HomeSmith Trainwreck: Leroy Brown

[Shotguncoach]

This .32 Hand Ejector Model of 1903 - First Change was found wandering around the bowels of the internet a few weeks ago and has been adopted into the Shotguncoach Home for Wayward Smiths.

If I'm reading my Supica correctly, serial number 45885 puts him in the 1906 time frame. The last 119 years have been difficult and he's collected some scars along the way but everything still works....and that magic second leaf spring isn't broken.

If everything works out, when we're done I may be able to go to town with a .32 gun in my pocket for fun.

Welcome to project Leroy Brown.

 

[Shotguncoach]

Leroy's most obvious issue is that he's missing his front sight blade due to a barrel amputation. Whoever did the work was kind enough to leave all the patent information on the barrel though.

Judging from the appearance of the metal in that area, it appears that there was no attempt to re-attach a front sight after the barrel was cut and Leroy was carried for a long time without it.

Being an I frame, Leroy does actually fit in a pocket very well. If the person who carried Leroy wanted something that would primarily be used at short distance, say perhaps across a card table or inside an elevator, there really isn't a need for a front sight.

 

[Shotguncoach]

Other than the barrel cut, Leroy appears to be 100% original. All the serial numbers match including the right stock panel.

Unfortunately both stock panels are broken. I'm fresh out of 119 year old I frame stocks so I'll be on the lookout for something suitable. I suppose I could shorten a pair of J frame stocks but if I can I'd rather have the real thing. We'll have to see how (and if) Leroy shoots before spending any money on wood though.

 

[Shotguncoach]

I'm sure it's a big surprise to everyone that Leroy needs just a touch of work before heading to the range.

I'm not sure if the current approved language allows me to say this, but Leroy is a little slow. Maybe I should phrase that as rotationally challenged to make HR happy. Anyway....carry up is late on 4 of the 6 chambers, and the other two snap in just as the hammer comes to full cock.

We're not going to worry about that yet because if you give Leroy a good shake he sounds like a castanet. Endshake is .011" and we're just a hair (a red one, to be precise) short of maximum rear gauge. Fixing that could potentially also take care of our carry up problem.

Leroy's chamber walls and bore look a whole lot like the bottom of a pan of burned brownies that was scraped with a fork. But again, if the primary use is at what one gunwriter in the 1980's used to call "halitosis distance", it may not matter. I'll get back to you on that after a good soaking and scrubbing.

As an added bonus, Leroy has had some custom embellishment done on the backstrap. Hopefully those lines are just decoration and not someone keeping track of something.....

 

[Shotguncoach]

So what makes Leroy special?

Leroy is a pre-rebound slide design. Take a moment and count the leaf springs in the pictures...I'll wait here until you get back.

I have two other pre-rebound guns (The Geezer and Mr. Fitz) but they are of a slightly different design. Both of those guns are K frames with the trigger return leaf spring pinned to the frame. Even though Leroy is an I frame, he is much more well endowed in the spring department....both his springs go all the way down and the strain screw passes through the trigger return spring.

Amazingly, all the pieces are still in place and everything works. Leroy is worth fixing just for that......

 

[Shotguncoach]

Most repair/recovery jobs begin with a good cleaning, but Leroy had a layer of surface rust that I wanted to use, so his rehabilitation started with 45 minutes boiling in distilled water and a visit from the carding wheel. Right now he's relaxing in a sandwich bag covered in RIG #2 oil.

The degreasing, boiling, and oil soaking should help break up some of the glock buildup in the chambers and bore. Tomorrow after church we'll begin scrubbing and endshaking.

More to come.....

 

[Shotguncoach]

I have to say that Leroy is quite possibly the dirtiest firearm I have ever had the pleasure of working on.

After being blasted out with brake cleaner....

After 45 minutes in boiling water....

After a 24 hour soak in RIG #2....

After being blasted out with Remoil....

I still spent the better part of an hour scraping mung and gack off the inside of the frame and from the various parts. All the little black spots on the paper towel are chunks that were scraped out of the frame. Not the barrel or cylinder...the inside of the frame.

The good news is that Leroy is probably the cleanest he has been in 100 years.

The bad news is that the accumulation of schmutz on the inside appears to have been what made Leroy work as well as he did. Now that things are clean, we have a bad case of hammer push off that wasn't there before and the endshake has increased to .012".

 

[Shotguncoach]

The chambers cleaned up reasonably well.

The bore? Yeah...that. Have you ever cleaned out the grease trap at a Chinese restaurant? After soaking and scrubbing the bore looks almost that good. I think our goal of being able to put 6 shots into the A-zone across a card table is still possible though.

The endshake shims that I have on hand are all too big to fit into an I frame cylinder, so we're at a stop for the moment while my buddy Lance at Triggershims.com fixes me up with some that will fit.

