I found a nice, well not quite nice, 38/44 that I could repair a bit , for a reasonable price. It had a bit of ham handed damage to it but otherwise looked like it had not been used too much. Some one had taken a file to the backstrap and removed someone's name or such. It had been drawfiled and cold blued, leaving some flats and damage to the horn where the curve changes at the top of the grip. Then some one dropped it on concrete at the rear sight, leaving some damaged area. I was a metalsmith by trade for some years, so I knew I could help the old girl out and make her feel like new again! I started on the backstrap, and in a couple hours had remove all of the damage, and had it refinished to a 800 grit surface, including the draw filing damage to the horn area. Then on to the concrete damage! I used my engraving tool to hammer the displaced metal back to it's origional area. A small piece of concrete actually came out of one of the areas! An hours work and I had all of the displace metel moved back to where it should be, except for one small pit of about .005. Decided that was as far as I was going to go. A bit of polishing with 800 grit, and the metal was ready for a bit of bluing. I fired up the rust blue pot and reblued the new polished areas. Didn't put any bluing on the rest of the pistol, only the damaged areas! Man it came out great, you cannot tell where the origional blue and the new rust blue come together! To say I was estatic is sort of understating it! On to shooting the old girl. I have one cylinder that hangs up on rotation! It is the same one every time. So checked that the locking bolt was clearing the cuts on the cylinder before rotation, check! Not dragging on the back of the barrel, check! Rachet looks great, not worn or dinged, check! Everything has the correct clearances! I shot about 150 rounds through it this morning and the same spot on the rotation of the cylinder drags! I pulled the cylinder out and clamped the crane in the vice (has wood in the jaws) and I could see a few thousands of wobble in the extracter rod. This seems like it might be where it is binding during rotation. I just tried to strighten it out a bit, but man are they tough to bend a little bit. Should I just see if I can replace the rod? It's a 1950 or 51 so it has the right hand thread, and it is a N frame. Can some one point me in the right direction to find one, it has knurling on the end of the rod and is the same diameter as the rod. Or does anyone have an idea what might be causing the binding. All the parts look to be in great shape, including the hand. Best regards, the toolman.
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