North American Arms Factory Tour: new at AllOutdoor.

4 Responses to North American Arms Factory Tour: new at AllOutdoor.

1. Lyle says:

   May 17, 2016 at 12:18 pm

   I broke down and got an Earl. It’s well made and so far appears reliable. It is accurate enough, but the fixed sights are so far off as to make using them more of an impediment than an aid in hitting your target. POI is feet off of POA at ten yards. I wrote the company and instead of a solution I was given instructions as to how to get hold of So And So, who might have something to say on the subject. They tossed the ball right back to me, and so I figure I’m on my own.

   I’d have to void the warrantee by cutting off the front sight and dovetailing in a new, hand-made one. The gun with it’s longer barrel and decent sight radius has potential and so, some day, I’ll get around to it. Until then it’s pretty much just something that looks pretty.

   I have an Uberti 1862 Colt Police, which is only slightly larger than the Earl and in the same price range. It too was hitting clownishly far off of POA, but it shoots groups of under three inches at 25 yards. Having installed a new, far taller front sight on it means I can now hit things with it. What a concept.

   If you get one of these admittedly very cool guns, figure on it being a belly gun (contact distanced not much farther) only unless you want to customize it. I’d like to see NAA take it from “hey, cool, and it even shoots” to “hey, cool, and it even hits things”.
   • Oleg Volk says:

     May 17, 2016 at 12:21 pm

     Unregulated sights suck. Can the rear groove be adjusted instead?
2. Lyle says:

   May 17, 2016 at 5:53 pm

   If so, there’d be scant little remaining of the top strap. The POI needs to come down a whole big bunch, and then a bit to one side. Best would be a dovetailed, i.e. drift adjustable, taller front sight. I could turn the barrel slightly to reach windage zero, but then the flats wouldn’t line up to the frame. I’ve dealt with this before as stated above, and so it’s not a big hurdle except for my time.

   Better yet would be if they offered a regulated gun for another 50 or 100 dollars. I’d take that offer in a heartbeat. Hard to do with the dual caliber setup of course, but if it hit to POA with any one load I’d be happy. I suppose they’re trying to make a price point but I prefer the “If you build it, they will come” philosophy.

   As I told them in my initial letter; “golf balls at ten yards”. In this day and age I don’t think it’s too much to ask. That’d be about a seventeen MOA pistol, if you want to think about it that term, or a little over four inches at 25 yards. I have 200 dollar guns that will do as well or better, but they needed custom sights to make any use of it. I think it’s accurate enough as is, but the accuracy is of little use when it hits so far off of POA.

   The Earl is a potentially very fun gun, and it would be good on squirrels and rabbits too, once you got the sights regulated.

   Another possible issue would be factory holsters. I bet my Colt Police, for example, would not fit in the holsters made for it, now that the blade front sight is about three or four times taller than the original bead sight. That means if I want a holster it’d almost certainly have to be a custom holster.
3. Paul Koning says:

   May 18, 2016 at 10:54 am

   Curious. My .22 mini seems to have reasonable sights (though it’s hard to hold so I don’t expect much accuracy for that reason).

   The one thing that still bums me out is that I sent mine back to the factory for their free cylinder upgrade (from the original plain cylinder to the new “safety notch” one). They did that, but in the process they changed everything else as well. In particular, they ground off the original text on the frame and replaced it by the current factory address. Annoying, because the original text had their California address, before they fled from that state, and that seemed like a neat thing to have. It bugs me that they never even asked.

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