warbirdlover
New member
Who makes a good one and how much do these things set you back? Thanks.
Colt Peacemaker
- Thread starter warbirdlover
- Start date
the rifleer
New member
Uberti makes one and they are a pretty good company. I have never shot one, but I saw one and i can say that if I was going to buy one (basically when I can afford it) that's what I would buy.
LOL! You're too funny!
Only Colt makes a Colt
If you mean the "peacemaker" by name, i.e. the .22 version of the Colt Single Action Army, then those are no longer being made.
If you mean the "peacemaker" as in slang for the Single Action Army Model-P, then you can still get one from Colts and they run around $1300 for the stock model.
Only Colt makes a Colt
If you mean the "peacemaker" by name, i.e. the .22 version of the Colt Single Action Army, then those are no longer being made.
If you mean the "peacemaker" as in slang for the Single Action Army Model-P, then you can still get one from Colts and they run around $1300 for the stock model.
First, warbirdlover, do you mean a single action revolver, and if so do you mean one made by Colt or one of the many copies on the market? And do you mean an antique gun for a collection or modern gun for shooting?
That may seem a lot of questions, but your question can't really be answered without knowing the frame of reference.
(Example, Colt Single Action Army serial number 1 sold recently in the mid six figures. But I can buy an Italian-made copy for around $300.)
Jim
That may seem a lot of questions, but your question can't really be answered without knowing the frame of reference.
(Example, Colt Single Action Army serial number 1 sold recently in the mid six figures. But I can buy an Italian-made copy for around $300.)
Jim
The Colt 1873 SAA Peacemaker spawned a slew of clones.
If you want a quality clone USFA makes good ones.
http://www.usfirearms.com/pages/highres.asp
They tend to be pricey with the exception of the Rodeo which retails at $600+
Pietta and Uberti make good clones that are pretty close to the original. They go for about $400+
If you want a quality clone USFA makes good ones.
http://www.usfirearms.com/pages/highres.asp
They tend to be pricey with the exception of the Rodeo which retails at $600+
Pietta and Uberti make good clones that are pretty close to the original. They go for about $400+
Wait. Let's start with the basics.
What do want it for? Woods carry? Street/CCW? (And yeah, some do.) Cowboy action shooting sports? General shooting/target?
What's your budget?
Do you want something that has a modern transfer bar safety inside even if it otherwise looks "old school"? There's a few such, and can be safely carried six-up. Anything else, it's five-up, hammer down on the empty just like Wyatt and anybody else back then did it if they were halfway sane (not all were of course...).
What caliber? 357/38 is cheapest to shoot if you're on a budget. 45LC is both traditional and fairly easy for a beginner reloader to cope with. The vintage slightly bottleneck cartridges like the 38-40, 44-40 and 32-20 can be kinda nice but are more difficult to load.
Do you want traditional sights, or adjustable like the Colt "New Frontier"?
What kind of budget are you dealing with?
How much do you care about looks?
That's a start on just the questions.
For the record: I have a matched pair of near-clones of the Colt SAA. Primary, and daily carry CCW is a heavily modified Ruger New Vaquero in 357, 4.68" barrel (what Colt would have called a 4.75"), blue, transfer bar ignition. I have a piece that's purely for cheap practice as an "understudy", a Cimarron "Plinkerton" $200 .22LR modified to mostly match the Ruger. The Plinkerton is not at all "heirloom quality" and I wouldn't trust my life to it, but it works well as a cheap practice gun and alternative to high-volume reloading...you can shoot .22LR cheaper than you can reload 38.
Ruger makes a good gun, and the NewVaq is fairly close in size/heft to a post-WW2 Colt SAA. The ergonomics can be retrofitted to match a pre-war Colt SAA fairly easily as I've done by dropping in a SuperBlackhawk lower hammer. Doesn't look very "cowboy" but it matches the pre-war thumb reach to the hammer.
USFA copied the pre-war Colt ergonomics out of the gate on most models including the Rodeo. Higher-end-finish model USFAs run around $900ish and usually exceed Colt quality control levels at least a little; a few years ago they were beating the snot out of Colt and Colt reformed their production standards in response, almost catching USFA. Almost. Colt, USFA and most of the Italian guns are all either "no safety at all" or in the case of some Italians, "safety that can't be trusted six-up" - either way, they're for five-up-carry.
What else...ah. Take a good look at Longhunter, a gun dealer and gunsmith who has good deals on "pre-tuned" pieces:
http://www.longhunt.com/
He weeds out any "birth defect cases" from the Rugers and high-end Italian pieces he sells, and on USFAs he replaces a lot of the internal flat springs with modern coil springs. He's highly regarded.
