Rossi Rifleman

The 44 special has SAA style grip, not the 44mag style that Uberti (or Pietta?) has made on occasion.

Got to going over things today. Another... jeeze-leweez moment. Fitting the hand was a non-issue, and the carry-up is very close to perfect. Three chambers time tighter than a snails rosette under water, and three are just a wee tiny smidge looser. And I mean sub-.001 looser. Its a pretty tight gun (tighter than Ruger!).

I cleaned the gun and to my dismay, the "colors" of the color case finish washed off with Hoppe's #9 to a large extent. What? I have no idea what the finish is. But the "blue tint" is gone, and what's left is a light grey and dark grey color scheme. Pretty bad looking actually. Worse than before. There's nothing in Hoppe's that should do that to a normal finish, so again... not sure what's going on. Certainly, Hoppe's didn't fade the finish of my other Uberty - the Birdshead .45.

I took off the grips, and they were just not fit very well. Had to make some corrections on the frame area, and while I was at it, decided to strip off the "bowling pin -esque" finish and see what was under all that plastic. Turns out its walnut, not "hardwood". The grips do fit right now, and are on coat #2 of linseed/japan-drier finish. The color is no longer orange, but walnut colored.

Looked for buffalo coins, and couldn't find anything in 12mm. These medallions are 12mm by the way. I did find some Celtic knot pewter buttons, but... ya know... not really my thing, so right now that's all up in the air.

The trigger pull smoothed up, lightened up to near perfection when I fit the hand, since things aren't all bound up when the hammer is pulled back. I thought the barrel was tilted a bit to the left, then to the right, then to the left, then.. its gotta be the way the light hits it. And if I can't "really tell" its must be so close to straight its like a mirage to me.

I've only got one more Uberti, and it has a much stiffer mainspring setup. I think that has to do with the birdshead grip. That is... the curve of the front strap and the placement of the mainspring puts more tension on things. The hammer on this one, very easy to pull. That that I will, but fanning would be a joy with a gloved hand.

I'll see if I can grab a pic or two of the faded off case colors. I'm perplexed by it. Not really %@*&$, as this is a fun shooter of a gun, but more like... what in heck did they do? Its like the finish didn't do well, so they just used a bit of dye on the metal or something. Weird.

Ruger's fake CCH was pretty weak too back in the full size Vaquero days. I have a Cimmaron Uberti that's case color-whatevered but I don't think it'll wipe off...

There's what it looks like now.

There's another pic in this thread to compare. Its almost like they used %@*&$ on it.

The grip did turn out well though. I experimented with higher concentration of Japan Drier in linseed for the base coats, then normal concentration for another two coats.

As an aside... Linseed with JD is the cats-patootie. Just nice to work with. Pretty quick too. Add a little Johnson's pase wax on top of the last dried coat and there ya go.

Well, I do think the receiver metal looked better before.
Now the receiver looks a bit washed out or worn.
Almost makes you wonder if they smeared the color on it with a sharpie.

Good job on the grip though

Im thinkin maybe surface prep for the chem dip it gets?

Reese-Mo wrote:Im thinkin maybe surface prep for the chem dip it gets?

Assuming they didn't do an actual 'color case hardening' job on the frame it might be a lack of surface prep such that the finish just didn't take?

Its chemically applied. Turnbull says potassium cyanide. However potassium cyanide is very hard to work with safely. I'm guessing they used something like a copper wash and selenium over that. Copper will almost plate onto steel by itself with no electrical current. It can be put on steel with the current generated by the chemical that suspends the copper salt. Selenium will plate to steel very well as also, but plate even better to copper. For what it's worth all cold blues are form of selenium plating. I'm sure each factory has their own secret recipe.

There's a company that sells chemicals to give a multi layered and multicolored facsimile. I'll have to look into that

The loading gate on mine has much less color to it too. Likely a different alloy that takes the treatment differently.