Want a new SAA clone: Help

C

Carbon_15

New member
A recent thread has got me thinking about adding another .45Colt SAA clone to my collection. I sold my polished stainless Vaquero a while back. It was a beauty, especialy with the foux ivory stocks, but it was just to dang hard to keep looking pretty. I bought it with the expectations of just adding some sparckle to my gun case. WRONG...it was so much fun to shoot, I rarely made a range trip without it. Powder and fingerprints wiped off easy enough, but the mirror polish showed fine scatches every time I wiped it down. Much like the dust scratch swirlies you get when you wax a black car. I'm a little bit of a neat freak about my guns, and it drove me nuts having to re-buff it after ever 500 rounds or so. Will polished chrome or nickle get the fine scratches from being wiped off with a cotton tee-shirt like the polished stainless. I think I understand why most stainless guns have a matte or brushed finish now.
I checked out a Uberti the other day and was shocked by how much lighter and sleaker it was than the Ruger. The action seemed alot smoother as well. Can it be safely carried, hammer down on a loaded chamber? I had almost desided on a blued and case hardened finish, untill I saw the Uberti in Nickle. Rugers Case hardened finish looks 10 times better (IMHO) than the Uberti, but I prefer the lighter weight and slicker action of the More SAA faithfull Italian pistol. How does the quality and accuracy of the 2 pistols compair? I assume the stout modern loads like th Cor-bon and Buffalo Bore hunting rounds are out with anything but the Ruger..right? What are some other SAA clones with nice, smooth actions, and more faithfull lines/dimensions?


BTW, I dont plan on useing it for hunting or Cowboy action shooting, just informal plinking and target shooting.
 
Only the Ruger is safe with 6 rounds loaded. NO traditional, non-transfer bar single action, should be carried with a round under the hammer. Although many of the replica single actions have some kind of "safety" device to prevent the hammer from firing a round by accident, most of these shouldn't be trusted. The two different designs I've delt with were weak at best.

For those of you who have never heard this, the way to load a traditional single action is:
Load one chamber. Skip one chamber. Load 4 chambers, cock and lower the hammer. It now will be resting on an empty chamber.

Most of the available single actions are made by Uberti. these are sold by Cimmarron, Navy Arms, EMF, and Uberti-direct, among others. There is a new company in Hartford Conn. making very high grade SAA's that are near Colt quality, but slightly less than Colt price.

The very hot loads are best left to the Ruger.
 
Uberti makes some nice looking single actions. My brother probably has about 8 of them in various configurations. He had some recent problems with the half-cock notch breaking off of the hammer in one of them, but was able to order two new hammers and I believe he corrected the problem in the mechanism which broke the notch.

There is also a company in Florida making some VERY beautiful single actions called American Western Arms. I looked one over a few months ago, and the fit and finish were outstanding... Better than a lot of last generation Colts I have seen. The one I looked at was a 4 3/4" blued called the "Peacekeeper" with color case hardened frame priced at about $650. It was VERY hard not to take it home! They have a great list of options and grades available which can get the piece way up there in price.

The list prices on the website are higher since they are "recommended" retail, but take a look at them:

http://www.awaguns.com/
 
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