HomeSmith Trainwreck #2 "The Geezer"

A new Trainwreck for a New Year. Meet "The Geezer"

The Geezer appears to be a .38 Military & Police Model of 1902, 1st Change. He is a pre-5 screw 4 screw with a 4" barrel and nickel finish.

The finish is slightly challenged. On Gunbroker it would be advertised as 'Excellent 98% original finish with occasional blemishes".

The top sideplate screw is missing. I'm sure that will be easy to find.

The stocks are wood and have been customized by a previous owner sometime in the last 120 years. The majority of my guns have had the stocks upgraded in one way or another, but these will stay. That design was important enough for someone to spend a lot of time on it and it deserves to be there.

I'm going to have to find a box of U.S. Service Ctg's to put on display with this one. If anyone knows of one please shoot me a PM. And yes, I know that I might pay more for an original box of shells than I did for the gun.

The chambers look surprisingly good considering the age of the old fella. The cylinder spins freely and smoothly, and the ejector is extremely smooth. Almost like it's been worn in by over a century of use...

We're not so lucky with the barrel. There is some pitting in there but I've seen (and shot) worse. After looking at an enlarged version of the bore pictures there might be a ring in the bore that is filled with lead fouling. I'll scrub it more and let you know.

Carry up is good on 4 chambers and slightly slow on 2.

The trigger pull is marvelous and smooth but not quite right....the trigger does not return on it's own.

Let's pull off the sideplate and see if we find the reason for the invention of the rebound slide...

Yep - the trigger return leafspring is broken off, leaving only a small section pinned to the front strap of the grip frame.

This is a fascinatingly simple design. It's easy to see how the leaf spring should work, and manipulating the action with a screwdriver simulating the pressure of the spring makes the trigger pop right into place.

So where do we go from here?

First things first - we need a good cleaning.

Then I'm going to try a top sideplate screw from another gun to see how it fits. If it turns out that a top sideplate screw is a top sideplate screw, then Numrich can fix me up there. If not, well then there will be a WTB ad coming.

I've seen several posts about Mother's Mag Polish and the wonderful things it does for nickel finishes. I think that quite a bit of the plating on the Geezer is simply gone but we'll try some polish on it anyway just to see what happens.

Then there's the big one: that spring. From what I've read about 1902's it appears that the trigger reset spring is made of unobtanium.

Looking at the design, I'm wondering if a substitute spring could be made out of a shortened mainspring. I've got a half dozen or so in the parts pile, so when I have time I'll shorten one, re-shape it slightly, and clamp it in place to make a shortened shaped pseudo substitute spring.

If that works, the next problem will be securing our shortened shaped pseudo substitute spring. I haven't studied it, but logic tells me that if the pin in the grip frame is driven out we will find some sort of stud attached to the spring that fits into a recess in the frame.

If the shortened shaped pseudo substitute spring is satisfactory, I have an idea about using the mill and/or lathe (depends on the shape needed) to create a stud that could be silver soldered to the shortened shaped pseudo substitute spring. A silver soldered stud would make our shortened shaped pseudo substitute spring.....superior.

I imagine that it will take a fair amount of hand fitting to make our superior shortened shaped silver soldered stud pseudo substitute spring slide smoothly.

This one is pretty low on the priority list, so updates may be infrequent. Having a variety of projects to work on is nice because if one is stuck waiting for ideas, tools, or parts there are always others to play with.

Well I chuckled happily at the assessment here!

Where do you find these wonders?

U.S. service cartridge was the .38 Colt long.

I did a little research into the cross and triangle design in the stocks and came up with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which was broken up into splinter groups in 1903. Interesting coincidence of dates.

Probably not it, but it makes for fascinating speculation about the history of this one.

alwslate said:

Where do you find these wonders?

Click to expand...

This one came from an estate auction on Proxibid.com for the princely sum of $60 plus shipping and auction fees. Search and be patient...they're out there.

Shotguncoach said:

The chambers look surprisingly good considering the age of the old fella. The cylinder spins freely and smoothly, and the ejector is extremely smooth. Almost like it's been worn in by over a century of use...

We're not so lucky with the barrel. There is some pitting in there but I've seen (and shot) worse. After looking at an enlarged version of the bore pictures there might be a ring in the bore that is filled with lead fouling. I'll scrub it more and let you know.

Click to expand...

Me thinks there is a ring in the barrel, unless intense bore scrubbing proves otherwise. Otherwise a great find!