Finally, if you have the money, the very best single actions made today don't look very traditional, but they have the highest machining standards of anything this side of the engine in a stealth fighter. That's Freedom Arms. Nothing, and I mean *nothing* beats their quality control levels or out of the box accuracy. They make Colt or anything else outside of maybe a 1960's-era Python look like a joke. My ultimate dream gun is a Freedom Arms '97 model, 357Mag, six shots, 4.5" barrel, round butt, adjustable sights, octagonal barrel, extra cylinder in 38 match chambers. List, about $2k. Worth it? Check out this test of that gun in 22LR that managed an honest 1" group at 100 yards:
http://www.gunblast.com/Freedom_97-22.htm
What do want it for? Woods carry? Street/CCW? (And yeah, some do
.) Cowboy action shooting sports? General shooting/target?What's your budget?
Do you want something that has a modern transfer bar safety inside even if it otherwise looks "old school"? There's a few such, and can be safely carried six-up. Anything else, it's five-up, hammer down on the empty just like Wyatt and anybody else back then did it if they were halfway sane (not all were of course...).
What caliber? 357/38 is cheapest to shoot if you're on a budget. 45LC is both traditional and fairly easy for a beginner reloader to cope with. The vintage slightly bottleneck cartridges like the 38-40, 44-40 and 32-20 can be kinda nice but are more difficult to load.
Do you want traditional sights, or adjustable like the Colt "New Frontier"?
What kind of budget are you dealing with?
How much do you care about looks?
That's a start on just the questions
.For the record: I have a matched pair of near-clones of the Colt SAA. Primary, and daily carry CCW is a heavily modified Ruger New Vaquero in 357, 4.68" barrel (what Colt would have called a 4.75"), blue, transfer bar ignition. I have a piece that's purely for cheap practice as an "understudy", a Cimarron "Plinkerton" $200 .22LR modified to mostly match the Ruger. The Plinkerton is not at all "heirloom quality" and I wouldn't trust my life to it, but it works well as a cheap practice gun and alternative to high-volume reloading...you can shoot .22LR cheaper than you can reload 38.
Ruger makes a good gun, and the NewVaq is fairly close in size/heft to a post-WW2 Colt SAA. The ergonomics can be retrofitted to match a pre-war Colt SAA fairly easily as I've done by dropping in a SuperBlackhawk lower hammer. Doesn't look very "cowboy" but it matches the pre-war thumb reach to the hammer.
USFA copied the pre-war Colt ergonomics out of the gate on most models including the Rodeo. Higher-end-finish model USFAs run around $900ish and usually exceed Colt quality control levels at least a little; a few years ago they were beating the snot out of Colt and Colt reformed their production standards in response, almost catching USFA. Almost
. Colt, USFA and most of the Italian guns are all either "no safety at all" or in the case of some Italians, "safety that can't be trusted six-up" - either way, they're for five-up-carry.What else...ah. Take a good look at Longhunter, a gun dealer and gunsmith who has good deals on "pre-tuned" pieces:
http://www.longhunt.com/
He weeds out any "birth defect cases" from the Rugers and high-end Italian pieces he sells, and on USFAs he replaces a lot of the internal flat springs with modern coil springs. He's highly regarded.
Finally, if you have the money, the very best single actions made today don't look very traditional, but they have the highest machining standards of anything this side of the engine in a stealth fighter. That's Freedom Arms. Nothing, and I mean *nothing* beats their quality control levels or out of the box accuracy. They make Colt or anything else outside of maybe a 1960's-era Python look like a joke. My ultimate dream gun is a Freedom Arms '97 model, 357Mag, six shots, 4.5" barrel, round butt, adjustable sights, octagonal barrel, extra cylinder in 38 match chambers. List, about $2k. Worth it? Check out this test of that gun in 22LR that managed an honest 1" group at 100 yards:
http://www.gunblast.com/Freedom_97-22.htm
A friend just got a USFA, for about $900, I think, and it is a very nice piece. The trigger was a little creepy, but a real beauty, well-timed, and good shooter. If I were shopping for something that has "the look", rather than "the real thing" (Colt), I'd look at the Italian replicas.
warbirdlover
New member
I didn't mean it had to be made by Colt. My bad. Anyway, someday I just want a single action Peacemaker to play around with. Is the Cimarron P model worth a look? Comes in different calibers.
Cimarron mostly imports Uberti from Italy and specifies their highest level of fit'n'finish. They then support it stateside and have a very good rep. That's one of the two best ways to get an Italian gun, the other being Longhunter's Italian offering:
http://www.longhunt.com/taylor/smokewagon.htm
That $550 will get you something VERY authentic looking and a good shooter that's already been checked over by a gunsmith to weed out birth defect cases. It's also an authentic "no safety, five-up-carry" gun unlike a Ruger. Looking at his list of personal modifications, they make a lot of sense, esp. the recut forcing cone and barrel face/cylinder gap tuning. That thing might run neck and neck with a bone-stock USFA and is likely a better gun than any Cimarron.
The latest Italian guns in general are pretty good. They usually look better than either a Ruger or a USFA Rodeo, but also usually won't shoot quite as well as either. The difference isn't huge though and most range from decent to very good.
