POLISH IT!

by Paul , Monday, December 12, 2022, 18:41 (712 days ago) @ JimT

Summer of 2021 I was gifted a Pietta 1860, new in the Traditions box. A lovely piece of ordnance, but a bit rough in the cycling. I proceeded to cycle it over and over and over again. The more I handled it the smoother it got. After a few hundred times of cocking and decocking it the roughness had pretty much disappeared. The barrel was firmly wedged to the frame, even once the wedge was removed. That took a brass punch to drive out. Once the frame came off I reassembled it and disassembled it a few times and got it working fairly well, but the wedge continued to stick way out on the left side of the frame. As all my tools are down south it wasn't possible to do much else, but the pistol is a joy to use now. I'm sure it would benefit from some good polishing, but I'll have to see if I can chase down the necessary equipment to do so some year we're up there again. I'd heard about some of these being quite rough, but this particular example was not too bad at all, but did benefit from the above mentioned cycling. I really should pick up spares for it, I'm sure, but the quality is much better than examples I've messed with in the past.