HomeSmith Trainwreck: The Pit of Despair

Shotguncoach · Dec 7, 2024

She Who Must Be Obeyed (SWMBO) is out of town for the weekend, so I had time to fit in one more project before the end of the year.

Today we're working on a Model 10-6 with a C-series serial number from the mid-1960's. It's a nice looking gun with a pencil barrel, nickel finish, an extremely smooth action.....and a barrel that looks like the inside of the dumpster behind the downtown bus station.

Welcome to the Pit of Despair.

Shotguncoach · Dec 7, 2024

After making sure the gun was empty and the work area was clear, the first order of business was to remove the cylinder and yoke, then it was time to address the barrel pin. I can't say enough about my Donegan OptiVisor for tasks like this. The extra magnification makes positioning the cup-tip punch a breeze and helps tremendously with selecting the right size of punch for the job.

Another thing I've learned is the importance of repositioning the punch after every strike. The temptation is strong to do the blacksmith-style continuous pounding but that path leads to scratched frames and idiot marks. I even do it after the pin has moved enough that the punch is inside the frame just to reinforce the habit.

Once the pin was out it was time to assemble the MGW action wrench, mount the barrel in the same $6 V-shaped soft vice jaws from the jungle website that I've used since the beginning, and spin the barrel off. This one didn't want to come off and I had to actually put a bit of muscle on the wrench. Usually with pinned barrels it's a one-hand affair but this time I had to change my position and put some body weight behind it. Mongo was feeling strong when he put this barrel on but it did come off.

Shotguncoach · Dec 7, 2024

Next was the fun part: finding a barrel and cylinder that would work.

The Pit was originally a tapered barrel gun, so the frame did not have the shoulders to meet up with the rib on a heavy barrel. A heavy barrel will thread onto a tapered barrel frame, but it ends up looking really gross where the barrel meets the frame. I didn't think to put one on for pictures but let's just say that it looks like the front end of a Dachshund and the back end of a Saint Bernard stuck together. Fixed sight tapered barrel frames get fixed sight tapered barrels.

My recently completed inventory sheet told me that I had 4 possible parts kits that could make the Pit whole again. The barrel from the first kit stopped with the front sight in the 6 o'clock position so that was a no-go. Yes, I could have set the barrel shoulder back and made it fit, but memories of the H&R American that I rebarreled and had to move the shoulder half a turn forward with a hand file came crashing back. Let's see what else we have....

Setting the barrel shoulder back by hand was a learning experience to find out just exactly how bad it would be. 2 and 1/2 hours and 87 bazillion test fits was the answer. Not extremely difficult, just tedious.

The barrel from the second kit didn't want to thread on at all due to bunged up threads around the barrel pin notch. A K-frame die from Brownells and a bit of cutting oil made short work of that. I did make sure to thoroughly clean and degrease the threads afterwards so that no lubricant was introduced into the threaded areas. Once the threads were de-bunged barrel #2 spun on and stopped at 11 o'clock. We were in business.

Shotguncoach · Dec 7, 2024

I wanted to make The Pit into a reverse pinto with a nickel frame and blued barrel/cylinder, so fitting the replacement cylinder came next.

In other projects like this I've had to swap the hand from the donor kit into the action of the receiving frame to get the cylinder timing correct. This time I got extremely lucky: the replacement cylinder from the kit dropped right in and the timing was spot on with the original trigger and hand. The serial number on the back of the extractor star in the replacement cylinder is very close to the serial number of The Pit. I imagine that had a lot to do with it.

I couldn't check the barrel to cylinder gap yet (well, I suppose I could: it was infinity both with and without the wedge

) but I could check the rear gauge. The .060" end of the rear gauge gauge fit, the .068" end did not.

Sweetness.

Shotguncoach · Dec 7, 2024

Before going any farther I needed to address the scabies that were growing on the replacement parts. The rust wasn't bad but it was there.

The Power Custom cylinder dismantling and remantling tool was used to remove the guts of the cylinder, then my shop assistant and I moved to the kitchen and set a pot on the stove to boil. To keep peace in the family I highly recommend that you buy your own pot for boiling gun parts. Momma probably won't mind if you use her stove, but don't even think about using her pots and pans.

Since this was unplanned rust (as opposed to planned rust that I created), the boiling time was 45 minutes to make sure that the conversion process had time to do it's thing. That presented a good opportunity to do some other cooking. Lunch today was boiled barrel and cylinder with a side of beefaroni. Yummm.

