HomeSmith Trainwreck #9 "Organ Donor" and #10 "Eleanor"

Ok....before I start this one, I want to slow everyone down and make it clear that nothing other than test fitting has been done to either gun yet. The are both in their original state.

With that out of the way, meet Trainwreck #10 "Eleanor":

Eleanor is a 1950 Target in .44 special with a 4" barrel. I bought Eleanor for several reasons:

- She's a pretty thing
- I'm addicted to 4" 1950's
- The stocks are kind of ok
- She's exactly 50 numbers away from one of my other 4" 1950's....S118227 and S118277. Eleanor is the 77 gun.

When Eleanor and I went on our first range date I discovered that like many pretty things, Eleanor is broken on the inside.

We came home from the range that day with 3 empty cases stuck in the cylinder. They were stuck so well that I had to remove the cylinder and pound (yes pound) the empties out with a drift and a hammer. Stuck good. I didn't think to take pictures of the empty brass but there were huge bright gouges down side of the cases and none of them would even think about fitting into the chambers of any of my other .44's.

The empties were egg shaped. Eleanor had a broken heart and so did I. Eleanor went into the back of the safe for a year while I figured out what to do.

After searching for a long, long....long time for an original replacement cylinder, I decided that what I needed to do for Eleanor was to find an organ donor. I went looking for a cosmetically challenged but mechanically good 6" 1950 Target.

That took a while, but I eventually found one.

Meet Trainwreck #9 "Organ Donor"

Organ Donor was made a year or so after Eleanor. Organ Donor has had a hard life but appeared to be mechanically sound. As a bonus, Organ Donor came with a set of non-relieved diamond target stocks.

Mechanically, Organ Donor is in pretty good shape. In fact my FFL yelled at me when he found out what I was thinking about doing.

The trigger is marvelous. Timing is great on 5 chambers and the 6th locks in right as the single action sear engages.

Organ Donor's biggest issues are cosmetic. Not as bad as Short & Sweet, but far from "pristine". The barrel has the worst issue. We've all seen what bloody fingerprints do to hunting rifles and I think this is another example.

I am happy to say that "Eleanor" and "Organ Donor" look not so much like "Trainwrecks" as "Minor Derailments".

John

The real test of if Organ Donor was a viable Donor for this project was the first range trip. My FFL is also a shooting buddy so he continued to gripe at me about Organ Donor for the entire trip.

"You should be restoring that one instead of tearing it apart!"

"But I would be taking apart a '1 of 5,000' to fix a '1 of 500'...it's worth it!"

"I don't care. You're a dum##ss. Fix this one and try something else for the other one."

Some of you are probably saying the same thing. I get it.

At the range, Organ Donor was wonderful. All 6 empties fall out just by raising the muzzle and she shoots like a laser beam.

That didn't help with the griping.

There's a lot of potential great stuff there!
Yeah, gotta love those 1950 .44 Targets.

Did you ever think of getting a .357 cylinder (M27 or 28) and having it rechambered for .44 Special?

Last night I decided to do some additional checking on Eleanor. After the egg-shaped empty case thing I just put her away and didn't go any farther.

First up was a quick feel for endshake. None at all. No movement. Hmmm.

Let's check the rear gauge. Uh oh. A .068 gauge actually rattles between the cylinder and the frame. I don't think that's a happy thing, but let's check the other end.

Checking the cylinder gap was inciteful. The gap ranged from .006 to less than my smallest feeler gauge, which is .0015. Variances were observed not only from chamber to chamber but also from side to side on individual chambers.

I didn't observe the cylinder dragging on the barrel extension, but that gap is tight in some spots.

Ok....let's check our yoke alignment. That came out perfect - the gauge dropped into place perfectly by lifting the muzzle with the cylinder latch held back. Hmmm again.

The low-to-no gap chambers also coincided with an increase in the double action trigger pull. As I said, I didn't observe any dragging on the cylinder face but it could still be there.

At this point I'm thinking there are several possibilities:

- The catastrophic event that bulged the chambers could have changed the exterior dimensions of the cylinder. All the metal is still there but it's been rearranged, so things may have changed. Checking the cylinder with a set of calipers revealed a longest length of 1.561" and a shortest length of 1.555".

- The end of the yoke barrel and/or the spot inside the cylinder where it rides (flip, flip, flip...what's the right term....oh well nevermind) may not be square, leading to the cylinder sitting cattywampus (technical term) and tolerance stacking issues when combined with the variations in cylinder length.

- Or the frame may be bent. Something bad happened to Eleanor to create the egg-shaped chambers. She may have just barely survived.

So Eleanor has more problems than I thought. Oh well, we're here....let's swap some parts and see what happens.

