K frame hand help

[Buddiiee]

Ok, here's my problem. On this 1905 5 screw, I installed a new Power Custom oversized cylinder stop that had to be fitted. I fitted it and finally got it to start working, but the revolver now developed another problem; at the verry end of the double action trigger squeeze, you can feel the mechanism hit a small stop if you will before the trigger locks the hammer back and lets it go. I finally traced it down to the hand. Right at the end of the trigger pull I can see that the cylinder rotates all the way and locks into where it needs to lock into, and the hand is underneath the pawls on the extractor, still trying to force the cylinder around which it can't because it's locked, so the only way the trigger can continue it's rearward travel to full lock is if you just keep pulling the trigger and have the hand (blue arrow) slip off of the pawl (red arrow) to the right, which then will allow the trigger to keep pulling, connect the sear and let it off.
But if I were to keep moving it like this, this action would then start to wear the right nip of the extractor pawl off eventually, and that would be bad. Any one have ANY idea how a new cylinder stop would cause this?

 

[mh51]

Is the new cylinder stop a tight fit in the cylinder notches? If so, the new stop is causing the cylinder to lock slightly early, and the hand is binding on the ratchets. You may need to lightly stone the sides of the new stop to allow just a little more rotation of the cylinder.

 

[Buddiiee]

Is the new cylinder stop a tight fit in the cylinder notches? If so, the new stop is causing the cylinder to lock slightly early, and the hand is binding on the ratchets. You may need to lightly stone the sides of the new stop to allow just a little more rotation of the cylinder.

Wouldn't that defeat the entire reason for me putting a new cylinder stop in though?

 

[fleabus101]

If you need a hand (pun intended) I'll mail you a
couple of K frame 3 pin hands to experiment
with gratis. Randy..
email me at:
[email protected]

 

[glowe]

I am not a gunsmith, but pretend to be one in my home. It seems to me that the first thing you have to determine is if the cylinder is perfectly aligned with the bore?? If it is, the hand is too long and needs to be shortened. If not, the stop is too wide and stopping the cylinder before correct alignment. From past experience I can tell you that lead shaving can be a problem if the cylinder is not perfectly aligned with the bore, especially on early examples without a forcing cone.

Only a best guess, since I have not had your problem before, but if you cannot fully cock the gun, there is an interaction going on between the hand and cylinder stop not having enough play to fully allow the hammer to cock. The hand is pushing the cylinder against the stop before the hammer locks into single action mode??

 

[Buddiiee]

I am not a gunsmith, but pretend to be one in my home. It seems to me that the first thing you have to determine is if the cylinder is perfectly aligned with the bore?? If it is, the hand is too long and needs to be shortened. If not, the stop is too wide and stopping the cylinder before correct alignment. From past experience I can tell you that lead shaving can be a problem if the cylinder is not perfectly aligned with the bore, especially on early examples without a forcing cone.

Only a best guess, since I have not had your problem before, but if you cannot fully cock the gun, there is an interaction going on between the hand and cylinder stop not having enough play to fully allow the hammer to cock. The hand is pushing the cylinder against the stop before the hammer locks into single action mode??

I would tend to agree, that at this point (though ive NO idea how) the hand is too long...(in theory) but it's 82 years old, so I have to assume it's the only new part causing this... though if I sand any more of that brand new cylinder stop off, I'm going right back to where I was from the start, and mind as well put the old beat up 82 year old one back in there lol.

After sitting here and screwing with this and observing, the REAL overall problem is the cylinder stop timing. In my picture you'll see the red rectangle surrounding the relationship between the trigger and the stop. The white arrow points to the gap that is just too big from the factory. If you stick a super thin razor tip in that gap to take up the slack, the cylinder stop moves out of the way a little earlier, preventing all sorts of odd timing issues, and the gun runs like a champ, with bank vault-like SOLID lock up, every time. I mean you've never felt a cylinder this tight in your life. What lead me to that was the fact that the cylinder wanted to start turning before the cylinder stop was beginning to drop out of the way, so being a newcomer to this action I started thinning out the stop itself. After taking hairs off at a time I realized that even though that would semi fix the problem, the REAL problem was the actual timing. Now I know Smiths aren't supposed to have a zero-slop cylinder lock up, but if this cylinder got out of the way when it was supposed to, a tad earlier in the cycle, you could fine tune your lock-up by shaving ten thousandths off at a time at your will, and you could literally have an endless amount of room to play with.
But this stop begins it's downward travel way to late in the game, causing all sorts of issues.
Even after thinning out the width of the stop a little more, it's still struggling to drop out of the cylinders notches because the cylinder has already began it's rotation, binding the cylinder stop's downward travel against it's own notch walls.

Does anyone know any aftermarket gunsmith cylinder stops besides Power Customs?

 

[Buddiiee]

If you need a hand (pun intended) I'll mail you a
couple of K frame 3 pin hands to experiment
with gratis. Randy..
email me at:
[email protected]

Well thank you man! I appreciate that I'll see if I need any once I continue screwing with this thing.

 

[glowe]

I can only offer an of image from one appropriate age K frame with the sideplate off for comparison. I see that your trigger is a different shape at the tip than my example and could wonder if someone has taken metal off??

