Revolver Voodoo

[Trooper224]

Amongst my crew I'm known as the gun guy, especially when it comes to "antiques". One of my shift partners isn't a gunner, but he does collect agency memorabilia including old issued weapons. Last night he tells me he has an old agency revolver with a stuck cylinder. It'll rotate but it won't open he says. Given the vintage, I was almost certain it was a backed out ejector rod. So, I tell him to bring it to work tonight and I'll look at it.

Sure enough, it was an elector rod issue along with a couple of other things, but nothing major. However, it did necessitate me completely disassembling the gun. Before I was done I had all the youngsters on the shift in the office peering over my shoulder. I kept hearing comments like, "That's a lot of parts." "What's that thing do?" The way they were acting you'd have thought I'd just opened King Tuts Tomb.

I reminded them I only have 369 days left, so someone better sart reading a book or watching Youtube.

[lwt16]

Yeah, I can relate.

I've had so many guns brought to me with sad cop faces saying "FIX!!!" that I've lost count. The best one was a paper sack full of revolver parts and they weren't even sure all the parts were there. Brought that wheelie back to life within a couple of hours.

Matter of fact, I'm overdue for such a challenge. The last one was a Sig Xcarry that wasn't going back into battery. Some rough machining marks were preventing lockup. Oh and the "this gun shoots left/low" and then we take it to the range together and I knock over plates at 25 yards like they are nothing. Then a quick lesson in trigger slapping commences and the guy/gal learns new tricks.

The gun guy. His/her work is never done. lol

[willie]

Decades ago when I worked for the Texas prison system, armorers told me that some guys working in raised perimeter pickets would get bored and disassemble a m65 revolver to see what it looked like inside. Reassembly often would result in leftover parts which were then thrown down the pee drain. The leftover parts could be found there. When any cop entered the prison, his weapon went up to the picket. More than one officer found out that when he got the gun back, adjustable sight screws and strain screws had been monkeyed with. I remain horrified that some people are dumb enough to do such things.

[oregon45]

The notion that revolvers are "simple" never survives the removal of a S&W sideplate

[Bigghoss]

Chris Baker said something to the effect of "it looks like a clock threw up in there".

[willie]

The old style Colt action found in Pythons and others were super complicated compared to S&W's. In these, one part not fitted properly affected the rest.

[ragnar_d]

Similar thing with me. Be it how to put something (back) together or esoteric gun knowledge. One conversation I remember was when we were discussing gun ideas.
Buddy 1: "What if there was a gun that did [X]?"
Me: "Yeah, the did that with the M1941 Johnson."
Buddy 2: "What?"
Me: "That was something similar to the Johnson rifle." *pulls up some stuff on my phone*
Buddy 2: "How...how do you know al this stuff?"
Me:"Mom wouldn't buy me a PlayStation so I grew up watching Tales of the Gun and reading Guns and Ammo."


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[Trooper224]

The old style Colt action found in Pythons and others were super complicated compared to S&W's. In these, one part not fitted properly affected the rest.

During my lecture I told the youngsters, "When you take the side plate off a Colt the best thing to do is put it right back on."

[Malamute]

The notion that revolvers are "simple" never survives the removal of a S&W sideplate

Interesting, once I finally became brave enough to do it, I thought they werent that hard to figure out what does what. The scary part was "what position does the hammer block stay at to get the sideplate back on", then thinking about what it does, it goes in position to block the hammer when at rest.

[Malamute]

The old style Colt action found in Pythons and others were super complicated compared to S&W's. In these, one part not fitted properly affected the rest.

Theres some good tutorials with pictures on how to do several things on Colt DA revolvers on the Colt forum. They arent quite as scary as I was lead to believe in the past.