Driftwood Johnson
Member
Howdy
I keep telling myself no more K frames! I've got enough already. Then I'll come across something a little bit different that I just have to have. I bought my first Victory Model the other day. It was not a whole lot of money, so I grabbed it. The grips are wrong, the lanyard loop is missing, and it is a little bit the worse for wear, but the chambers and bore are pristine, so I said what the heck and bought it.
I just had it apart and cleaned out a few decades of hardened oil and gunk.
Here are a few photos.
First off, how about a guess as to when it was made, please. As you can see, the SN is V4224XX. This particular gun has no military markings on it except for the flying bomb next to the SN. I have read this makes it a civillian model, probably sold to the Post Office or some similar agency. Did all the Victory models have the flying bomb on them?
The seam around the side plate is much more noticeable on this gun than any of my other Smiths. At first I thought maybe somebody had filed down the sideplate to make it a looser fit. Turns out the edge of the frame all around the side plate has a slight radius running all around the top edge, highlighting the seam. The sideplate is nice and tight, it required a good bit of tapping on the grip frame to get it to rise up, there is just has this slight radius running around the top edge of the frame cut. Is this typical of Victory models, or did I get one that has been altered?
Here is a couple of photos of the markings on the grip frame. Anything of any particular meaning here?
This gun has the older style spring type hammer block that is pinned to the side plate, rather than the more modern sliding hammer block. I take it that since the SN does not have a SV prefix that it is correct.
One more question. I would like to replace the Magna grips with something a little bit more correct, but doubt if I can find any real service grips for a reasonable amount of money. Does anybody remember the name of that outfit that is making reasonably good replica wooden grips for older Smiths? I put a pair on one of my Brazillian 1917s, but I can't find any information about where I bought them.
Thanks for looking, and thanks for any answers you can give me.
P.S. I took it to the range last weekend and put some of my standard 158 grain semi-wadcutter loads through it. It's quite a shooter, it held some very tight groups. I was a little bit surprised, because the barrel/cylinder gap is huge, around .015 or so. I was expecting to get lead spitting and poor accuracy, but I was very pleasantly surprised.
I keep telling myself no more K frames! I've got enough already. Then I'll come across something a little bit different that I just have to have. I bought my first Victory Model the other day. It was not a whole lot of money, so I grabbed it. The grips are wrong, the lanyard loop is missing, and it is a little bit the worse for wear, but the chambers and bore are pristine, so I said what the heck and bought it.
I just had it apart and cleaned out a few decades of hardened oil and gunk.
Here are a few photos.
First off, how about a guess as to when it was made, please. As you can see, the SN is V4224XX. This particular gun has no military markings on it except for the flying bomb next to the SN. I have read this makes it a civillian model, probably sold to the Post Office or some similar agency. Did all the Victory models have the flying bomb on them?
The seam around the side plate is much more noticeable on this gun than any of my other Smiths. At first I thought maybe somebody had filed down the sideplate to make it a looser fit. Turns out the edge of the frame all around the side plate has a slight radius running all around the top edge, highlighting the seam. The sideplate is nice and tight, it required a good bit of tapping on the grip frame to get it to rise up, there is just has this slight radius running around the top edge of the frame cut. Is this typical of Victory models, or did I get one that has been altered?
Here is a couple of photos of the markings on the grip frame. Anything of any particular meaning here?
This gun has the older style spring type hammer block that is pinned to the side plate, rather than the more modern sliding hammer block. I take it that since the SN does not have a SV prefix that it is correct.
One more question. I would like to replace the Magna grips with something a little bit more correct, but doubt if I can find any real service grips for a reasonable amount of money. Does anybody remember the name of that outfit that is making reasonably good replica wooden grips for older Smiths? I put a pair on one of my Brazillian 1917s, but I can't find any information about where I bought them.
Thanks for looking, and thanks for any answers you can give me.
P.S. I took it to the range last weekend and put some of my standard 158 grain semi-wadcutter loads through it. It's quite a shooter, it held some very tight groups. I was a little bit surprised, because the barrel/cylinder gap is huge, around .015 or so. I was expecting to get lead spitting and poor accuracy, but I was very pleasantly surprised.
