HomeSmith Trainwreck: Short and Stout

Short and Sweet has a big brother!

This abused 13-8 showed up last week at the Shotguncoach Home for Wayward Smiths. It was advertised as a 12-3 which helped keep the attention level low. (The model stamp appears to be double struck and is hard to read without magnification)

I paid twice as much for this one as I did for Short and Sweet, but have you looked at the prices of 3" Model 13's lately? Three bills is a bit much to pay for a project gun but this one looked like it had potential.

Welcome to Project Short and Stout.

Starting our inspection on the right side, we see a nice arc of Pachmayr Pitting (tm) and some ugliness around the rear sideplate screw.

There is also some fluffy orange rust forming around the 4 line address, and an interesting tribal tatoo on the side of the barrel.

On the left side we see more Pachmayr Pitting (tm) and the beginnings of a very stylish Starsky & Hutch style arrow.

There is also a pretty bad rash forming along the bottom of the frame underneath the cylinder window.

The left side of the barrel looks fine with just a bit of holster wear at the muzzle.

The real tragedy is the cylinder. My FFL buddy and I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what made these marks in the cylinder. My buddy was on his way to the shop refrigerator to replenish our beverages when his eye fell on a set of Channel Lock pliers hanging on the tool board.

That was it. Some dufus used a set of Channel Locks on this poor thing. Why it was done is unknown, but our speculation is that the dufus was trying to unscrew the ejector rod and didn't realize that it was a left hand thread. I forgot to get pictures but there are indentations and a scrape in the end of the ejector rod that look suspiciously like ViseGrip marks.

Path forward? Will keep tuning in for progress reports - thanks

What abuse and neglect. Just wow

,

The cylinder gap without a wedge was .008", with the wedge it was .006", leaving us with endshake of .002". Rear gauge was within spec.

The yoke to frame clearance was good, but the yoke alignment was off towards the top and inside. It took a while, but some careful work with a wedge and lead bar brought the yoke back into alignment and the gauge pin now falls into place easily.

We're going to revisit the yoke when it's time to do an action job on this one. The end of the yoke barrel looks pretty rough. Assuming that everything else checks out I'll trim it square, smooth it out, and either stretch it or install a shim to bring our rear gauge/cylinder gap/endshake back into spec.

Let's move the insides to the outside and see what they have to tell us.....

The sideplate was the first to start talking. We've got contact from the hammer, the rear leg of the bolt, and the rebound slide. All of these components show shiny spots where they've been rubbing on the sideplate.

The inside of the hammer also shows contact in several places.

I'm going to replace this hammer with a DAO hammer like Short and Sweet has, but this chewed up one will still come in handy. When the time comes I'll cover the whole thing in Dykem and use it to verify that all the high spots have been addressed.

Other than all the pieces rubbing where they shouldn't the inside of the frame looks pretty good.

Since we had a bare frame at this point it was easy to degrease it and boil the frame and sideplate to kill any active rust. After carding it looked better but still has obvious issues.

Most of the glockness on the frame is on flat areas so drawfiling is on the menu for later. I'm also going to attempt to drawfile the cylinder. Some of those scratches are pretty darn deep but it's not like I'm going to make it much worse. If that doesn't work then I can always replace the cylinder.

The rest of the existing blued finish will be destroyed as soon as I start drawfiling. This will give me a chance to try out my unopened jug of Brownells bluing remover to clean it up and then a full rust blue will happen.

The good news is that the chambers and bore look good and the timing is spot-on.

I was out of time for this afternoon so everything went back together without any additional work. Why put it together if I know it all has to come apart again? For me, the easiest way to keep track of parts is to have them in the gun where they belong.

With all the original pieces in place we have a single action pull of 4 1/2 pounds and a double action pull of just under 11 pounds. The hammer tension is a whopping 60 ounces.

Next steps are the DAO conversion, an action job, and correcting all the interior rubbing. There won't be any cosmetic work performed until it's 100% functional and has been verified to hit where it's pointed.

Stay tuned...

Shotguncoach said:

The real tragedy is the cylinder. My FFL buddy and I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what made these marks in the cylinder. My buddy was on his way to the shop refrigerator to replenish our beverages when his eye fell on a set of Channel Lock pliers hanging on the tool board.

That was it. Some dufus used a set of Channel Locks on this poor thing. Why it was done is unknown, but our speculation is that the dufus was trying to unscrew the ejector rod and didn't realize that it was a left hand thread. I forgot to get pictures but there are indentations and a scrape in the end of the ejector rod that look suspiciously like ViseGrip marks.

Click to expand...

