Uberti's - How they're made

[Triggernosis]

Interesting: http://youtu.be/qYOJa8ZNxmE

[O.S.O.K.]

Interesting indeed. And now, the technitian eyeballs the barrel alignment

Wow, if the technitian is having a bad day or is hung over.... well now you know!

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

It is interesting to see the way the frame is forged to shape. A red hot round bar of steel is pounded to shape in a hammer forge. Directly after that we are shown the frame in two configurations, each one the result of forging in progressive dies. The frame is not CNC machined until after the second forging die brings it to close to the final shape. That is the old fashioned way to do it, rather than machining from a solid block of steel. Forging first results in a stronger frame because the grain of the metal flows to follow the shape. I visited the S&W factory last year and saw bins and bins of frame forgings like that ready to be machined.

Original Colts used tapered threads to secure the barrel to the frame. Uberti does not, they are standard threads. You can see the Uberti barrel only torques down to the frame at the very end, when the barrel shoulder snugs up to the frame. He taps it back and forth a bit to get it right. A thread locker secures the barrel in place.

With the Colt tapered threads the barrel gets progressively tighter.

I did own an Uberti Cattleman at one point where the technician got it wrong, the front sight leaned considerably to one side.

I think it is interesting that a filing fixture is used to bring the cylinder ratchet teeth to their final height, rather than controlling that in the CNC process.

Interesting video, but the narrator got a few details wrong.

The spring the technician is inserting in the frame is a replacement for the hand spring in the original Colt design. The original style flat handspring is prone to breakage, Uberti has substituted a coil spring in the frame to push the hand forward, it is not prone to breakage.

The narrator got the proof pressure wrong, guns are not proofed at 3 times operating pressure. Most are proofed at 25% - 30% over service pressure.

I have no idea why the technician pounds the cylinder arbor into place, it is supposed to be a slip fit and is supposed to be easily removable. They come out easily on the Ubertis and Colts that I own.

The gun shown laying on the white surface at the beginning of the video is a fake. The cylinder notches are all wrong and you can see a parting line on the trigger guard. Probably the TV show bought a cheap fake for the first shots and edited them into the video from Uberti.

The process shown to color the frames is not Case Hardening. True Case Hardening requires heating the parts in a furnace in the presence of carbon bearing materials like leather and bone. Then the parts are quenched in water. The process shown is a chemical process used to induce colors similar to Case Hardening colors, but it is not as labor intensive nor as expensive as true Case Hardening.

Interesting video despite the narrator's errors. It still shows the basics of how the gun is made.

[Triggernosis]

Interesting indeed. And now, the technitian eyeballs the barrel alignment

Wow, if the technitian is having a bad day or is hung over.... well now you know!

Then you end up with a S&W or a Ruger.

[Driftwood Johnson]

Then you end up with a S&W or a Ruger.

Not hardly

Back in the pinned barrel days S&W used dedicated fixturing to make sure the barrel was torqued into the correct position. S&W barrels are not simple turned cylinders, the barrels are forged with the sights and lugs in place. If it is not torqued to the correct position, the gun will not function properly. Now that barrels are no longer pinned they use threads that crush. I'm sure they still use fixturing to line them up correctly. Dunno about Rugers.