Uberti (the biggest Italian SA shop) was bought by Beretta fairly recently, who now sell some under the Beretta brand name. Those have transfer-bar ignitions like a Ruger, safe for six-up carry, but they don't have the reliability rep of Ruger...that may be due to retrofitting more complex innards into an older design. (Internally Rugers are very modern, externally they look "old school".)
As I said, my trainer/plinker gun is an Italian Cimarron (made by Armi Chiappa) so I'm hardly a Cimarron basher. But it's also not a gun I'd trust my butt to.
What else...
Oh yeah. DO NOT buy a Taurus Gaucho. I don't care how cheap it's being blown out the door for. There's a reason. Baaad news guns. Bigtime.
http://www.longhunt.com/taylor/smokewagon.htm
That $550 will get you something VERY authentic looking and a good shooter that's already been checked over by a gunsmith to weed out birth defect cases. It's also an authentic "no safety, five-up-carry" gun unlike a Ruger. Looking at his list of personal modifications, they make a lot of sense, esp. the recut forcing cone and barrel face/cylinder gap tuning. That thing might run neck and neck with a bone-stock USFA and is likely a better gun than any Cimarron.
The latest Italian guns in general are pretty good. They usually look better than either a Ruger or a USFA Rodeo, but also usually won't shoot quite as well as either. The difference isn't huge though and most range from decent to very good.
Uberti (the biggest Italian SA shop) was bought by Beretta fairly recently, who now sell some under the Beretta brand name. Those have transfer-bar ignitions like a Ruger, safe for six-up carry, but they don't have the reliability rep of Ruger...that may be due to retrofitting more complex innards into an older design. (Internally Rugers are very modern, externally they look "old school".)
As I said, my trainer/plinker gun is an Italian Cimarron (made by Armi Chiappa) so I'm hardly a Cimarron basher. But it's also not a gun I'd trust my butt to.
What else...
Oh yeah. DO NOT buy a Taurus Gaucho. I don't care how cheap it's being blown out the door for. There's a reason. Baaad news guns. Bigtime.
Pietta makes a damn good clone, bought my Cimarron from Cimarron in Fredericksburg, they import finished Uberti's and whoever I spoke with on the phone, preferred the Pietta's. They built mine to my specifications.No faux case hardening, brass trigger guard and backstrap.Trigger job, 2.5 lbs and all the features of the original Colt.Firing pin on hammer, I had an Uberti and it would shake itself apart in 50 rounds.I bought mine in 94 when they called the Cattleman the Buckhorn, were imported by American Arms, N Kansas City , Mo.
I'd love to get one of the Cimmaron's with the original finish!
The New Vaquero is really nice. Can load all six chambers and its an extremely tough gun. I don't like the stainless version though. 45 colt is really easier to reload and the reloads are WAY cheaper than factory ammo. $9/box vs $35/box
The New Vaquero is really nice. Can load all six chambers and its an extremely tough gun. I don't like the stainless version though. 45 colt is really easier to reload and the reloads are WAY cheaper than factory ammo. $9/box vs $35/box
DiscoRacing
New member
this is
a cimarron
I was looking at gunblast.coms article about this years shot show and they had two awsome looking sing actions from EMF. One was a .22 copy of the new frontier called the stallion, and one was an adjustable sighted (not a copy of the new frontier) in .44 Mag. I love the look of the .22 and am going to be looking for one in a couple months when they hit the market
warbirdlover
New member
What about Taylor? Any good?
The Cimarron P and similar polished blue/case hardened Taylors are all Ubertis of approximately the same quality. These are all pretty close cosmetic clones to the original Colt "P"s (Single Action Army or SAA) and are pretty smooth and reliable shooters. Cimarron specs a certain exterior trim/finish level; otherwise the working parts are all the same. EMF's "recent" (decade or so) Great Western II series is Pietta, a quality Italian competitor to Uberti. The same Pietta--under a different moniker--was (and maybe still is?) marketed by Charles Daly--but in fewer trim levels (and maybe calibers). EMF no longer carries its "Hartford" which was, for at least the last decade, also Uberti of the same approximate trim/finish level as the better Cim's and Taylors. However, there are still a lot of these left from dealers on the market (new).
Uberti--and some of its importer-disteibutors (above) as well--markets an economy/lower finish level (matte black, and on some brass gripframe/trigger guard, etc) version of their Colt clone, which are often found at the large warehouse sporting goods stores--Cabelas and the like. Like the USFA matte-finish Rodeo mentioned, these should have the same innards as their glossier and pricier stablemates.
Uberti--and some of its importer-disteibutors (above) as well--markets an economy/lower finish level (matte black, and on some brass gripframe/trigger guard, etc) version of their Colt clone, which are often found at the large warehouse sporting goods stores--Cabelas and the like. Like the USFA matte-finish Rodeo mentioned, these should have the same innards as their glossier and pricier stablemates.