I've been looking for an ‘Old’ Vaquero in .45 Colt for some time; I love fixed sights when they can be made to work, and I wanted a sixgun that would take the heavy loads. I passed a couple back before obama-fright drove the prices dizzy, and the ones I had priced recently were higher than New Vaqueros. I was actually looking for a used Glock when I called a dealer the other day, and just asked if he had any of these laying around. He said he had one, the finish wasn’t great but it must shoot OK ‘cause the prior owner killed a deer with it.
I looked it over and everything was right; perfect timing on all six, reasonable tight lockup and close to 0.050 firing pin protrusion. The gun was dirty but the bore was perfect & showed no leading. The forcing cone was well done end evenly worn…looks like maybe they got the holes in all the right places on this one. The trigger was typical New Model which at least told me that nobody had butchered the innards yet.
Per the serial# it is a 1999 gun, so I guess it stands to reason that it’d be a little worn. The colors have long since rubbed of leaving a patina, and the aluminum ejector housing shows ‘shiny’ in a few spots. That didn’t bother me none ‘cause a new one would get roughed-up this bad if I carried it six for months. As it stands, it priced about$175 under the going rate for Old Vaqueros and that suited me fine.
Actually, the only thing that concerned me at all was that the gun would shoot close enough to the fixed sights, to allow it to be zeroed with a couple of good loads. While pricing .45 Colt ammo (35 bucks a box for BLAZER!!) it soon became apparent that ‘ammo money’ would be better spent on components. While I intend to cook up a heavy-hitter, I wanted a pretty standard .45 Colt load for checking the zero. What I used was 7.1 grains of W231 under a Hornady swaged 255 RNFP, and I decided to shoot it standing unsupported just to see where the gun shot from the most likely position it would be fired in the field. The target represents 12 rounds at 25 yards from somebody who hasn’t fired more than 12 rounds from a single action in the past ten years.
It’s a given that I need some work with these guns, but I was real happy with where it shot- and I’m pretty sure those wanderers had nothing to do with the gun.
I looked it over and everything was right; perfect timing on all six, reasonable tight lockup and close to 0.050 firing pin protrusion. The gun was dirty but the bore was perfect & showed no leading. The forcing cone was well done end evenly worn…looks like maybe they got the holes in all the right places on this one. The trigger was typical New Model which at least told me that nobody had butchered the innards yet.
Per the serial# it is a 1999 gun, so I guess it stands to reason that it’d be a little worn. The colors have long since rubbed of leaving a patina, and the aluminum ejector housing shows ‘shiny’ in a few spots. That didn’t bother me none ‘cause a new one would get roughed-up this bad if I carried it six for months. As it stands, it priced about$175 under the going rate for Old Vaqueros and that suited me fine.
Actually, the only thing that concerned me at all was that the gun would shoot close enough to the fixed sights, to allow it to be zeroed with a couple of good loads. While pricing .45 Colt ammo (35 bucks a box for BLAZER!!) it soon became apparent that ‘ammo money’ would be better spent on components. While I intend to cook up a heavy-hitter, I wanted a pretty standard .45 Colt load for checking the zero. What I used was 7.1 grains of W231 under a Hornady swaged 255 RNFP, and I decided to shoot it standing unsupported just to see where the gun shot from the most likely position it would be fired in the field. The target represents 12 rounds at 25 yards from somebody who hasn’t fired more than 12 rounds from a single action in the past ten years.
It’s a given that I need some work with these guns, but I was real happy with where it shot- and I’m pretty sure those wanderers had nothing to do with the gun.