6string said:

There's a lot of potential great stuff there!
Yeah, gotta love those 1950 .44 Targets.

Did you ever think of getting a .357 cylinder (M27 or 28) and having it rechambered for .44 Special?

Click to expand...

That's a different Trainwreck that you haven't met yet. There's a converted M28 in the safe that was done using a recessed cylinder. Whoever did the machine work was not very careful and every single one of the countersunk areas for the rims are at a different depth. That one was a potential organ donor that I set aside when I found this one.

We'll get back to that one later.....

After a break to ponder what I had found with Eleanor, I cleared enough bench space to have two distinct work areas and tore both guns down, taking notes on the assembly numbers as I went.

The yoke from Organ Donor was waayyy out of alignment when I did a test fit in Eleanor, so it stayed with Organ Donor and I re-used Eleanor's original yoke. This may be important - see the second note in the earlier post about what might be wrong.

The hammer, trigger, hand, and complete cylinder assembly (including the ejector parts) from Organ Donor went into Eleanor. I left Eleanor's original rebound slide in place because I remember reading that the rebound slide is fit to the frame whereas the other pieces are fit to each other while in the frame. I hope that makes sense.... (Edit: that was my thought process last night. The rebound slide still has to interface with the trigger and hammer, so I see the fallacy in my reasoning now. I don't think that would cause the issues described later in this post. )

Everything dropped into place as if the two guns were only made a few months apart (go figure). With the sideplate back on and the strain screw tightened, it was time to repeat the checks on Eleanor.

- The rear gauge still rattled.

- The cylinder gap was almost identical to what it was before the swap and still varied in the same manner from .006 to almost zero and was still different side to side.

- The carry up was slow on two chambers (the ones with the most cylinder gap)

- The double action pull still stacked on the chambers that had almost no cylinder gap.

Huh. I checked the serial number on the cylinder to make sure I had actually swapped the cylinders....I had.

Just for fun, I assembled Organ Donor with the pieces that came out of Eleanor and checked that one.

- Rear gauge was in spec and the same as before.

- Cylinder gap was the same as before.

- Timing was actually a little better than it was with the original parts.

With the pieces in Organ Donor, if I had not just performed the swap and didn't look at the serial numbers, I would say that nothing had changed. Everything worked great. In fact, it was better than when the same pieces were in Eleanor.

Huh.


Eleanor's problems stayed with Eleanor.

I think that leaves two possibilities for Eleanor:

- Out of square yoke barrel end

- Bent frame


That was the end of the night.

This morning after the chores were finished I took both guns back apart and reassembled them with all their original pieces back in place. Another quick check revealed that Eleanor still had all the same problems and Organ Donor was back to the way she had been before everything started.

Eleanor is once again in the back of the safe and Organ Donor is going to the range again tomorrow as a reward for being a good sport through all this.

So hear I am.

I tried asking Mr. Kuhnhausen about how to measure for a bent frame and how to test for an out of square yoke barrel, but I didn't find either answer.

I'd like to toss this one out to the hive mind and get your opinions about where to go next with these two. If possible, I'd like to get Eleanor running again. Organ Donor could easily become a restoration candidate on it's own merit. I've also gotten used to Eleanor being a pretty thing that just sits in the corner so there isn't any hurry.

Thoughts and comments would be appreciated. We're getting into the difference between swapping parts and fitting parts. I'm suffering from a lack of confidence about proceeding with modifying the good pieces (that are pretty rare on their own) from Organ Donor to make them work properly in Eleanor. If Eleanor has deeper problems (like a bent frame) then I would end up with two guns on the dead list instead of one.

If this was a pair of clapped out Model 10's I probably would forge ahead. The real problem in my head is what I'm working on.

At the moment, my plan is to enjoy Organ Donor as-is for a while and do some additional work on Eleanor, knowing that Eleanor has a bum cylinder.

After I acquire the proper tools, I'd like to try squaring the yoke and the busted cylinder, then either stretching the yoke and/or adding shims to correct the headspace issue. I realize that may also mean re-fitting the height of the extractor collar (thank you Mr. Kuhnhausen). That will also change the cylinder gap, hopefully for the better.

If doing that gets Eleanor back into being dimensionally correct, then and only then would I try the swap again. The parts are really close to fitting now....I just don't trust Eleanor's frame to still be straight.

IF I can fix the headspace (rear gauge...yes, dear) and get the cylinder to not be cattywampus it would eliminate one more variable and I think there would be much less final fitting to do when the parts are swapped. I hope. Maybe.

