Beware of inexpensive gun kits

[frogwalking]

A good friend bought a rifle kit for an inexpensive price several years ago. He tried to build it with my coaching and made considerable progress, but finally gave up. He asked me to finish it fir him. He had disassembled the Siler lock to inlet it piece at a time, as I suggested, but had not completed the inletting. I began to reassemble the lock, beginning with the tumbler and hammer when I discovered that the hammer is a very poor fit to the square tumbler shaft. This surprised me as I have disassembled and reassembled a number of Jim Chambers locks and never seen this before. All my previous experience has been with locks assembled in Jim's shop. It turns out that the kit provider had bought the lock kit from Chambers, built it in-house, and advertised it as a Siler lock. Please be aware that a Siler is not necessary a Siler. If it was bought from Jim as a kit, and built by others, the quality of the finished product may not be what you were expecting.

 

[silly goose]

I've experienced that myself, and now only buy Chamber's built locks. Not worth the pittance of savings. Although I do have one that came from a fellow who knows what he's doing. It's a Chamber's lock that he assembled and showed some love to, and man that thing is amazing. Sure fire and fantastic on flints.

 

[wattlebuster]

I have learned thru some hard lessons that a bargain aint always a bargain. Now I do my research before buying anything an buy what I consider the best no matter the price even if I have to wait a while to save up the bucks

 

[ohio ramrod]

As John Arbuckel always said: "You get what you pay for!" :idunno:

 

[Pete G]

I had a similar experience with a Siler that wasn't a Chambers. No problems really but the feather spring screw was drilled in a different place from the dimple indicating where it should be. That's when I figured out that it wasn't assembled in the Chambers shop.