a couple more times and then realized I had reached the limit on rear sight travel and was still getting groups 2" to the right. At this point I knew something was wrong, but could not for the life of me figure out what. I kept looking down the sights and everything seemed fine. I then decided to turn the gun around and look down the barrel (yes, I checked twice to make sure it was unloaded!). That's when I saw it - the front sight was canted about 5 degrees to the left. The barrel was literally twisted. Overtorqued is probably the right term. It was not something that was obvious at all when I went through my checklist and handled te gun for a good 15-20 minutes. Furthermore, I don't think many folks would have caught it either since it was so subtle when viewing from the rear, but glaring when looking at it from the muzzle. Anyway, I talked to the guy I bought it from and he was quite understanding. He had not fired it in 8 years, and even then had only fired it once or twice. He has agreed to have the gun repaired, or if too expensive, to buy it back for my purchase price. A gentleman indeed! Anyway, I wanted to add this in as another item to check for when buying used. The gunsmith I brought it to said the gun probably came from the factory like that (very disappointing - I expected better from Colt) and that the repair could easily require cutting the shoulder and replacing the forcing cone, and might run upwards of $150-200, which is over half the cost of the gun. Buyer beware!
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. If your sight is in that range (14 to 18mm), then that is THEE hot ticket. Probably more than the Marbles, but not too much more.