The play that you are showing should have nothing to do with the apparent over rotation of the cylinder. The action you describe, seems to be acting properly. The cylinder does not stick when starting to pull the hammer back but the stop engages before you reach full cock, so the hand has to be the culprit here with the new stop installed??

You might want to consider moving your thread to the Gunsmithing section here, since the experts often help others out with this type of question.

 

[Buddiiee]

What you described is correct, describing my first problem; but before I realised that was happening, the cylinder moving before the lock began its descent into the frame was the original problem. That is a function of my gap being too big where that white arrow's pointing. But you're right, this should probably be in the gunsmithing section-how do I do that?

 

[glowe]

Go to your first post and click on the red triangle in the upper right corner of the post just to the right of the #1. Just ask that this be moved to Gunsmithing section and the Moderators will help you out.

 

[Rolandag2]

Was the oversized cylinder stop fitted to the cylinder stop window on the frame or was the window enlarged to allow the stop to fit the frame. If the window was enlarged to fit the stop then the hand would be to long and it would bind when the cylinder locks. You got a larger cylinder stop and installed it but the hand also has to fitted or the ratchet. I would definitely get a gunsmith to do that work cause to much and the hand will be to short then it won't lock.

 

[sndbggr1484]

Just a thought but is the cylinder stop screw tight? Has the cylinder stop plunger been shortened?

 

[Buddiiee]

Was the oversized cylinder stop fitted to the cylinder stop window on the frame or was the window enlarged to allow the stop to fit the frame. If the window was enlarged to fit the stop then the hand would be to long and it would bind when the cylinder locks. You got a larger cylinder stop and installed it but the hand also has to fitted or the ratchet. I would definitely get a gunsmith to do that work cause to much and the hand will be to short then it won't lock.

The I fitted the cylinder stop to the tightest notch on the cylinder first, then took off the rest out of the window to let it through.

I'm guessing now that threw everything off huh.

The cylinder stop screw is tight and the plunger's untouched as far as I can see.

 

[Buddiiee]

After trying to see if it's the hand length, unless I'm missing the overall design function of the ejector pawls, this hand would be 50 thousandths too long... The dilemma is that when you perform the double action trigger pull, by the time you're at about 95% through the pull, the hand still has at LEAST 50 thousandths more travel before it would be done doing what it has to do. This makes me believe that maybe there's some sort of ramp that is supposed to be built into the pawls to purposely cam the hand off of them as the cylinder stops wayyyyyy before the physical hand travel ends.

 

[Protocall_Design]

Normally on the modern S&W revos, the hand will continue upward after the cylinder locks. It does this by going past the end of the ratchet. The ratchets are machined accordingly to allow this. You can alter your current ratchets to be like that, but it's a finicky job that requires careful, precision work, either by hand filing each one, or milling with an indexer.

We don't know where you are, there may be someone close enough to help.

 

[armorer951]

In your attached photo, and as others have indicated, it appears that your work on the installation of the oversized cylinder stop has changed the position that the ratchets are in when the cylinder rotation is completed. Because of the new position of the cylinder stop, the cylinder is unable to complete the rotation distance necessary for the ratchet to be "out of the way" when the cylinder final lock is completed, and the hand passes by the ratchet body.

I would be very concerned about this carry up issue, because in this scenario, the cylinder is actually out of alignment with the barrel when the rotation is complete. You can cut the ratchets to accommodate this new position, but the cylinder will still be out of alignment.....perhaps dangerously so.

What was the reason for the new oversized cylinder stop? Was there too much open gauge in the stop slots, or was the ball on the original stop just worn out?

 

[Buddiiee]

In your attached photo, and as others have indicated, it appears that your work on the installation of the oversized cylinder stop has changed the position that the ratchets are in when the cylinder rotation is completed. Because of the new position of the cylinder stop, the cylinder is unable to complete the rotation distance necessary for the ratchet to be "out of the way" when the cylinder final lock is completed, and the hand passes by the ratchet body.

I would be very concerned about this carry up issue, because in this scenario, the cylinder is actually out of alignment with the barrel when the rotation is complete. You can cut the ratchets to accommodate this new position, but the cylinder will still be out of alignment.....perhaps dangerously so.

What was the reason for the new oversized cylinder stop? Was there too much open gauge in the stop slots, or was the ball on the original stop just worn out?

There was ton of rotational slop. It was in my opinion that both the cylinder slots and the stop were both worn, but the stop itself had a little more of the wear.

 

[Protocall_Design]

You need a range rod to determine if the chambers are in line with the barrel, or get them in line before doing anything else.

 

[armorer951]

If you don't have access to a range rod, you can use a plug gauge to check the barrel and cylinder alignment. The diameter of the "service" range rod is .345". Brownells has them (range rods), or you can just purchase a plug gauge that size from an online vendor like MSC. (less expensive)


https://www.mscdirect.com/browse/tn...VF6N3BWn_MvAv9v2ut-rG6Si4xKo_AsxoC_dMQAvD_BwE

 

[WR Moore]

As others have noted, your problem is likely the cylinder stop and whatever you've done to the window. I was about to comment upon which side of the stop window you should have been filing, but after looking at my special file for the hand/stop windows, I'm gonna let wiser heads hold forth. .

It's the better part of wisdom to try a new standard size cylinder stop before you consider oversize. Just as a reminder, you check for rotational slop and bore/cylinder alignment with the trigger held all the way back so that the hand is helping position the cylinder.