Okay, so here's my new
clone reproduction (did that for Coffinmaker
) . I've been wanting a charcoal blue Cavalry for a long time, and now that the BP-frame Cimarrons are the only Uberti single actions with the standard hammer and firing pin, I thought I oughta get one while I could. Cimarron gets in the Cavalry guns often, but not as often in charcoal blue. But then I noticed they had 5 in stock. So I'm thinking maybe now's the time, then suddenly there were only 2 left, so I grabbed one. Did not get to choose between the two as it was being shipped to me.
Overall I am very pleased with the gun. It does have two quality issues that I can live with. The first is that there is a string of proof marks on the side of the cylinder, on the opposite side of the serial number. One of the plusses of Cimarrons is that those marks are supposed to be miniaturized and stamped on the rear face of the cylinder. Also, where the "45 Cal" is stamped on the left side of the triggerguard, the metal is collapsed in some. The hole for the left side triggerguard screw has less metal on the side wall where the Cal is stamped than usual, leading to the dished in appearance. Not major, but still.
When OD#3 did his report a while back on a new Cavalry, he mentioned the grip cartouche being laser engraved. I had seen some of those in the past and didn't care for it either. Someone since mentioned their cartouche was stamped, and so is this one.
I put a spring kit in it. I have an assortment of springs, I think this one is an Evil Roy kit. And the coil hand spring I intend to cut down a bit but for now just left out the set screw to give it a little less tension. Timing is good. I did rub a piece of emory cloth over the hammer cam a bit with my finger. The action feels great.
The day after I bought it I took it with me to a match, intending to pop off a few rounds after the match to try it out. But the hand spring on my Kirst converted '61 decided to break at the loading table on stage 1, so I shot the Cavalry in the match. I've shot it in two matches since then, paired with an antique-finish Cimarron Pre-War .45 that I usually pair with an identical-looking 1st gen Colt. Results of those first 3 matches? Three clean matches! I have no idea what it does on paper, and at the moment am not concerned. With the spring kit and having been shot some now, the trigger pull is a nice crisp 2.5 lb, which for me is perfect.
I'm shooting a very pleasant load, 4.7gr Clays with a 200gr bullet, the Clays minimum in the LaserCast loading manual (they say 660fps). Brass drops out of the cylinders without ejecting and looks pretty clean. My schedule these days doesn't give me time to load nor clean BP much, so I haven't shot any yet in this gun but will get to it eventually.