I have never owned a blackpowder pistol. I have been thinking about it a long time, but never pulled the trigger on one (pardon the pun).
Not wanting to spend a lot on my first pistol, I ordered the Pedersoli Kentucky in Flint. I have owned numerous Pedersoli long guns and all were adequate to fantastic in the case of my Rocky Mountain Hawken.
Here's the results of my inspection both good and bad:
1)The first thing I noticed is that the slotted touch hole liner had the slot nearly vertical when tightened down. Of course this will allow pan powder to trickle down behind the lock panel. The fix would require an 8mm 90 degree countersink to deepen the countersink a bit to allow another 1/3 turn. I thought maybe I was over reacting so I did 10 test fires and on removing the lock there was significant soot and also unburned priming powder. DANGEROUS.
2) The touch hole liner was very low...so much so that the bottom was below the side flat exposing the top two threads! The hole itself was right at the bottom of the pan. I believe this is a defect when the barrel was drilled as it should have been higher to be completely on the flat and positioned properly on the pan.
3) Upon removing the lock, I could see that the barrel inlet bottom fell away from the barrel the last 1 1/2 inches. I'm not talking about a few MM..it was about 3/8"! So basically, the barrel breech was hanging by the tang instead of having a solid bottom.
4) There were various cosmetic inletting defects, but for this price-point I would expect those. The lock, trigger guard, and side plate were all sunk into the wood and the lip left had chipped in a few places. If one wanted to completely refinish the stock, those could just be sanded down. There was also a small chip by one of the ramrod thimble pins.
5) The sights are not appropriate for a pistol, but I knew this going in and was prepared to change out the huge high ugly sights.
6) The walnut stock was a plain grade which I would certainly expect at this price point. it was nice enough, though.
7) I put 10 shots through it, not focusing on accuracy too much, just shooting. The trigger pull was suprisingly crisp. No issues there at all.
8) Playing with the flint prior to actually shooting, the best I could achieve was mediocre sparking (black english flint). In the 10 actual firings, the pan failed to ignite twice (20%). Each time the pan did ignite, however, the gun went boom! The touch hole liner has significant concave inside and coned outside, so the powder charge is close to the prime.
9) The pan is very, very tiny holding no more than 1 gr of priming powder. It's very thin in width, so the sparks had better be right on to hit the powder at all. One could do a little Dremel work and make that a bit larger.
10) Patent breech. To effectively clean this it really is necessary to take out the touch hole liner each time as the entrance to it is so small I believe cleaning from the muzzle would be inadequate.
11) The gun felt good in my hand. To me it balanced well on aiming and the trigger reach was comfortable.
While I knew I wasn't getting any custom gun and I expected a low-grade wood and inletting issues, I could not overlook the dangerous touch hole liner and the unsupported breech area. I would have been more than happy to have made a winter afternoon project of refinishing the stock, but the touch hole placement is unfixable and building up the barrel inlet is more than I would want to invest in a gun like this. In short, I don't think this one should have ever left he factory. Overall, I was disappointed in Pedersoli's quality with this firearm.
It is going back to Cabela's. I sent them a note telling them this gun should NOT be sold due to the dangerous touch hole issue and they gave me instructions for the return to ensure it goes back to Pedersoli instead of going back into inventory. I do not intend to replace it with another Pedersoli.
Not wanting to spend a lot on my first pistol, I ordered the Pedersoli Kentucky in Flint. I have owned numerous Pedersoli long guns and all were adequate to fantastic in the case of my Rocky Mountain Hawken.
Here's the results of my inspection both good and bad:
1)The first thing I noticed is that the slotted touch hole liner had the slot nearly vertical when tightened down. Of course this will allow pan powder to trickle down behind the lock panel. The fix would require an 8mm 90 degree countersink to deepen the countersink a bit to allow another 1/3 turn. I thought maybe I was over reacting so I did 10 test fires and on removing the lock there was significant soot and also unburned priming powder. DANGEROUS.
2) The touch hole liner was very low...so much so that the bottom was below the side flat exposing the top two threads! The hole itself was right at the bottom of the pan. I believe this is a defect when the barrel was drilled as it should have been higher to be completely on the flat and positioned properly on the pan.
3) Upon removing the lock, I could see that the barrel inlet bottom fell away from the barrel the last 1 1/2 inches. I'm not talking about a few MM..it was about 3/8"! So basically, the barrel breech was hanging by the tang instead of having a solid bottom.
4) There were various cosmetic inletting defects, but for this price-point I would expect those. The lock, trigger guard, and side plate were all sunk into the wood and the lip left had chipped in a few places. If one wanted to completely refinish the stock, those could just be sanded down. There was also a small chip by one of the ramrod thimble pins.
5) The sights are not appropriate for a pistol, but I knew this going in and was prepared to change out the huge high ugly sights.
6) The walnut stock was a plain grade which I would certainly expect at this price point. it was nice enough, though.
7) I put 10 shots through it, not focusing on accuracy too much, just shooting. The trigger pull was suprisingly crisp. No issues there at all.
8) Playing with the flint prior to actually shooting, the best I could achieve was mediocre sparking (black english flint). In the 10 actual firings, the pan failed to ignite twice (20%). Each time the pan did ignite, however, the gun went boom! The touch hole liner has significant concave inside and coned outside, so the powder charge is close to the prime.
9) The pan is very, very tiny holding no more than 1 gr of priming powder. It's very thin in width, so the sparks had better be right on to hit the powder at all. One could do a little Dremel work and make that a bit larger.
10) Patent breech. To effectively clean this it really is necessary to take out the touch hole liner each time as the entrance to it is so small I believe cleaning from the muzzle would be inadequate.
11) The gun felt good in my hand. To me it balanced well on aiming and the trigger reach was comfortable.
While I knew I wasn't getting any custom gun and I expected a low-grade wood and inletting issues, I could not overlook the dangerous touch hole liner and the unsupported breech area. I would have been more than happy to have made a winter afternoon project of refinishing the stock, but the touch hole placement is unfixable and building up the barrel inlet is more than I would want to invest in a gun like this. In short, I don't think this one should have ever left he factory. Overall, I was disappointed in Pedersoli's quality with this firearm.
It is going back to Cabela's. I sent them a note telling them this gun should NOT be sold due to the dangerous touch hole issue and they gave me instructions for the return to ensure it goes back to Pedersoli instead of going back into inventory. I do not intend to replace it with another Pedersoli.
