"Soft" steel in Pietta revolvers

[mykeal]

Yesterday one of the senior members made reference to the use of "soft" steel in Pietta revolvers. I asked for a reference for that claim in a reply in the original thread, then thought better of it - this should be discussed in it's own thread. Thus this new topic.

Does anyone have any information about the use of material in Pietta revolvers that might be considered "soft" steel, or substandard/substrength steel?

I should mention that I have 4 Pietta revolvers made in 1977, 1981, 1982 and 2001; all are used but none show any signs of weakness or substandard materials. Also, I am not personally aware of any data, anecdotal or scientific, regarding failure of any Pietta revolvers due to lack of strength or material weakness.

This is a serious issue, and I would greatly appreciate the member who made the comment, or anyone else for that matter, providing any information they have on the subject.

Thanks.

[Flint]

Probably not a serious issue, as I don't know of any failures.  I have a Navy Arms Pietta which barrel unscrewed while shooting, but an application of Locktite solved that.

I noted the barrel steel as pretty soft when I recut the forcing cone with a Brownell's tool.  The softness could result in early bore rifling wear, but with soft lead bullets, it probably won't occur in our lifetime.  I shoot 45Colt in R&D cylinders in my Piettas, and have seen no splitting or damage to the forcing cone area, which, with the exposed threads, would seem vulnerable to damage with the harder, heavier cartridge loaded bullets and smokeless powder.

The soft parts that do make trouble are inside, the hand and bolt are not as hard as they should be, and particularly with a conversion cylinder made of 4140 or 4150 steel, the hand does get chewed up some.  I was thinking that new, hardened steel replacement hands for both Ubertis and Piettas could have some market, to go with the Kirst and R&D cylinders.  The Kirst is particularly hard on the soft Italian hands, as the rachet is like a series of chisels, cutting away at the hand nose.

[mykeal]

Thanks, Flint. Perhaps the member's thoughts were on the action parts; that wasn't stated. The context was Pietta used soft steel as opposed to Uberti, and you seem to feel that both the Italian manufacturer's action parts fall into the soft area. Given that the reference was to action parts as opposed to cylinders the seriousness of the issue diminishes considerably in my mind. I guess I had a suspicion that was the case as, like you, I am not aware of any problems with Pietta revolvers failing due to substandard steel. I thought it best to ask, however.