Sixgun sight fix
Fix that low-shooting Single Action
Being a fan of single-action wheelguns, my tastes have tilted toward Rugers and I own a couple of Blackhawks in .41 Magnum, two New Vaquero models including one with a 7-½” barrel that wasn’t offered for long, and a dandy little stainless steel Single Six in .32 H&R Magnum with fixed sights and a short grip frame around which I wrapped a Pachmayr rubber replacement grip to better fit my hand.
But this year, there’s a new revolver from Uberti added to the company’s “Outlaws & Lawmen” series and it’s pure eye candy. Dedicated to President Theodore Roosevelt — “Col. Teddy” to his comrades from San Juan Hill, I’ve read somewhere — this single-action “faithfully replicates” the former president’s 1873 Model Colt.
This specimen is chambered for the .45 Colt cartridge (Roosevelt’s gun was chambered for the .38 Colt cartridge). It’s nickel-plated with some handsome engraving on the cylinder, frame, on top of the barrel and the ejector rod housing. The images I’ve seen show the gun wears a high profile blade front sight.
Uberti’s Roosevelt model wears simulated ivory grips and I tend to like such grips more than walnut or some other wood on a single-action. My guess is they’ll fill someone’s gun hand comfortably.
When I first acquired my Ruger single-action New Vaqueros, both shot low at 25 yards using 250-grain lead loads from Remington, Winchester and Black Hills. It wasn’t “that” low with either sixgun, but enough I figured it would make a difference at long range, say 75 or even 100 yards. As for windage, both guns were dead-on.
So, I traded some email with a couple of guys about this dilemma. First, they advised I needed to work up a good load which would work consistently in both revolvers, the 7 ½-incher and the other with a 4 5/8” barrel. I hit paydirt with a 255-grain Hornady flatnose lead bullet pushed by 6.9 grains of Hodgdon’s HP-38. While rounds still shot low, they grouped well.
Since then, I’ve gotten good results with a 250-grain cast lead flat point propelled by 7.0 grains of HP-38 and they strike at essentially the same point of impact. Both loads clock right around 900 fps out of the longer barrel and about 875 fps out of the shorter gun, but they’re good utility loads — that’s what a .45 Colt sixgun is for me, a utility gun.
I’ve also experimented with the 250-grain bullet and Hodgdon’s CFE Pistol propellant and results were satisfactory with just a bit more horsepower.
I spent an afternoon at the range with both revolvers, a fine file and a small diamond stone. This is the tricky part. I started gently filing the tops of both front sights, say a half-dozen strokes at a time and then I’d load up and run a cylinder-full through each gun over a sandbag rest. This went on for a couple of hours, and with each progression, holes in the 25-yard target gradually came up.
I switched from the file to the diamond stone, a little pocket-sized piece that removed most of the file marks and smoothed the tops of the slightly lowered sights. I probably didn’t remove more than a couple thousandths of an inch, but it was enough to bring my groups up enough to satisfy. My last step was to touch the bare metal with some Birchwood Casey cold blue, wipe it off with cold water and give the surface a few strokes with very fine steel wool, then wipe with an oily patch to finish the job.