I'm sorry to hear you are having problems finding the reproductions of the fun old timers, in Canada. It's too bad that the first importer you have found there has decided to sell only Palmetto products. I recently bought a Palmetto made 1849 Hartford pocket . At first galance, the finish looks fine, but when we started cleaning the storage oil from it, we soon became aware that the fit leaves a lot to be desired. The hammer was noticably narrower than the mortise in the frame, and you could move it around. in spite of all the room, the hammer sat at an angle from right on the bottom, to left on the top. scraping the left side of the mortise every time. Then, once we had it cleaned up, and attempted to load it, we found the mortise for the ram on the loading lever was so oversized, that the ram could move around in it with 3/16ths of an inch "tolerence". Worse yet, the extra room was all in the wrong direction, so you still could not get the ram to center on the ball. Now, those short loading levers under 4 inch barrels never seat bullets easily, but it took about 5 times the effort to get a ball seated as it takes to seat one in my friends Uberti .31 pocket. We used 9 balls to get 5 in the chamber,as some would get so smashed by the off kilter ram, that they would not seat. We went out to shoot it, and had to cock and shoot about 15 times to get the 5 shot cylinder empty. The hammer was being dampened by hitting the frame a glancing blow before getting to the percussion cap. The group we shot at 15 yards was a four shot group that measured 29 inches the short way, and 37 inches the long way. The 5th shot that missed the back board could have opened the group to a mile, for all we know. It might have been because the balls were so deformed during seating, but I suspect the chambers in the cylinder don't line up with the barrel. I took it back. This was only one gun, and I won't go so far as to declare to the world that Palmetto makes nothing but junk, but I will never buy another Palmetto without being able to look it over real well. Between my friend and I , we have 5 Uberti and one Pietta, cap and ball revovers, and they all function and perform very well, so I will stay with those makers in the future. DO NOT buy the Palmetto unless you get to inspect it first. Better yet, work of your retailer to stock other makers. cowpox
