HomeSmith Tuneup: Whack Job

Today we're working on a 2nd Model Hand Ejector that was born somewhere around 1916. This gun was introduced to the forum here:

https://smith-wessonforum.com/s-w-hand-ejectors-1896-1961/717531-2nd-model-he-4-inch-waco-auction.html

At some point in the last 98 years the barrel was shortened, so the name for this one is.....

Project Whack Job

Whack Job looks pretty good for being almost 100 years old if you can get past the front sight sitting on top of what's left of the barrel stamping.

Our inspection began with a timing and range rod check - both passed.

The endshake and rear gauge checks are where things fell apart. As the young folks say, "Dat gap!"

Endshake came out at .007", with the wide gap being .012" and the small gap (cylinder wedged forward) shrinking to only .005".

With that much endshake I couldn't really get a good measurement on the rear gauge: the .068" feeler gauge dropped right in with room to spare.

Not off to a great start.....

Our endshake of .007" was doubleplus ungood and needed to be fixed before going any farther.

This is my first trip inside a pre-war Smith and the surprises started immediately. After removing the cylinder and yoke assembly I found this cool little detent on the bottom of the yoke body. Is that a factory thing? If so, when did it stop being used?

The Power Custom ejector rod tool was used to take apart the cylinder and yoke assembly. I had to open the tool waaay up to clear the knob on the end of the ejector rod but it worked just fine.....as soon as I remembered that this old guy had a right hand thread on the rod. Three empty cases were used to support the ejector star.

The second surprise was to find the serial number stamped on the back of the ejector star. I don't remember seeing that before but then again I also wasn't really looking for it.

This was a good time to degunkify the cylinder. What looked like fouling turned out to be a ring of lead in one chamber. It didn't take much effort to get it out with a brass brush, but it surprised my when the chunks started falling onto the bench. The screwdriver head in the picture is just for scale - I didn't scrape with it. I'll keep an eye on it to see if the build up happens again.

Another small mountain of glock was cleaned out of the center of the cylinder and off of the yoke barrel. When everything was spiffy clean a pair of Power Custom .002" cylinder endshake shims were lubed up and carefully placed into the cylinder.

A few drops of oil were put on all the slidey and turney parts, and then with our 3 support cases in place again the ejector rod was tightened back up.

The two cylinder bearings worked as advertised and reduced the endplay down to .003", with cylinder gaps of .009" with the wedge and .012" again without the wedge.

This also fixed our rear gauge problem. The double ended go/no-go gauge now gave me the readings I wanted: the .060" end fit in easily, the .068" end did not.

Yay. One issue fixed. Let's pop that sideplate off and have a look inside...

That sideplate was tight! It took quite a while and a great many whacks with a hammer handle on the frame but it eventually did lift off.

Inside was ....... different. The most glaring change was the lack of a hammer block and the corresponding pin missing from the rebound slide. And then there was that great big double action sear hanging out there. Not quite as noticeable was the difference in the spring for the cylinder stop. The 4- and 5-screw design with the screw/spring/plunger arrangement looks much easier to work with but I can see how it would add substantially to the manufacturing time.

The other thing that stood out were the circular brass-colored inserts in the hammer and trigger. If someone would take the time to give me a bit of education on those I would appreciate it.

It also appeared to me that the hammer seat on the rebound slide was quite a bit lower than the more recently manufactured K-frames that I've been working on. Is that normal for this design generation or is that just a factor of almost 100 years of wear?

There was actually less gunk inside than I thought there would be. It was wonderfully sticky though, and did great things to soften my hands.

From here on out it was just a normal cleaning. I wasn't trying to do an action job here....just a clean up and repair as needed so that I could establish a performance baseline.

There was a glob of hardened gack inside the rebound slide and all over the rebound spring, along with general sticky muck throughout the action.

Side note: I love working inside an N frame! There is so much more room than inside a K frame. (I know, I know: "Just wait 'till you open up a J or I frame!" I'll get there eventually and I'll have my tweezers handy.)

Two things I did not do: I didn't remove the hand from the trigger and I didn't remove the cylinder stop. I haven't gotten my YouTube certifications for those yet and I didn't want to have anything go Zing! by finding out using what my old man called "the idiot method". I'm pretty sure that I do not want to lose that itty bitty coil spring inside the trigger.

The insides were moved from the outside back to the inside and there were no extra pieces! The bore cleaned up quite nicely also.

