AManWearingAHat
Member
Quick background, bought a Model 14 Target Masterpiece off of Gunbroker for my better half to shoot (so I can shoot mine again 
). Suffice to say it has some issues.... I believe the seller misrepresented the item and I am dealing with that.
Anyway, I have no intentions of letting this poor thing stay in the state its in. I've been working on K frames for a bit but I'd like to go over the list of planned work as a sanity check. If y'all have suggestions as to how I can do a higher quality job, please let me know!
1. The rear sight was chopped to be shorter and it was widened. Cuts were done poorly and none are straight.
Fix: Replace rear sight blade and windage screw. Does anyone know the correct height rear sight blade for a 14-4?
2. The front sight had a dot added to it. The dot was added with a metal punch and nail polish. It is off center and looks hideous. One side of the sight is slightly peened.
The partridge front sight is a one piece unit, the blade cannot be removed separately. I can see the pin holding the ramp and blade in but it has been ground flush with the barrel and blued (beautiful attention to detail). I will eventually send this gun back to Smith and Wesson to be re-blued. Will they be able to replace the front sight as well for me? I don't feel comfortable that I could do a good job of trying to remove that pin and feel it best left to S&W if they can do it.
I wont be able to afford this work for a while. I was thinking, in the mean time, of milling the face of the sight down deep enough to remove the dot, making sure the whole thing is flat, and then cold bluing. Thoughts?
3. The hammer block is missing. Lost or removed, who knows.
Replace
4. The double action is completely non functional.
I've got the gun totally apart. Bubba was kind enough to not take a file to the trigger or hammer. The original strain screw was discarded, and a new screw was used in its place. From test firing, the gun was set to barely be reliable in single action. New strain screw and this should be all fixed.
5. The nose of the thumb latch was cut off.
A previous owner wanted a larger thumb latch and poorly attempted to fit an N-Frame latch to a K-Frame gun. When it didn't fit, get the dremel! It binds up and leaves a section of the bolt exposed which has accumulated a good bit of filth. Replace the thumb latch with a proper one.
6. The previous owner poorly attempted to polish the frame behind the rebound slide. This one is just bad. Its pretty clear they were trying to file off the milling marks, but couldn't work the file in to actually cover the whole area he was trying to get at. The kicker? The file marks are coarser than the milling marks that were there originally.
Fix : Ill polish this up correctly and finish with a rouge cloth. I know no one sees this, but its so poorly done. I take pride in my work and I don't want that looming under the hood.
That about covers it. Mostly easy fixes, but very frustrating to see someone would do such a half *** lazy job on a target masterpiece. If y'all have any suggestions about how I could do a better job or answer to my couple of questions I'd really appreciate it. Thanks for reading!
). Suffice to say it has some issues.... I believe the seller misrepresented the item and I am dealing with that.Anyway, I have no intentions of letting this poor thing stay in the state its in. I've been working on K frames for a bit but I'd like to go over the list of planned work as a sanity check. If y'all have suggestions as to how I can do a higher quality job, please let me know!
1. The rear sight was chopped to be shorter and it was widened. Cuts were done poorly and none are straight.
Fix: Replace rear sight blade and windage screw. Does anyone know the correct height rear sight blade for a 14-4?
2. The front sight had a dot added to it. The dot was added with a metal punch and nail polish. It is off center and looks hideous. One side of the sight is slightly peened.
The partridge front sight is a one piece unit, the blade cannot be removed separately. I can see the pin holding the ramp and blade in but it has been ground flush with the barrel and blued (beautiful attention to detail). I will eventually send this gun back to Smith and Wesson to be re-blued. Will they be able to replace the front sight as well for me? I don't feel comfortable that I could do a good job of trying to remove that pin and feel it best left to S&W if they can do it.
I wont be able to afford this work for a while. I was thinking, in the mean time, of milling the face of the sight down deep enough to remove the dot, making sure the whole thing is flat, and then cold bluing. Thoughts?
3. The hammer block is missing. Lost or removed, who knows.
Replace
4. The double action is completely non functional.
I've got the gun totally apart. Bubba was kind enough to not take a file to the trigger or hammer. The original strain screw was discarded, and a new screw was used in its place. From test firing, the gun was set to barely be reliable in single action. New strain screw and this should be all fixed.
5. The nose of the thumb latch was cut off.
A previous owner wanted a larger thumb latch and poorly attempted to fit an N-Frame latch to a K-Frame gun. When it didn't fit, get the dremel! It binds up and leaves a section of the bolt exposed which has accumulated a good bit of filth. Replace the thumb latch with a proper one.
6. The previous owner poorly attempted to polish the frame behind the rebound slide. This one is just bad. Its pretty clear they were trying to file off the milling marks, but couldn't work the file in to actually cover the whole area he was trying to get at. The kicker? The file marks are coarser than the milling marks that were there originally.
Fix : Ill polish this up correctly and finish with a rouge cloth. I know no one sees this, but its so poorly done. I take pride in my work and I don't want that looming under the hood.
That about covers it. Mostly easy fixes, but very frustrating to see someone would do such a half *** lazy job on a target masterpiece. If y'all have any suggestions about how I could do a better job or answer to my couple of questions I'd really appreciate it. Thanks for reading!
