Worst Pistols

[Many Klatch]

We have all talked about great pistols that look great and shoot great: but lets talk about the worst ones. Zonie has a well stated disregard for the New Orleans Aces.

I have a pair of Japanese smoothbore "Pirate Pistols" that were more kit than gun. One needed a new frizzen, mainspring and recutting of the tumbler before it would work. Both needed massive wood removal before they actually looked like a pistol. I finished them with black paint and steel wool. But I only have $125 invested in pair. They shoot as well as you can expect a .60 and a .64 smoothbore to do. At least the barrels appear to be safe.

So what other ugly guns have you had pass through your hands?

Many Klatch

 

[Zonie]

The Ace is a piece of fine craftsmanship when it is compared with CLASSIC ARMS PEPPERBOX.

This is a total piece of manure.
It doesn't look very much like a pepperbox. Even removing 1/2 a pound of metal from the barrels doesn't help it.

The hammer only rises when the trigger is pulled when it feels like it (which isn't often).

It is the one gun I made from a kit that I never could get to fire.

Had the REAL pepperboxes looked and worked like the Classic Arms pepperbox no one would ever have heard of a "Pepperbox Pistol" because no one would have been foolish enough to have bought one.

As much fun as Mark Twain had at poking fun at the pepperbox of his day he would have been speachless when talking about this thing. (He wrote a very humorous account of the firing of a pepperbox stating that it was dangerous to everything around it except the target).

 

[BAC]

The "Twister" by Classic Arms!
Just put one together. I bought it from private party still in the box. The barrels looked like they came out of a gin mill. Ha! Ha! It took a lot of fitting,grinding and sanding. Threw away the cheap plastic grips. Made some out of a apricot tree. Yeah, the tree was destroyed in the "Cedar Fire" here in San Diego, Ca. So I saved the wood for projects. It doesn't look bad.

Bob

 

[wulf]

Cheap guns aren't worth the powder that will
blow them to hell..I never settled for second best
and saved until I could get the "real thing"..
That's just me for what it is...are...am..

 

[Don]

I have both the Ace and the Twister and had to do considerable tinkering with both.. I'm a stubborn cus so I kept at it till I got both working with a measure of reliability. If the Pelosi-Obama cabal succeeds in taking our modern guns I have some comfort in knowing that I have something that will throw lead.Not my first choice or even my second but I know they will shoot.

Don

 

[blacksmithman64]

:hmm: Had a fella a couple weeks ago wanted to trade me TWO ace pistol kits for a horn...turned him down...after reading this thread I think I done good! :rotf:

 

[mazo kid]

I have no experience with the Ace or Twister, but did put a Pepperbox together. I thought I did a fair job at removing unwanted wood but just polished the barrel(s). What a club of a hammer! I finished it up and sold it at the next rendezvous I went to. Turned a $55 profit and was glad to be rid of it as I have an original Allen and Thurber that the repro was obviously not copied from!

 

[Bob Riegl]

:v Did the pepperbox---what a piece of manure---so the rest of the Ace line isn't any better. Just watch out for MTV's Indian imports they are not only manure but dangerous IMHO. :hmm:

 

[JN01]

Screw barrel flintlock pocket pistol made by Palmetto. It wasn't cheap (I believe it was like a couple hundred bucks from Dixie Gun Works) but the quality was on par with the pot metal "non-firing replica" guns that you can buy. Nothing fit properly together. You couldn't close the frizzen on the pan with a flint installed as it extended too far forward. When you unscrewed the barrel, the area where the powder chamber should be was not drilled out. Not that it would fire anyway as the frizzen spring was about 3 times heavier than the main spring. Wouldn't even make a good wall hanger.

 

[sequoia]

I found one of the "Duck Foot" pistols in my fathers workshop after he died. It was one ugly piece of metal. None of the barrels screwed in fully and it looked like it would blow up if you tried to shoot it.

 

[Poor Private]

Those CVA brass pistol kits are a piece of manure also. I bought one of the 62 pocket police and never got it to work correctly. Also 3 other people tried- I told whoever could get it to work could have it. It's now in a shadow box hanging up on the wall in the living room. I won't go into what I and others went thru, but I won't buy another CVA kit again.

 

[Zonie]

Although I've never heard of a Classic Arms pistol blowing up I suppose it's a possibility.
As I mentioned, I never have been able to get that pepperbox to fire.

