Hope all of you in .41 Land are doing well and buying up more guns...
Thought I was about done with new .41s but then one came up that caught my eye on GunBroker a couple of weeks ago..
Was advertised as a 1965 57 6" blue with the presentation case and screw driver. Pictures showed quite a bit of holster wear but zero rust or pitting. What was really stunning were the grips...it had the original Cokes and the grip wear didn't match the blue wear...they looked like they had just come out of the factory. The case had been relined in velvet. Starting price...$1195. Have seen the same gun in excellent condition with the original grips and PC sell for $2k+ wherever they come up for sale... I bid...no one else did.
Came home a couple of days ago...honest blue wear but except for a tiny ding on the heal of the right grip panel the Cokes were flawless. Not much of a turn line, nothing above the flashgap, face of the cylinder clean enough to eat off of and no wear marks on the recoil shield...I'd be surprised if it had more than a box of shells through it.
Cylinder opened smooth as butter but didn't spin free at all... Action was smooth... Pulled the whole gun down. Oil was congealed in both the action and crane... Cleaned it all up, polished the rebound slide, put in a 13# rebound spring, put a little lube on everything and buttoned it back up...and it is smooth as butter...warm butter.
Contacted the Seller who was a gun dealer about 75 miles north of me. Asked him what he knew about the gun...nothing...another dealer had asked him to sell a couple of guns for him and he did. Asked if he could find out anything about the gun as the wear didn't match between the grips and the gun... A day later he writes back that the other dealer said he had taken it in from an old Maine bear guide...it was his guiding/backup gun. The reason the grips looked so good is that after he bought the gun he, like most of us, didn't like shooting the gun with the wooden grips on it and it had "rubber" grips on it all these years. Pure luck he still had them and put them back on to sell the gun...
Will make fine "shooter"...Bob
Last edited by SuperMan; 02-13-2022 at 09:56 PM.
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