Hi Standard Sentinel .22 Revolver

A new pistol came to join the family today. it's not exactly something that I had been looking for, but still, I certainly couldn't turn it down. It is a Hi Standard Sentinel nine shot 22 long rifle revolver. looking it over carefully, it's condition appears to be essentially new and unused. I already own a very similar revolver to this one, also built by Hi Standard but sold through Sears and Roebuck as a JC Higgins model 88. the Sears revolver is also chrome plated.

The finish on this revolver is also a bit questionable, as it seems to scratch very easily, and appears to be not far removed from satin finish spray paint. The barrel, however, appears to be very high quality with excellent bluing. The barrel does not look like it came from the same factory that produced the rest of the gun!

The rear sight is drift adjustable for windage, but it is not adjustable for elevation. At close range it seems to shoot about 2 inches high. I wish it had an adjustable rear sight for elevation.

The trigger pull is heavy and crunchy, but not that much worse than what is now found on a lot of production guns. A bit of gunsmithing and a trigger job may make a lot of difference. With the heavy trigger pull and heavy hammer spring, this little revolver practically crushes the rim of the cartridge. I've fired close to 100 rounds of older Remington Golden bullet ammunition and did not have a single round fail to fire. Of course, being a revolver, failure to feed is not an issue!

I have to admit that shooting this little revolver was a lot of fun, even if I wasn't very accurate. With my eyesight, of course, and iron sights, my expectations are never very high anyway. The grip on the gun is quite small even for my relatively small hands. I think I would do better shooting this revolver if the grip was a bit larger. Even so, it was still lots of fun to shoot. A bit of a trigger job, and it will probably be even more fun yet!

When you consider that these revolvers are readily available and very inexpensive used, if you come across one of these you may just want to add it to your collection, just like I did!