New Aquisition: S&W No. 3 American U.S. Army

[wlw-19958]

Hi There,

I have seen a number of early Americans that are fully plated.
I have an early 2nd model lettered as Full Nickel plated
The plating was not done in the factory but by sub-contract

I don't know when S&W started doing nickel plating in-house
but in the 1870-1871 time frame, they used an outside inde-
pendent company. The 200 revolvers that were nickel plated
were plated by the Boston Nickel Plating Co.

In fact, the 200 nickel plated U.S. Army Americans were plated
via a coordinated effort between the Army, S&W and Boston
Nickel Plating. General Dyer ordered that 200 of the 1,000
be plated for field testing as per the recommendations of the
St. Louis board of March 1870. Dyer ordered Major Benton
to perform this function and he contacted Capt. Adams of the
Boston Nickel Plating Co. The revolvers were forwarded direct-
ly from S&W to Boston Nickel in groups of 25 guns per day
until the 200 were finished. Apparently, there was some trou-
ble in plating the trigger guards but I will leave it to you to
read Charles Pate book.


Cheers!
Webb

 

[iby]

Do you remember if Col Pate says they were full plate?

 

[wlw-19958]

Hi There,

Do you remember if Col Pate says they were full plate?

As I read it, trigger guards and barrel latches were nickel plated
but not hammers or triggers. S&W thought nickel plate on the
sear parts would throw off timing and would ultimately chip and
flake off.


Cheers!
Webb

 

[iby]

Thanks
I will re-read it.