We here at Bubba's Skool of Kitchun Table Gunsmithin teaches our students to use a vise to hold the cylinder when removing or tightening an ejector rod. But if a vice is not available, we shows 'em how to use channel locks or a pipe wrench to hold the cylinder.

Probably this guy, all growed up...

A 3" 13-8 is a great gun to have, and we know you'll do good things to it with your skills.

As to the model stamping, it looks like the factory originally stamped it 10-8 and then hit it again with 13-8 a couple of times.

Sure ... you can laugh at vice grips but they've saved the world more times than you could count.

This afternoon I decided to spend a few minutes with Short & Stout.....6 1/2 hours later the DAO conversion has been done, we have a 7lb trigger pull with 48 ounces of hammer tension, and the rust bluing starts tomorrow.

I'll post pics of the highlights later....for now, here's how the cylinder came out after 4 hours of drawfiling and one pic of the work in progress.

Nicely done. Not quick or easy, but great results. The model 13 is worthy of this level of effort.

Protocall_Design said:

Nicely done. Not quick or easy, but great results. The model 13 is worthy of this level of effort.

Click to expand...

Thank you…..we're on rust cycle #3 at the moment

Ok....when we left our story last night, I had naively thought that I could just do some quick work on Short and Stout while my wife took a nap.

I had noticed while I was checking the yoke alignment that there were some burrs on the end of the yoke barrel and that the alignment gauge was extremely tight. The gauge sort of snapped in and out of the yoke which made checking the alignment somewhat sketchy.

One full turn with the yoke end reamer was enough to clean off the burrs. Reaming the inside of the yoke barrel took quite a bit more time. It was bad. There were 3 distinct narrow spots inside and the entire barrel ended up being cut by the reamer.

Afterwards, the gauge slid in and out easily and the ejection/cylinder rotation was greatly improved.

She Who Must Be Obeyed was still asleep, so I decided to press on with the DAO hammer install.

The DAO hammer I got from flea-bay must have been new-old stock. It was absolutely pristine, with a brand new hammer nose and a double action sear that had never been fitted to anything. All this meant that the double action sear was miles too long and locked the action up solid as soon as I installed it.

Swapping the double action sears between the old and new hammers brought everything into minimum spec and produced a very smooth hammer let-off with just a touch of a stone to the trigger bevel and double action sear.

Then I said the words that are the bane of every car, gun, and woodcrafting person: "As long as I've got the tools out......"

The rebound slide and it's corresponding frame area were stoned, the spring recess inside the rebound slide was deburred, the cylinder stop was cleaned up, the trigger face was smoothed and rounded, all the burrs on the bolt were removed, the sharp edge around the frame was smoothed out. Everything went well until it was time to shorten the strain screw.

I locked a file in the vise, chucked the screw into a cordless drill motor to spin it against the file, and the battery in the drill motor went kaput. Swap the battery.....and that one was also almost dead. Why should this be different. With a silent plea to the emotional support llama I pressed on with the screw turning at about 1 revolution per minute. When the battery in the drill motor finally died, the screw was exactly the correct length to produce 48 ounces of hammer tension.

With the shortened strain screw, a Wolff hammer spring, and a Wolff 11 pound rebound spring, we ended up with exactly 7 pounds on the trigger pull scale in double action. The key to the 11 pound rebound spring seems to be the interaction between the trigger and the cylinder stop. The reset path for the trigger has to be really slick for that light of a rebound spring to work properly.

I've grown to like the new style thumbpiece that Short and Sweet has, so when it was time to put everything back together Short and Stout got one too. The stainless thumbpiece looked like the proverbial diamond in a pigs butt against the nasty looking frame.

So now we have a smooth action, a bobbed DAO hammer, a spiffy new thumbpiece, and a frame/cylinder that looks like it was dragged behind a truck.

"While I've got the tools out......"

The ejector rod was removed using the handy-dandy Power Custom ejector rod tool and the cylinder was locked into a benchtop vise with one of the nastier portions facing up.

I started out with a heavily chalked #4 file but soon realized that it would take one week past forever to remove enough metal that way. The #4 file was set aside and an unchalked #2 was used to attack the cylinder first.

The circumference of the cylinder was worked with the #2, then with the chalked #4, then with 600 grit sandpaper, then with a brown scotchbrite wheel. Some of the larger scrapes on the edges of the flutes were left in place simply because I couldn't figure out how to removed enough metal to get them out without also changing the shape of the flutes.

Looking back now, I should have spent more time on smoothing out the big cuts from the #2 file. It's miles better than it was but I can still see marks in the finished product. The next time I fire up the bluing pot I'll strip this cylinder down and smooth it out more.

This is where I ended last night, 6 1/2 hours into my "quick messing around".