Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Well speaking of .45's...question on Cimarron Arms....

I'm thinking maybe I might want one of them there replicas of a SA Colt.

I'm thinking an old model "P" with 7 1/2" barrel. Cimarron says they have worked out the weakness in the old design. Price looks good too.

Anybody play with Cimarron Arms much?

I bought one in the late 1980s. They called it a Cattleman. Reproduction of the Colt Single Action Army. Sights weren't well regulated, in that it always shot to the left till I bent the front sight to the left a little. Then it shot fine for many years, till it eventually developed poor timing in one of the chambers. Shouldn't be a big deal for a gunsmith to fix it though. Your best bet, of course, would be to go with a USFA Single Action Army.

The Cimarron's are made by Uberti but a bit finer tuned. IMHO really decent guns for the money. The USFA is the REAL deal though if you don't want to spring for a Colt and if you don't need the "four clicks" a Ruger New Model Vaquero is tough to beat.

Thanks guys. Sorry for not responding sooner but my computer crashed and burned. My tech is getting me a new one at a real good price so hopefully I'll be up in running in about a week.

Cimarron, according to their site, offers all their make believe Colts with their patented cowboy action comp innards so they say all the weaknesses of the Colt have been solved.

I looked at the USFA Colts and they have better have finishes different than what they show on their site, brown, green, etc. yuck.

I have a Ruger single action .44 mag. I have had to have the action re-work to be a good shooter. I suppose I could do that again.

Well I'll be off line until I can visit the coffee shop again.

Surely you jest.

I have a Cimarron in .44 Special. It's one of my most accurate revolvers.

This was only 10 yards...but it was right hand only.



Dan

THAT finish is nice but those browns, greens, yellows, etc. they have are yuck. Surely you saw them?

Well my tech says about 3 to 4 weeks for my new computer. Yuck. That means daily trips to my favorite coffee shop.

That's nice considering the open sights.

Of course, fire arm purchases are on hold until I pay for my new computer. And I should finish buying re-loading gear before I another gun.

The sights are "fine" or small if you prefer. Fine sights allow for greater precision. It takes more effort to use them and to get good with them, but they offer a more precise platform for superb accuracy. I have modern revolver designs, with far better sights, that don't shoot as well. Every Colt and Colt "style" single action I've ever owned, has been superb in the accuracy department. They are "shooters!"

Dan

The Uberti's are very good guns. I have found a few of them that were not very well regulated for point of impact out of the box, which takes a bit of gunsmithing to fix. But once fixed, you have a gun you can really count on. And my experiences accuracy wise were much like Dan's, downright accurate. Finally, I have found the Uberti's much less prone to parts breakage than the Colts, so there's a plus there.

I've owned quite a few Colt-type single actions, including a number of originals. IMO, the best made right now is the USFA. They shade newly-made Colts. I would rate the Colt at about the same level as most Ubertis. The Cimmarron is an Uberti, with Cimmarron being the importer. Any Uberti imported by them is top-shelf. The USFA has the advantage of being made here, whereas the Cimmarron is made in Italy, of course. The USFA is better but probably not enough so to justify the doubling of the price. I would recommend a Cimmarron highly. Any Uberti imported by a top quality importer today will be considerably better than one made in the late eighties.

Just for clarification. Not all Cimarrons were Uberti. Cimarron bought parts from more than one Italian arms maker, and assembled them here in America and did the final finish here as well. The guns come in parts.

That being said, I'm sure Cimarron now uses mostly Uberti and probably solely Uberti. There fit and finish is 1st class. My example, happens to be Armi San Marco. Not considered to be top of the line. It was purchased in the mid 90s. As soon as I bought it and fired it, I sold my 3rd Generation Colt because the Cimarron exceeded the Colt's quality in every detail.

Strangely, I have pistols and revolvers that cost twice as much, but none that shoot better groups. Some are on par, but most - including a couple Ruger Blackhawks - that can't quite do the clover-leaf thing.

On the other hand, every Colt I've ever owned - only 3rd Generations - have also shot consistently tight. I once had a 7.5 inch Colt in .44 Special that would cluster all 5 shots into one intensely ragged hole at 25 yards with factory ammo. I never reloaded for it at the time. Being a poor Air Force Airman, I had to part with it when it came time to fix the car.

Not to dispute what you're saying, but I've never come across that info. IIRC, Cimarron was the company left over from the now-defunct Allen Firearms Co., also located in Texas. My information was related pertaining to currently-made, new Cimarrons anyway. If Cimarron assembles and finishes their model P's here, where do they do so? Do they have a plant in Fredericksburg, Texas or do they do it elsewhere? USFA is the only company I'm aware of who went from importing Ubertis to finishing them here and now making the whole product on Colt's old machinery. I could be wrong though and would like to know the details about Cimarron if I am.

There used to periodically be a rumor that Colt SAA's were simply Ubertis that were finished at the Colt plant. Every once in awhile a gunwriter would either bring it up and further the rumor or debunk it. I dunno.

