I bought a pair of Dakota II which are Pietta Great Western II with the matte finish from one of the members here. The action was worked and the revolvers handle very nicely. One was shooting just about 3-4" inches low and the other was so low the rounds were off the target paper. For that one, the front sight was so tall that it interfered with the flight paths of planes coming into Denver International Airport.
My understanding is that shooting low is typical for these guns.
I went out for testing the low shooting SAA for the third time on Thursday after filing and ultimately using a Dremel on the front sight. It took 3 trips to the range and 3 sessions of sight height reduction because I wanted to be very conservative and not take too much off at a time. Walla-Voila-Viola (my French isn't very good)!! The revolver is right on, now.
After studying from the Internet, with the assumption that if it is on the net, it must be true
, I covered the barrel and top of the gun with masking tape and went after the sight with a file, laying the file on the table and running the gun over it. The method worked, but was very slow. I measured how much sight came off with a caliper. Off to the range, and there was improvement. I was hitting the bottom of the target paper, but was not in the target area.
Next step: brought out the battery powered Dremel with a grinding tool at the end. I covered the rest of the gun with a sock torn at the heel. The sock hole was in the perfect location to let the sight stick up. I did have to be careful because if the rotating Dremel caught the sock, I would spend the next several minutes unwinding the fibers from the tool. Because the Dremel works much faster, I had to be much more careful.
Second time out on the range _ the SAA is hitting the target.
Did the Dremel dance one more time and off to the range. At 10 yards, 10 bulls eyes. I should note that I used 100 yd rifle sight in targets so the bulls eye was big enough for my 67 year old eyes to see.
Ron