An out of square yoke barrel (common) will not make the cylinder gap variable unless the mating surface in the cylinder is also out of square. The most likely situation is the front face of the cylinder is out of square. Many of them are, just to a lesser degree than your 2. Being only 50 numbers apart, there was probably a small metal chip on one of the lathe chuck jaws that day that slightly cocked the cylinders while it was being machined. The frame is probably not bent.

The way I measure this is to put the cylinder in the lathe chuck, make sure the side is running true with a dial indicator, then move the indicator to the front of the cylinder, and turn it a few revolutions, watching the hand on the dial.

You might also look for a 44 mag cylinder. If it's too long, you can face the front back on the lathe to fit. If you do that, leave the center part the original length. That will deflect the carbon from the cylinder gap and keep it from going into the yoke barrel space.

Thank you Sir -

I think I figured out how to test both surfaces.

I have a yoke facing reamer on the way. When I get it, I'll clean the end of the yoke barrel and put some marking blue on it, then set it all up so that the weight of the facing reamer is the only pressure being applied. One turn should tell me in the marking blue if it's square or not.

Testing the cylinder would be similar except that it would involve a flashlight and an endmill turned once by hand.

I wonder if the folks at Power Custom thought far enough ahead to make the yoke facing cutter in such a way that it could be used to true both surfaces.....

Anyway - Thank you for the input. The lathe that I have available to use is 38 miles away at a friends house. I have an ejector rod testing fixture that uses a dial indicator so before I make the drive I'm going to try to set that up to perform a more crude version of your lathe test.

I'm resurrecting my own zombie thread here to continue the story and as a reminder to myself of how this all went down.

When we last visited Eleanor and Organ Donor I was a whopping 23 days into my adventure in learning to work on revolvers. At the time I thought I was ready for a more challenging task...I was wrong.

I spent days messing with Eleanor trying to make things work with no success and a great deal of frustration. I didn't need tools. I didn't need parts.

What I needed was experience.

I'd like to say it was youthful enthusiasm, but the 'youthful' part would be incorrect. Perhaps misplaced enthusiasm would be a better term.

It's been 10 months now and 32 projects have made it to the range and been shot. Not all of them were worth writing about but quite a few have been posted here. (Christmas for my family is going to be spectacular just so I can make room in the safes ) Yesterday I took the day off from work and decided to just take a quick look at Eleanor.

I said earlier that I didn't need parts...that wasn't quite true. I had parts available in Organ Donor but 7 months of searching every night after work finally paid off when a new-old-stock cylinder for a model 24-3 showed up online. Four hundred dollars later I had a cylinder that is so shiny it's hard to photograph.

IF the new cylinder would work that meant that Organ Donor might have a second chance at becoming a restoration instead of a pile of parts.

I started by making sure that both guns had all their original parts back where they should be and fixed my waaay to generous endshake fix in Organ Donor by removing the .005" shim that was installed (and provided absolutely no endshake) and replacing it with a .003" shim. Once Organ Donor was happy and back in the safe it was time to see what would happen with Eleanor.

The first step was to make sure the yoke was aligned properly and it was. Then the big one: would the new cylinder even fit into the window? The new cylinder was slid onto the yoke without an ejector rod attached and here.....we..........go.

Click.

It slid into place like it was meant to be there.

But what about the clearances? The .060" rear gauge gauge (that's what we call it at the Wile E. Coyote School of Gunsmithing) slid into place easily and the .068" rear gauge gauge did not. I was too excited at this point to think about measuring the new vs old cylinders to figure out why one had excess headspace and the new one didn't.

One step at a time....

The next problem was the ejector rod. Eleanor's original ejector rod has a right hand thread and the new cylinder has the modern left hand thread in the ejector star. My pile of parts is mostly for K frames so I had to ponder this one for a bit. I have a parts kit for a 629 in the pile that would have an ejector rod with the right thread but that one is stainless and wouldn't look right.

Then I remembered The Highwayman. The trashed 28-2 cylinder should still have the ejector rod attached. I scampered around the work room for a few minutes looking in drawers and toolboxes and then I remembered that I had "organized" things a while ago. I opened the correct drawer and there it was, nestled safely between two bulged Model 66-2 cylinders in the "these will eventually become pencil holders" area.

A few minutes with the handy dandy Power Custom ejector rod descrewing tool gave me a proper ejector rod and all the associated springs and collar and fun stuff like that. Blip bloop into the new cylinder it went, the whole thing went onto the yoke....

And now the cylinder wouldn't close. The assembly was too long.

But now I know how to fix that

One of the most important things I've learned over the last few months is that if you want to file something and actually have it be square, don't just hold the file in one hand and the work in the other. After a quick trip to the vise with a file and a stone we had an ejector rod that fit.

