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Re: Hawg:
Yep. I have noticed the pattern after all these years. I have owned a few Uberti Colt Navy 51's over time, including the Leech & Rigdon I mentioned. I have compared a couple of Pietta-built guns side by side with them and it was clear that Pietta paid a lot more attention to tolerances when it came to the cylinder pins. Pietta deserves an even better reputation and following than they have done for the past 20 years. All of their products are consistently top of the line. At least all of the Pietta handguns I had handled. The Ubertis, on the other hand, were not that good enough to be keepers, and I think that is the reason why I generally shy away from the open-top frames. I like shooting heavy loads and stout cartridges, and the fact that everything on an open frame gun, the cylinder, arbor, loading lever and barrel, are all attached to the frame by a tiny threaded stub at the end of the arbor does not give me too good of a feeling.
If a manufacturer built a fully modern open-top revolver chambered in .357 Magnum and state that it is "fully capable of firing full-powered factory loads and reloads", would anyone go ahead and take a chance?
Yet one of Mike Cumpston's (MEC) good friends had an article years back where he said that several original 1858 Remington revolvers salvaged and restored by his father were converted into .357 Mag hunting guns.
Of course, no offense meant at all to those who enjoy shooting the open-tops. They represent an essential part of history and Elmer Keith himself did a lot of his long range shooting with an original open-top Colt. If you don't plan on turbocharging them, they are good and will deliver years of good use. Just like the Rigdon that my boss converted to .38 LC.
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