First .32 - What did I just buy?

raljr1 · #51 04-29-2024, 08:56 PM

These guns shoot great, if your old eyes can see the tiny sights. I have three of these and all three together aren't as nice as the one you picked up. Congrats.

Shotguncoach · #52 04-30-2024, 12:48 AM

Tonight I had a few hours available so I dug deep into the little guy to give him a decent cleaning and inspection.

Starting out with the stocks....yes, they are numbered and yes, they have the patent date.

Questions:

-- What is the best way to preserve the pencil markings?

-- For Robert (raljr1): What stocks do you have on the one in the picture just above this post? My biggest challenge was not seeing the sights, it was getting a good grip on the toothpick sized stocks. Yours look like they might be J frame Herrett Shooting Stars......

Shotguncoach · #53 04-30-2024, 12:58 AM

Moving on to the exterior inspection...

I purposefully arranged the lighting in these pictures to highlight the flaws in the finish. In person it doesn't look nearly as bad as it does in the pictures.

The first issue I see is that someone used a screwdriver that was too wide on the yoke retention screw and wallowed out the sideplate screw hole a bit.

On the right side, we have some red rust on the frame under the stocks, and some fluffy corrosion on the frame around the top sideplate screw and in front of the cylinder where the barrel threads into the frame. There is also a skip-scratch that bisects the sideplate. The scratch really only shows up under the right light.

Other than the screwdriver damage, the sideplate does not look to me to have been refinished. The other screw holes are still sharp edged and so is the sideplate itself.

The grip frame has some assembly marks and what I believe is the B mark that indicates that the gun was originally blued. The other side of the frame does not show any markings at all that I can see.

Shotguncoach · #54 04-30-2024, 01:03 AM

Our barrel has the caliber marking on the right side, a 2 line patent stamp on top, the correct serial number on the bottom with another capital B, and a gold bead Patridge front sight.

Shotguncoach · #55 04-30-2024, 01:11 AM

The serial number 444863 is in the correct location on the front of the grip frame.

The left side of the frame has some speckling and rust patches that show up well in the right light.

The cylinder is also numbered correctly and the chambers look beautiful after a good scrubbing.

The bore also came out looking pristine after cleaning. This part of the cleaning was where I ran into my first problem: I don't have any .32 caliber cleaning equipment. I ended up using a .308 brush and jag on my .22 caliber pistol cleaning rod. It seemed to work just fine.

Shotguncoach · #56 04-30-2024, 01:40 AM

The only challenge in taking the sideplate off was the amount of mung that had built up around the screw heads over the last few decades.

Once inside it was pretty normal except for the moment of panic when the hand just sort of flopped around on the trigger. It took me a minute to realize that the hand tension was provided by a spring and plunger in the sideplate and not the coiled wire spring inside the trigger that I'm used to seeing.

Other than cleaning I only did two things while I was inside. The rebound spring appeared to have been pulled out of an F250 pickup and had obviously been shortened. I replaced that one with a stock spring from a K38 that was slightly smaller in diameter but seemed to fit and function correctly. The K38 spring was also much lighter even though it had not been shortened. The original mangled spring went into a numbered envelope to go into the growing pile of OE parts in the back of the safe.

The second thing I did was to round off a burr on the bolt that almost cut me while I was cleaning it. No files here....just a ceramic stone to remove the sharp edge.

A bunch of Hoppe's and a few Q-tips later, everything popped back into place easily. I'm glad that I learned how to do things like cylinder stops and bolt removal on the trainwreck guns before I got into this one....

The yoke alignment was good and the ejector rod is the straightest one I've ever seen. The rear gauge is in spec with a .060" feeler gauge entering easily and a .068" gauge not entering at all. Cylinder gap was .008" at the rearmost travel and .005" with a wooden wedge behind the cylinder, giving .003" of endplay.

Shotguncoach · #57 04-30-2024, 01:48 AM

The last step was to take a look at the rear sight and try to figure out how to adjust it for elevation.

I discovered that the entire rear sight assembly was hanging by the proverbial thread...using my second smallest screwdriver I put almost a full turn onto the front sight screw. Not having the rear sight assembly flopping around may make it a bit easier to shoot.

The elevation adjustment turned out to be a non-issue: turn the rear screw and the sight moves. Go figure.

I didn't try to take the rear screw all the way out. Does it have a retainer on the bottom to keep it from backing out and evaporating? Or do I need to keep an eye on that screw all the time?

Shotguncoach · #58 04-30-2024, 01:55 AM

So here we are back together.....it ended up with a double action trigger pull of 10 pounds and a single action pull of 2 1/2 pounds. The single action pull is so crisp that it feels much lighter than it measures.

I'd like to get the opinion of the group as to what to do with this one next. The shooter in me says that I should strip it down again, degrease it, and then boil and card it to take care of the rust issues. The collector in me says to just oil it to stop the rust from spreading and leave it the heck alone.

What is the group opinion on boiling and carding this one? I wouldn't dare to attempt rebluing it....this would be a pure conservation effort.

raljr1 · #59 04-30-2024, 08:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shotguncoach

-- For Robert (raljr1): What stocks do you have on the one in the picture just above this post? My biggest challenge was not seeing the sights, it was getting a good grip on the toothpick sized stocks. Yours look like they might be J frame Herrett Shooting Stars......

I honestly don't know what they are. They were on it when I bought it. They fit well so I assume they are correct for the I frame.