Leroy is back together and is resting his clean self in a Crown Royal bag until the mailman brings the little bits of magic to fix Leroy's endshake problems. One thing at a time....

 

[daveboy]

Really enjoy reading of your work to bring Leroy back to life. I'm thinking of purchasing one very similar. It will be my first .32 and also my first I-frame. I'm pretty familiar with taking the later smiths apart and getting them back together. I see there are differences with these models. Is there anything I should be particularly aware of on a .32 Hand Ejector?

 

[Pig Hunter]

Are you in need of a razor for your shoe? You can fix the grips with epoxy colored black. Put some kind of release agent on the frame and fill the voids a bit too full. When cured remove and cut , sand ,grind to shape after your own particular idiom. If you don't want to cut a slot or dovetail in the barrel, a ring around the muzzle has been used or a piece of cold rolled steel could fairly easily be fashioned and a blade or even a shotgun bead could be added. There was a very old thread about belly guns that had pictures of lots of old time ideas for dealing with a lack of front sights.

 

[austintexas]

Old beat up guns

Years ago I picked up 5 non-working 32 I frames at a pawnshop. $5.00 apiece. Good long soak in Eds Red, reassemble and they were ready to become trading material.
SWCA 892
PS, This was before waiting periods or Fed Forms

 

[Shotguncoach]

Really enjoy reading of your work to bring Leroy back to life. I'm thinking of purchasing one very similar. It will be my first .32 and also my first I-frame. I'm pretty familiar with taking the later smiths apart and getting them back together. I see there are differences with these models. Is there anything I should be particularly aware of on a .32 Hand Ejector?

I don't have my Standard Catalog in front of me so I can't give you the exact date (someone will shortly), but the later versions went to the rebound slide design that we're all familiar with. Leroy's design (first change) isn't bad to work with once you get used to sneaking that trigger return spring past the hand.

Now that I think about it, I'm wondering if it would be easier to put the hand in last instead of as a unit with the trigger. I'm so used to those two parts being one "assembly" that it never occurred to me at the bench.

The only real difficulty is that everything is just so tiny...and yes, I see you M frame weirdos in the back waving and yelling "hold my beer!"

To give some perspective to just how tiny Leroy is, here is a picture of him with some random junky thing that I use as a wheel chock for my trailer.

 

[Shotguncoach]

@PigHunter - I don't plan on hustling anyone named Slim, so I won't need the razor blade. (yeah, I know, different song )

Regarding the missing front sight, I'm not really sure what the future holds for Leroy. I bought Leroy because he was cheap and he was a design I hadn't worked on before....but mainly because he was cheap. Right now I don't have an end game in mind. I'm just having fun fixing stuff and learning.

If this barrel stays, I've been toying with the idea of learning how to silver solder and using a Barber dime as a front sight. My design uses 3 dimes put together like an Oreo cookie except that the outside two pieces are only 1/3 the height of the center piece...essentially making a base and blade out of the stack of dimes. It would be some interesting filing to match the profile of the barrel, but it would give much more area for the solder to adhere and it would be unique.

 

[stansdds]

Are you in need of a razor for your shoe?

Only if he is bad, bad.

 

[stansdds]

I'm not particularly interested in revolvers this old, but I have to say that this is a great rescue.

 

[Old_Cop]

You rescue some amazing revolvers, I can't wait for the end result.

 

[Pig Hunter]

Just silver soldering with the thin strips of solder material is not hard. it uses a different type of flux and a lot more heat to get it to flow. practice on some cold rolled steel. the flux and heat will mess up bluing. I've never tried real silver brazing.

 

[Protocall_Design]

There is low temp silver solder. It flows at a much lower temp than brazing, is much stronger than lead solder.

 

[Shotguncoach]

There is low temp silver solder. It flows at a much lower temp than brazing, is much stronger than lead solder.

That is exactly what I'm thinking of using. Lower temperature appeals to me in many ways outside of the normal considerations.....I really did not enjoy the debridement treatments after my last experience with high temps.

 

[Shotguncoach]

There are quite a few things that I don't like about today's digital world, but boy howdy does it make finding obsolete parts easier.

I remember back in the day when finding parts meant thumbing through copies of the Shotgun News at the library, hoping to find a phone number or some place to send a postcard. Long distance phone call charges, paper order forms, checks in the mail, and maybe something will show up before Labor Day.

Now it's a couple of searches, a little clicky clicky, and in two days this shows up on my doorstep.

Granted, I paid more for the parts kit than I did for Leroy, but I won't need all the parts and the others will go into the library for the next wayward Smith. I'm getting to where I have a rather sizeable investment in my parts library and I treat it as such: an investment.

I still intend to fix the endshake problem and take Leroy to the range at least once "as is" to establish a baseline. I don't know where he'll go from there, but he has more roads to chose from now.