Another thing I've learned along the way is NOT to use the formed sheet metal tongs that are in most kitchens for removing gun parts from a pot of boiling water. The parts will slip out and as the tongs flip around they will splash boiling water onto your belly, which is double plus ungood. The best method is to attach a piece of wire to each part as a handle, but in a pinch

the style of kitchen tongs made for ears of corn work well. Again, buy your own......or wait until SWMBO is out of town.

The boiling, lunching, and cooling off time was just long enough to watch the second half of the movie I started earlier this week. Just in case you're not feeling old today, the original Indiana Jones movie was made 43 years ago.

After the cooling off period the parts were carded with a Grobet carding wheel. We could have moved on to final assembly, but the Shop Assistant and I talked things over and decided that this was a good time for a nap.

Shotguncoach · Dec 8, 2024

Recharged by our mid-afternoon siesta, the shop assistant helped me to assemble the MGW action wrench again and the new barrel was threaded into place. Practice helps here....I was able to get a good vertical alignment on the front sight on only the second try. We won't know until it gets test fired, but it looks good from behind the gun.

With our barrel installed and the pin back in place, the next steps were to complete the inspection and adjustment of the various bits and pieces.

The yoke alignment needed to be adjusted inward a bit, so with the alignment pin/gauge in place to support the yoke barrel I whacked it a couple of times with a babbit bar (note: these were whacks, not WHACKS) and that lined everything up so that the gauge would drop into the frame when the cylinder release button was moved.

I've gotten into the habit of checking the ejector rod for straightness every time I dismantle a cylinder assembly and this one needed serious help: .029" of runout. A couple of quick pulls with the alignment bar from the Power Custom ejector rod fixer-upper jig brought that down to .003".

But what about 'dat gap? Without the wedge our cylinder gap was .009". Not great, not terrible. With the wedge the gap shrank to .007", giving us .002" of endshake. I can live with that.

Shotguncoach · Dec 8, 2024

I mentioned earlier that The Pit had a nice action. The hammer tension is exactly 48 ounces, the single action pull is 1 3/4 pounds, and the double action pull is just a hair over 7 1/2 pounds. Someone who knew what they were doing has been inside. I didn't even take the sideplate off....

To wrap things up The Pit needed to be dressed up a bit - the goodyear stocks had to go. Poking around in the pile caused two likely candidates to float to the top. The square bottom magnas fit much better than the rounded PC magnas. A Pachmayr grip adapter rounded things out for a better hold.

There still needs to be some quality time spent with Mother's wheel polish to clean up the nickel on the frame, but first I want to get in a quick range trip to check the barrel alignment and make sure everything works the way it should. I'm unsure of when I'll have time for that so watch this space for future updates....

Total time from clean bench to clean bench was 5 1/2 hours, but that includes 45 minutes of parts boiling and just over an hour of nap time, plus a few minutes of playing ball with the shop assistant. Call it just over 3 hours of work. A fun way to spend an afternoon.

JMD999 · Dec 8, 2024

Thanks for taking the time typing to lay this all out. Very informative
Nice job!

OrlontheBrave · Dec 8, 2024

Beautiful work as always!

I was under the impression the 10-6 was a heavy barrel with a ramp sight, and the 10-5 a tapered barrel. Ami I mistaken, or it possible the revolver was mis-stamped/rebarreled?

Protocall_Design · Dec 8, 2024

Great writeup and workmanship, excellent photography! Good pictures really help to see what's going on, but it's difficult to get good shots of the shiny stuff or inside a barrel. All of these are clear and well focused. They are very well done.

I did notice that your emotional support llama seems to be a lot smaller than the ones at the airports...

Shotguncoach · Dec 8, 2024

The emotional support llama is still there...he looks over my shoulder and gives me advice once in a while.

The shop assistant is a new hire that is in charge of security and bringing me random socks. A fun side benefit of having a dog in the shop is that when I drop something I can just look at the dog and the dog will be looking at wherever the part ended up. It actually is a real time saver.

.44Magler · Dec 8, 2024

So does boiling and carding turn the red rust to black or does it just remove rust? I'm new to the game and I seen this posted on a question I had before.

Shotguncoach · Dec 8, 2024

The boiling converts the red rust to black, the carding wheel (or brush) removes the fluffy leftovers and polishes the steel. In most cases the conversion process will somewhat re-blue the area. It's a black rust "blue" that isn't going to match the factory bluing, but it will look much better than it did.