Speaking from hear-say, another true piece of manure is the Palmetto Italy made Charleville Pistol.
As I understand it, this flintlock pistol will barely make a spark, the pan cover fits so poorly that the prime will fall out if the pistol is tipped to the side and the trigger pull almost bends the trigger before it will release the cock.

About a year ago, I decided to buy one of these from Dixie even though I knew of the pistols faults.
The original Charleville was the pistol that North based the first U.S. Martial pistol on and I thought that owning one of these Palmetto guns might be ineresting if only from the historical standpoint.
When I placed my order, Dixie said it was on back order. After waiting 6 months I called them and was told it was still on back order.
I told them they had one less pistol to back order and canceled my purchase.
I still think it would be interesting to own one of these but not for shooting.

 

[Many Klatch]

Zonie, I was surprised to get so many different guns mentioned. It will be interesting to see how many finally make the list.

Maybe we should come up with a Top 10 Alltime Junk Pieces of #&$@ list so we all know what to avoid. Heck we might even wind up with a top 20.

Many Klatch

 

[blacksmithman64]

OR A TOP 100 !

 

[bebloomster]

I'll have to go along with Jacob Neumann on this one... that Palmento flint pocket pistol is indeed a POS. Couldn't hit a 2 liter soda bottle at 4 feet with it... that is if I could get to to fire at all.

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

Many years ago I was given a flintlock pistol made in Spain. It had never been fired and there were no scrape marks on the frizzen. I cleaned it up and noticed that the ramrod hung up half way down the bore. Thinking it might be loaded (and seriously overcharged) I tried to get the ball out with my puller, but that hung up too and wouldn't screw into anything. Finally pulled the breech plug--which turned out to be barely finger tight--and was a bit surprised to find that apparently they had bored the barrel half way from one end and then turned it around and finished boring from the other end. And they didn't meet in the middle by a noticeable amount. I put it all back together and put a flint in the cock. Just for the heck of it I cocked it and closed the frizzen and fired it. The frizzen snapped off cleanly at the point where it became the pan cover. This is the worst muzzleloading firearm that I have ever owned or seen! Oddly, the screws had some of the prettiest bluing on them that I've ever seen. They were the only bits of the gun that didn't get tossed and were used on another gun a few years later. Guess it wasn't a total loss after all. :thumbsup:

 

[renovato]

For my experiences, the worst pistols I've ever encountered are ANY of the Classic Arms kits. Over the decades I've built most of them at one time or another. The Duckfoot, the Pepperbox, Snake Eyes, Elgin Cutlass and the Twister. They were all absolute junk! The Elgin Cutlass needed much metal removal from the blade before firing, or the ball would hit the blade!

On the positive side, the Pepperbox was a hoot when it chainfired. It did so in a slow, controlled manner so you kinda got a "full auto" muzzleloader effect. Hey, I was a teenager at the time! :haha:

A distant second was some of the CVA revolvers in the mid '80s. I have had 3 that were completely unfireable, including their "Officer and Gentleman" set. The 1858 Remmy from the set was so poorly timed that if fired, it would probably blow up in your hand. The little pocket pistol in the set looked like the barrel reamer exploded in the barrel and they just kept turning it. There's a giant cavern in the middle of the bore that has no rifling, only big deep, sharp, radial gouges that would shred a ball if fired. Luckily, I only bought the set for display, but it sure wasn't a good value since neither gun can be fired.

 

[aap2]

In 1969 I scraped together $29 for a Dixie Gun Works 67cal Tower flintlock pistol plus an additional $8 to have them "adjust the lock to spark with perfection". It did spark for about a week before the frizzen needed to be rehardened, but by then the mainspring was too weak to do much anyway. The entire pistol was really crude, but the barrel was properly breeched (some tower flintlocks aren't), but that pistol got me started into flintlocks as well as teaching me how to: reshape a stock, shape and install a mainspring, fit and harden a replacement frizzen...in short, how to replace or repair almost any part. A group of fellow tower pistol shooters used to have informal "matches" shooting .648 lead balls at a large target 50 feet downrange. Few hits were recorded and anyone who got their pistol to fire 5 times in a row won a six-pack. This has to be one of the all-time worst pistols, but I still have it.

 

[Many Klatch]

Yeah, I have a pair of them :barf:. If you consider them to be a kit then you won't be surprised. I think all the smoothbore Tower guns are questionable. The Japanese/Dixie ones have a good barrel as far as I can tell from my pair, but everything else needs work.

Many Klatch

 

[mazo kid]

OK all, here is your chance to own three of the worst pistols in one fell swoop!! http://gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.asp?Item=127395173