Yay.

A quick pull of the hammer with the new cylinder in place told me how I was going to spend the next few hours. Everything would start to move then about halfway through the cycle it all came to a dead stop and stuck in place. Oh well. If I had to choose between this and late carry-up I would pick this one.

On to other things....

There was enough movement in the action that I could manipulate the trigger to drop the cylinder stop out of the way and allow it to come back into the full rise position, so I did that through two full revolutions of the cylinder (rotating by hand) to make sure that the stop would engage all of the notches. It did.

Everything went roundy-round again by hand so that a range rod could be used to check the alignment on every chamber. The rod slid all the way through to the recoil shield every time with a satisfying plunk.

A few random checks during the cylinder stop test told me that the 'lock up halfway through' issue was consistent around the cylinder and not limited to just one chamber.

Before I could think about correcting the timing I needed to know the width of the hand that was in the gun. The strain screw was loosened, the sideplate was removed, the hammer spring that was so long that it was still under tension when the strain screw was completely out was finagled out of the action, and all the rest of the insides were moved to the outside.

The hand measured .097".

Ok...what's in the pile? All oversize. Two at .098", one .099", one .100", and a big momma that measured .108". That's not gonna help.

This is where The Highwayman came to the rescue a second time. When I rebuilt that one into a 4" 28-2, I used all of the pieces from the parts kit and put the original hammer and trigger into a bag in the pile. The original hand from The Highwayman measured .093". Bingo.

The .097" hand came off of Eleanor's trigger and the .093" hand was installed. With only the cylinder stop, the trigger, and the hand in place a test pull was done. It almost cycled and I probably could have pushed it through, but the sideplate was off and I didn't want to torque on the unsupported trigger stud.

I had an idea I wanted to try but the gun needed to be reassembled first. A 17 pound rebound spring was used because that was the strongest that I had available, a random hammer spring was installed to replace whatever that giant thing was that had been in the gun, the sideplate was installed and the screws were screwed.

With visions of Steelslavers ratchet cutting tool in my head, I put 6 double verified empty cases into the cylinder to support the ejector star, lubed the ratchets with some cutting oil and went to find out how strong my trigger finger really was.

Snap.

The action cycled and I felt the hand cut the ratchet tooth slightly. Everything was still too large and the trigger was stuck back, but it cycled. I really don't care for the wide target triggers but this time I was happy to have it because I could pinch the trigger and pull it back to the at rest position. Going around the cylinder, every chamber was the same way: it would hesitate then push through and the trigger would stick in the fired position.

On the third time around I had one chamber that allowed the trigger to reset without help.

Have you ever noticed how your dogs look at you when you do the celebration butt wiggle dance? Mine must think I am a complete fool.

Anyway - after the celebration dance, I poured myself a drink, started a movie on the TV, and sat down on the couch for some quality time with Eleanor. Five minutes of snapping and manually resetting the trigger gave me another chamber that allowed the trigger to reset by itself.

The third chamber freed up 10 minutes later.

Forty-two minutes after I started (and one large blister because I'm waaay to smart to be bothered with things like gloves) every chamber allowed the action to be cycled properly and the timing was freakin' beautiful.

I had fixed Eleanor.

Remember that 'youthful enthusiasm' thing? Yeah. I celebrated by taking a nap.

There was a strategic reason for the nap: it was 1:30 in the afternoon, it was 108 degrees outside, and the pistol bays at the range I go to would not be in the shade until after 4pm. It was also my day off and I could do whatever the heck I wanted.

One of my other 1950 Targets had recently gotten a "new" set of Herrett Trooper stocks that I hadn't tried yet, so that one joined Eleanor and Organ Donor for the trip to the range. (Fun fact: Organ Donor's serial number is S145148 and the other gun is S145188)

The first 6 shots from Eleanor went well, but the real test was what would happen when I went to take the empty cases out. Would I still need a hammer?

Nope. All 6 just fell out.

Organ Donor was up next and produced an almost identical group. I'm going to have to figure out what I'm doing that is causing the 4-and-2 thing to happen. It's annoying.

I put about 50 shots through Eleanor without any issues at all, then did my usual thing of 6 double action shots from every gun into the same target.

So what are the next steps?

Both Eleanor and Organ Donor (perhaps Isaac would be a better name now) need action jobs, there's some cosmetic work to be done, and Eleanor's right stock panel needs to be fitted better so it doesn't move while shooting.

Mostly I just need to shoot Eleanor a bunch and enjoy the time at the range. She's been in the safe since 2021 and this was the first successful range trip.

Happy days.....

I like how you worked through your problems slowly and logically. Having a bunch of extra parts is always a good thing