With everything back together it was time for some more measurements. Hammer tension was a whopping 64 ounces, the single action pull was 4 lbs, and the double action pull was 10 lbs.

With that much hammer tension I was sure that I could improve things by finding a replacement strain screw and shortening it. (I really don't want to mess with the original screw. When we get to that point, the original screw will go in a numbered envelope in the back of the safe.) My confidence turned out to be misplaced.

To get an idea of how much shorter the screw needed to be, I backed it out one turn and went to measure the hammer tension again. The double action pull felt tremendously better but I couldn't measure the hammer tension because the hammer would not go to the full single action cocked position. Maybe half a turn out would work...nope, same problem. A quarter turn out on the strain screw would allow the hammer to fully cock about 50% of the time. The only way the hammer will stay at the full single action cocked position is with the strain screw all the way in.

I was doing this with the sideplate on so I didn't have a full view of the mainspring. My working theory is that the distance between the frame where the mainspring mounts and the hammer strut (a dim memory of geometry tells me that the correct term is the chord of the arc) is just short of the maximum working length when the strain screw is all the way in, and loosening the screw allows the mainspring to straighten enough to immediately put the action into a hammer bind state. This leads me to believe that the mainspring may be slightly too long to do what I'm trying to do. IIRC, the pre-war grip frame is a touch longer than post-war frames so a "modern" mainspring might do the trick. You'll find out when I do. For now, the screw is all the way in and the trigger pull stays as is.

Time for a range trip....

It works! It goes bang every time! The trigger pull sucks and the stocks hurt my hand, but it does go bang.

Does it hit where I want it to? Oh heck no. With a center hold on an 25 yard target (B-8 I think) at 7 yards, I was hitting in the white at the bottom of the paper. In order to get the hits anywhere close to the center of the black I had to have the front sight sitting substantially higher than the top of the rear sight. The front sight blade is waaaaaaaaay too tall. It appears that the original front sight blade was just reattached to the barrel after the whack job and was not regulated to the new barrel length.

I forgot to get any pictures of the targets before throwing them away. It was bad. With the sights lined up normally I had to hold in the white top half of the target to hit the black. Ick.

The stocks were another major disappointment. They look neat, but wow are they uncomfortable to shoot.

When I got home I pulled my 4" 3rd Model HE out of the safe and compared the front sight heights. Yep. The 2nd Model sight blade was quite a bit taller than the one on the 3rd Model. Getting the 3rd Model out did help me with what to do about the stocks: the 3rd HE is currently wearing a set of BigMtnMan antler stocks for "large hands" that feel wonderful. It wouldn't break my heart to make a pair out of these two. PM sent....

Dinner was spent thinking about how to approach the front sight problem. Hand file or Bridgeport? Keep the half moon or go for a ramped semi-patridge thing with a brass bead? I had just decided to paint the entire sighting surface of the front blade orange and scrape the paint off a little at a time at the range to find out how much needed to come off of the blade when a non-destructive solution hit me:

I need a Wondersight.

A little clicky clicky, a little credit card action, and in a week or so we'll find out if it works. My hope is that there is enough vertical adjustment available in the Wondersight that I can get this thing zeroed without having to modify the front sight blade at all. If nothing else, the adjustable rear sight should at least make it so that not as much has to come off.

The Wondersight picture is not mine but I bought the part so I think that means I can show the picture. Unfortunately the Brazilian contract gun that the sight was on in the picture didn't come with the sight.

Stay tuned...more to come in a few weeks.

Entertainingly nice write up! Something good to read at 4am since I've been fighting with the flu for the past few days and my sleep schedule is screwed up.

Once you do it, you'll find the cylinder stop is not that big of a deal. In fact you may start taking all your guns apart just so you can remove all the cyl stops...or not.

Looking forward to seeing how the Wondersight works for you!

Well done!

Thanks for sharing!

Great write up. Thank you for sharing. I can't say when the detent you mention goes away. I discovered it myself recently too. Keep us posted on the progress.

IIRC, the cylinder hold-open soring loaded pin lasted into the 1930s in N frames and was discontinued in the smaller frames before that.

The bushings in the hammer and trigger are there to keep them centered in the frame. I think they are made of hardened steel, not sure about that, maybe bronze. This action is similar to a Colt Python action, in that it only has the single hammer to trigger interface rather than the later 2 step action of the current models. The 2 step was patented in 1909 and implemented at some point after that. The Python action hasn't changed in that regard to this day.

