Almost picked one up some years ago

by Catoosa, Saturday, March 03, 2012, 21:33 (4461 days ago) @ Scribe

My wife found an "Armero Especialista" in her late uncle's house when they were cleaning it out. Crappy piece of junk. Firing pin had been broken and replaced with what appeared to be a piece of sheet metal filed to a point. What was really interesting was that the barrel was bent upward as though it had been used to "buffalo" somebody. Must have been a heck of a story behind that.

Just to see if I could do it, I unscrewed the barrel, ran a piece of steel rod down it, clamped the rod in a heavy bench vise, and bent it back more or less straight, at least enough that the ejector rod would line up with the lug. I shimmed the cylinder to cure the grossly excessive headspace, and set the barrel back a thread to cure the grossly excessive cylinder gap, opened up the forcing cone a tad, and put it back together.

Surprise, surprise. The barrel was still not quite straight. In fact it was quite a lot not straight, but pointed rather drastically to the right. Shot it anyway, with .38 Long Colt cowboy loads, and darned if the thing didn't hit pretty close to POA. I guess the sights are as crooked as the barrel.

Keep it in my boat loaded with homebrewed snake shot loads. Pretty much worthless for anything else, but at least it shoots.