You can quickly and easily tell if a barrel is bulged by putting a thumb and pointer finger on either side and sliding along the length. If there's a bulge, your fingers will feel it.

There is a narrow lug (1/16" wide?) on the back side of that broken spring.
That lug sits in a groove in the grip frame. The hole was drilled thru both parts and the small dia pin driven thru to secure the spring to the grip strap.

I have seen a few repaired with home-made springs that lacked that
raised lug. It being the difficult part in making a new one or modifying a thick spring down to a useable part.

The home-made springs were just flat at that end,,no attachment lug w/hole in it.
To attach to the grip frame (here's the Bubba Part)...the spring was D&T at that end.
The grip strap was drilled and counter sunk for a screw from the outside.
The screw enters much like the mainspring tension adjustment screw does but slides thru the grip frame. Then screws into the end of the new trigger return spring.

If done well and with a very small screw head, it's not very noticable.
Yes it's non-factory, but it's a fix to get it back into shootable condition.
A non-collectible might be a candidate. People have done a lot worse in the name of fixing.

Certainly nothing that has any thing close to collector condition should be considered for the conversion.

The otherway is to 'make a spring from a spring' as I mentioned above.
The lower arm of many Flint and Percussion locks are quite thick especially near the V. Even sidelock hammerless & hammer cartridge shotgun lock springs are sometimes usable,
Plenty of matr'l there to file out the lug shape and leave the much thinner leaf that you need in this instance.
You don't have to anneal the donor spring to work on it. The file work just fine with sharp files.
But work even easier if annealed soft.
Then you can heat red and put any final bends in the shape as needed.
Mount it and drill the hole for the pin.
Then final harden,,heat to orange,,quench in room temp water.
Draw back in a lead bath at 740F. Use a hi=temp thermometer.

I think I have some badly Bubba'd 1902 parts, may have that spring. I will check.
It may be broken as well!!

Looks like it's time to learn to nickel-plate (de-plate first of course).
High Quality (and Safe) Nickel Plating : 7 Steps (with Pictures) - Instructables

Here is the spring is question
Lug on the lower end back side, Pin goes thru the frame and the lug to secure it.

A bit of a delicate re-curve shape to the spring at the business end.
Nice even taper to the spring overall

Thank you Sir! That gives me several ideas....

If made 2-piece, another way is to make the lug and leave the top of it with a round stud on it. Long enough to slip thru a hole in your new homemade spring.

Slip the spring in place and rivit the spring into position.
Flatten the rivit out well, and it's no different than many leaf springs held in place with a threaded hole and screw.

There is enough space betw the back side of this spring and the mainspring for a rivited head so no countersink of the rivit is needed.

The spring once installed in the frame and with the grips on can't swivel/pivot out of position on the rivit even if that loosens a bit..

I think soldering a separate lug in position would work but only for a short while as the spring flexes.
Silver Solder (Soft Silver Solder) the Silver/Tin alloy at 400F won't anneal a spring which is drawn at 700F+.
It's strong, but not remarkably strong. It's still a 'soft solder.'

HiTemp Silver Solder (Hard Solder or Silver Braze) at the needed 1100F+ surely will anneal the spring even though it would make a solid enough joint most likely.
You can't re-heat treat the spring after Hard Soldering because you need to go to around 1500F+ to harden it. That would destroy the Hard Solder joint.

You almost exactly described on of my ideas, except that I was going to try threading the stub and using a 6-48 scope mount screw....if there was enough width for the screw.

Another thought was to remove the stub of the old spring and then use a much longer spring with a hole in the bottom that would fit around the strain screw, with the long end sitting in the same frame channel that supports the main spring.

I also thought about modifying an automotive speed nut to pin in place and form a cup that the end of the new spring would sit in, but I have doubts about the strength of the speed nut and whether or not it would deform when the spring was under tension.

I appreciate you putting time and thought into the project....Thank you!

Shotguncoach said:

On Gunbroker it would be advertised as 'Excellent 98% original finish with occasional blemishes".

Click to expand...

You forgot "Appears to have a few small mechanical issues that should be easily repaired".

Well here is something that I did not expect to say today......The Geezer is going to the range tomorrow!

Last week I found this little gem deep in the bowels of Gunbroker. It was described as a "Smith & Wesson Pre-10 repair parts kit". The shape of the ejector rod and the barrel tell me that "pre-historic" might have been a better description.

Can anyone else see the piece of unobtanium in there?