Mark Novak has some excellent videos on YouTube that cover this topic in detail. [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rShG_F85W1Y"]This one[/ame] This one is about an hour long and covers conserving vs. restoring. The entire video is worth watching, but if you want to skip directly to boiling and carding jump ahead to the 32 minute mark.

.44Magler · Dec 8, 2024

Thank you so much for the information. Ill watch the whole thing!

Jeff

Shotguncoach · Dec 9, 2024

OrlontheBrave said:
Beautiful work as always!

I was under the impression the 10-6 was a heavy barrel with a ramp sight, and the 10-5 a tapered barrel. Ami I mistaken, or it possible the revolver was mis-stamped/rebarreled?

I have to give a shout-out to my buddy Orlon here....I've been reading the model stamping as 10-6 all this time, and it wasn't until I viewed it under magnification that I realized Orlon was right. The Pit is actually a 10-5 with a sloppy stamp on the number 5.

Good call out!

robvious · Dec 9, 2024

your stamp confusion makes sense.. that is a "lousy" stamping of a 5..

chuck17 · Dec 9, 2024

Cool project! Thanks for sharing. I wish my shop asst. would point to where all my shtuff flies off to!

steelslaver · Dec 9, 2024

I like it

Hey, next time you have to time a barrel I can help you out.

This is how I do it. But, I made up one of the centers deals for another forum member I did some work for

Then you can put the barrel in the centers jig and place the taper piece that fits in the forcing cone in a drill press chuck and spin it and use a file with the edges safed to trim the shoulder as the barrel spins true. If you really wanted to be extra steady you could put the muzzle center in a bushing or bearing in a cross feed vise on the drills table.

The other way to cheat, which I used on a beater 1917 is to remove some material from the face of the frame instead of the barrel shoulder. After all .02777 is a whole turn and 1/2 is only .013885

Shotguncoach · Dec 9, 2024

@steelslaver that's a pretty spiffy setup.

There's a lathe at the shop but it needs to be rewired before it can be used. (That's a long story - it came over from South Africa) After it's rewired I still have to learn to use it.

I have this goofy thing from Brownells:barrel set back fixture but I haven't tried using it yet either.

I've invested in a pretty large inventory of parts kits and so far I've always been able to find a barrel that times correctly. Keeping the serial numbers of the receiving frame and the donor kit close to each other helps quite a bit there.

The H&R was a $10 bag gun with the missing pieces sourced from ebay, including the barrel. That one was done as a combination of work on the frame and the barrel with files and stones. The sides of the frame weren't parallel with each other so I put a range rod into the cylinder and used it as a reference to square the frame to the bore axis using a machinists mini-square from Amazon and the calibrated eyeball. Just doing that picked up almost a quarter turn on the barrel. I started out on the barrel by working around the shoulder with a safe-edge file and ended using a magnifying visor to find each point of contact and addressing them individually to finesse the final little bit. Now that I can say "I've done that" I never plan on doing it again.

The H&R has been done for a while...I just had to wait on ammo because I didn't have any .38 S&W on the shelf. I'm planning on test firing it and a Rossi bag gun that also got put together from pieces when I take The Pit to the range. That's at least 2 weeks away due to travel plans so we all just have to wait.

Llance · Dec 10, 2024

More than a few years ago, i needed to fit front and rear sights to a 7mm Spanish Mauser I was making into a camp gun for myself. Williams supplied the sights, and a strong light provided the alignment tool. The guy at Williams said, or perhaps I mis-heard his Wisconsin speech, that I couldn't fit the rear peep sight to the bridge at the back of the receiver.

Never give an idiot a job then tell him it can't be done. He'll only make you look a fool.

Anyway, once the rear sight was fit to the receiver bridge, I used a strong light on the rifle, and using that, aligned the front sight. The light giving me a straight line the length of the barrel. When everything was lined up, front sight, light line to the rear sight, and all as straight as my eyes could match, I soft soldered the front sight in place.

First trip to the range and the first shot hit with no deflection but 2" high. I put it down, and after cooling it was cleaned one time then put in the case. I take it out now and again to wipe it down, but otherwise haven't had a need to shoot it. Which is a great pity in my mind. Still. Ehh, someday.

HomeSmith Trainwreck: The Pit of Despair

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