I am glad to see the number of beautiful pistols in this caliber, I hadn't seen alot of posting regarding 32-20. I just bought my first one on GB and am anxiously waiting its delivery, I really got interested in 32-20 when I bought an old 1895 Winchester from a friend and found what an interesting little cartridge it is. I've reloaded a fair number of different bullets and found that the main problem with crumpling the cases, at least from my experience was due to catching the lip of the cartridge with the edge of the deprimer stem. The cartridge needs to be firmly positioned in the case holder, like many small base cartridges and fed into the de-primer/resizer die. I also beveled the edge of the de-primer stem so that it would be a smoother transition rather than a blunt surface for the cartridge edge to catch on, haven't had a problem since and have resized at least 200 rnds.
I have a question among those that would go to the effort of re-plating a nickel pistol, who would you use. I called S&W and they informed me that they wouldn't work on a pistol that old, I've looked at a few on-line and some charged prices that I felt were ridiculus considering the probable devaluation of having the process done to an original pistol. Is it better to keep the original finish that is marginal, or have it professionally re-nickeled in terms of collector value. Or is it something one has done to satisfy their personal desire to have it looking as good as possible with no intention of letting it go having learned from previous mistakes. Thanks for all your pictures...