The headspace and cylinder gap can both be dealt with at the same time by putting the shims under the extractor instead of between the yoke and cylinder. This effectively "stretches" the cylinder to fill up the extra space. This is not a historically approved gunsmithing technique, but rather more of a field fix I came up with for times when it's not desired to do a barrel setback. It does work, however. On older guns, you have to cut the shims to clear the extractor alignment pins. On modern guns, there are no pins. The shims are easily cut with small scissors.

Nothing will go boong if you take the screw out at the front of the trigger guard. The screw tensions the cylinder stop spring, so as you take the screw out the tension goes away. The spring slides out and you can get the stop out easier than the current system. You still kind of have to hold your mouth right. Search for pictures of the King police sight. Gold bead and a white outline on the fixed sight gun.

The mainspring acting weird could be the screw in the grip. I don't remember if you said you tried letting the screw out without the grips. If you did that disregard.

@Pig Hunter - the grips were off when I was manipulating the strain screw and introducing the hammer bind. Good thought though....

I do like the looks of the King Super Police sights. I've seen pictures of front sights similar to that design that appeared to be a slot machined into the front sight base with a blade pinned into the slot. The top half of a Marble's bead sight would probably work....hmmm.

What I had in mind was something like the front sight in the attached picture except with a brass bead in the post. There may be one in the example. The picture is a bit fuzzy when enlarged to more than a thumbnail.

The first priority is to figure out how much of the front sight needs to come off. I was preoccupied with trying to get it to hit where I wanted and didn't stop to get an accurate measurement of exactly how low it was hitting so that I could calculate the height requirement.

I'm not looking at the front sight as a tragedy. It's just an unfinished job that I need to complete, one way or another. We'll have fun with this one.

Neat to see the friction bushings on hammer and trigger. They were on TLs and early M&Ps, I wonder when they were phased out. Thanks for posting this, interesting gun!

That's one of the hard parts of cutting the barrel and re-installing the original sight. Since the barrel is tapered, the farther the sight placement is down the barrel the taller the front sight has to be for the top of it and the fixed rear sight notch to be in parallel with the bore.

When you cut a tapered barrel and move the front sight closer to the rear sight you are in effect moving it "uphill" because the taper is less - or conversely the diameter of the barrel is larger.

It would seem to me that the best solution would be filing the front sight a little at a time until the POA & POI are the same just like you first thought. Then a little cold blue and VOILA' nobody else need be the wiser.

I would start by "flattening" the top of the front sight with a file until I ALMOST achieved the right height, THEN I would work on re-contouring the sight to it's original half-moon shape.

But if the Wonder Sight gets the POA & POI aligned, that is an equally good result. My only concern might be that the Wonder Sight will be too tall and you'll have the opposite issue (hitting high instead of hitting low).

I look forward to seeing how it works out for you. Great write up BTW...

I had a few extra moments tonight so I spent some quality time with Whack Job.

Tonight's objectives were to do something about that trigger pull and to install the Wondersight that arrived this week.

The Wondersight mounts in the top sideplate screw location and has to be installed last, which meant that the trigger work needed to happen first.

With the sideplate off, I started by removing the stock 98 year old rebound spring (which appears to have a compression rating just slightly less than the springs used in the suspension on my truck) and replacing it with a Wolff 14 lb rebound spring. This gave a nice snappy return action with much less effort than the original. One item done.

The mainspring was compared to a Wolff "power rib" spring and two major differences popped out: the Wolff spring had a much more pronounced hook area at the hammer end, and the original spring was much straighter than the Wolff spring. Overall length was not noticeably different.

The Wolff mainspring was installed, the sideplate put back in it's home spot, screws installed, strain screw tightened all the way, and it was time to test.

Double action pull: much improved.

Single action pull: hammer bind. Again.

Rats.

It was time to do something I really didn't want to do: take the sideplate off with the strain screw all the way tight. I know it's not recommended but I needed to see what was binding.

One cycle of the action made it very obvious where the bind was happening. Those great big hooks on the mainspring were touching the hammer as it approached the fully cocked position.

Out came the smooth cut file and a piece of 600 grit sandpaper. The hooks were dressed with the file on the top and the ends, then polished on the sandpaper. It took 3 cycles of filing, sanding, and test assembly before the bind went completely away. In all it took about 10 minutes.