I've owned firearms from both Armi San Marcos and Uberti and found little difference in them. On some of the older cap and ball pistols, the Ubertis seemed to be finished a bit nicer. Both brands were good guns though. Any later Uberti I have seen or owned, including Cimarron, which is meant to be a replica of a Colt SAA, I would recommend highly. I am only speaking though, of replicas of Colts. I don't consider brass backstraps and full-blued versions to be replicas, since there was nothing to replicate, unless you're mimicking a gun that had the grip frame switched with a Navy or one that had been re-blued in the fifties or sixties. How 'bout some Franzite grips to go with that? heheh An overpolish job wiping out most of the lettering and holing out the screw holes would be in order as well.

At any rate, I'm pretty high on Uberti's reproductions of actual guns whether they have the final finish performed here or in Italy. Pietta makes nice stuff too.

I forgot to add that a quick perusal of Cimarron's site makes no mention of them being finished here, that I could find.

DD, I would be hard-put to find something better than this. I would rather have one than a 1st Generation Colt if I wanted to do much shooting.

http://www.uberti.com/firearms/images/1873_cattleman_frisco_nm_pearl_lg.jpg

The second gun here is very nice too and lacks the $200 worth of grips the first one has. I just don't understand why Uberti insists on putting cylinder pin retaining screws on their guns that stick out. The originals fit flush with the frame unless they'd been replaced with a badly-fitting screw. This is akin to the Japs supposedly copying WWII fighter planes so closely that they even replicated the bullet holes where the plane had been shot down. I'm sure Uberti considers them an improvement, but I don't.

http://www.uberti.com/firearms/images/1873_cattleman_om_chblue_lg.jpg

Cole

I'm only going on the info I had at the time I was investigating a good replacement for the Colt. That was in the early to mid 90s. I was under the impression that Cimarrons were finally finished on parted weapons imported from Italy. At the time, the Cimarron offerings had a clearly different color case than the Italian clones being marketed as whole guns. The hammers had color case as well. One could look at the various offerings and see a completely different finish.

I broke the hammer "half-cock" notch some years after I bought the gun, and Cimarron would not work on it as they no longer imported parts from San Marco. I had to get a replacement from gunpartscorp. It worked like a charm.

Like you, I prefer the "Black Powder" frame of the early 1800s rather than the push button retaining screw that showed up sometime in the 1800s.

Actually, the Colt cap and ball revolvers reissued in the 1980s were in fact Italian parted guns, finally finished by Colt. I don't know about their Peacemakers, having not heard that story. But their reissued cap and ball revolvers were Italian "made" guns.

I don't know if Cimarron finished the weapons themselves, or subcontracted out the chore. But literature of the time, either indicated that the weapons received final finish in the states or that the finish was to specifications not commonly found on the completely imported guns. I could also be mistaken.

All I can comment on.

Edited to provide a link to an article that discusses this concerning Cimarron.

http://www.workathomearticles.net/i...&task=view&id=13764&Itemid=2

Dan

Well here I am in my favorite coffee shop at their computer key board.

A friend of mine is a Colt collector so I've have had a chance to real Colt '73's of the 1800's. Real shooters and it easy to see why Colts were the revolver of choice.

Thanks for the endorsement of Cimarron. I thought they would probably be a good choice now that all of Cimarron's Model "P's" have their patented Cowboy Action Comp action which allegedly elminates the weakness of the Colt.

I'm looking for a fun gun to throw in the Polaris Rzr which I'm hoping to buy next year. Now to caliber, .44 Special or
.45LC/ .45ACP? I'm leaning toward .44 Special.

If you reload, 44/40 is a cool caliber. Sort of like a .41 Special.

Here's my Cimarron in .45 Colt.

You misunderstood what I'm saying about the screw. The screw on many of the new Ubertis stands out unlike the originals did on Colts. It is a whole different discussion than whether a person prefers push pins or screws (black powder frame). If you'll examine one of the newer Ubertis, they have this oversized screw which resembles a rough gunsmith repair from the frontier. I thought this was only on the guns they "antique" but evidently even their finely finished models now have this too if they have the black powder frame. Anyway, if the pics are to be believed. Look at one of their Antique finished guns and you'll see what I mean.

As to the screw vs. push pin, I have no real preference. I kind of like the screw better simply because the real old guns had it and I like close copies, but the push pin is a bit more practical especially if one has an extra cylinder such as 44 Spec./44 WCF or 45 Colt/45 ACP.

DD I think your best choice would be 45 Colt. The Special is kind of underpowered unless you reload. If you really want something commonly available and don't care about the chambering being an old west one, .357 Mag. is your best bet. I would not get 44-40 due to the problems with reloading the brass, intrinsic to the caliber and also the lack of carbide dies. If you aren't reloading it, the factory rounds are at least as anemic as the Special and it is probably a bit harder to come by, even though CAS use it a lot. 44-40 used to be my favorite caliber. In the right gun it will get a lot closer to Magnum velocities than the Special. I believe it actually has a bit more powder capacity than the .44 Magnum. The 45 Colt certainly does but you'd not want to load it or the 44-40 up that way in a Colt or clone.

The 32-20 is an interesting cartridge, but even harder to get than the aforementioned. I like the 45 Colt the best of all of them.

DD
As Cole said, the .44-40 is a touchy reloading proposition. I ruin at least one case every time I reload for it.

Cole

I see what you mean with the take-down screw. I have scads of books featuring original Colts and cannot recall ever seeing it on an original piece.

Dan