Concealed Carry.... circa 1888

[clm2112]

Pair of project pistols came my way. Started on the first one today to clean up and fabricate a trigger return "v" spring.

Harrington & Richardson "The American" double action. 5 shot chambered in 44 Webley black powder cartridge. While waiting on the package of springs to get here from Wolff, I started making some brass to load. 44 Webley hasn't been produced since 1940, so the only solution is to machine down 44 S&W into the tiny cartridge. I still have to make a mandrel for the lathe to thin the rim on the cartridges.

This specific revolver (octagonal barrel, with no H&R markings) was made from 1888 to 1897, so it is an antique per the feds and the state of PA... i.e. not a regulated firearm.

Haven't decided if I want to refinish it, or just leave it in it's current condition after making it functional.

 

[Stephen G]

I have a pair of HR hammer less in 38 S&W. Lots of fun.

 

[clm2112]

I have a pair of HR hammer less in 38 S&W. Lots of fun.

Doing your own black powder loads, or are they modern enough to be proofed on nitro?

I've already done a few H&R top-break revolvers in 32 S&W. Seems to be a rather popular revolver in this area, though they have all been 20th century pistols and I made up black powder cartridges for them.

The other pistol I'll be working on in the coming weeks is another antique 32 revolver, a Forehand & Wadsworth six shot top-break that also dates around 1889 to 1896. It, along with the H&R 44, came out of a local patch house that was being torn down. They had been left on the floor joist beam in the basement for an unknown period of time.

 

[Bongo Lewi]

I have a break top S&W that needs a full restoration. I’ll get around to that one of these days. The original nickel plating is hopeless. Way beyond patina. I’ll send out the frame and cylinder. Zero interest in doing my own plating.

It would be a cool wall hanger or in a display box.

I am intrigued by the break top design. It should have become more prevalent on modern wheel guns. So easy and fast to reload. Cavalry still rode horses when it was made. It seems ideal for shooting from horseback.

 

[clm2112]

Ok, no springs in today's mail. Moving on to the other pistol, which fortunately doesn't have any broken parts, just filthy and gummed up with oil that has turned into grease and glue.

Soaked in carb cleaner, dismantled, cleaned, and re-assembled. Piece of cake and ready to shoot as soon as I make up some more 32 S&W black powder cartridges.

 

[Bongo Lewi]

Ok, no springs in today's mail. Moving on to the other pistol, which fortunately doesn't have any broken parts, just filthy and gummed up with oil that has turned into grease and glue.

Soaked in carb cleaner, dismantled, cleaned, and re-assembled. Piece of cake and ready to shoot as soon as I make up some more 32 S&W black powder cartridges.

View attachment 20769

That looks a lot like mine

 

[clm2112]

That looks a lot like mine

Yup, it was a S&W design that was copied by a lot of manufacturers. H&R, Iver Johnson, etc all had variations of the S&W top-break revolvers (most were infringements on somebody's patent or another, but seems the general theme was... sell as many as you can today and deal with the lawyers later.)

 

[Stephen G]

Mine are strictly BP. 1888 +/- I think. Just 1886 patent date. Need to make couple more trigger return springs. 1 broke (again) practice makes perfect I rekon.
If I remember right its pushing about 550 fps. With decent back lighting you can watch it go down range- you need a fan to blow smoke away too lmao.

 

[Bongo Lewi]

Yup, it was a S&W design that was copied by a lot of manufacturers. H&R, Iver Johnson, etc all had variations of the S&W top-break revolvers (most were infringements on somebody's patent or another, but seems the general theme was... sell as many as you can today and deal with the lawyers later.)

The gun biz has a colorful history of litigation for sure. Aircraft too. The Wright Brothers spent decades suing people for patent infringement.

I have a Winchester 1911 aka "Widowmaker" shotgun. To avoid infringing on Browning's ground breaking semi-auto shotgun patents, Winchester came up with this crazy design that had hunters blowing their heads off or their feet. Story here: Winchester Model 1911 - Wikipedia

I've restored it and shot it a few times just for grins. It hangs on a wall with two of the original Belgian Brownings made by FN, one is among the first 100 made. The other in the first 3000. I did a respectful restoration on those and they run beautifully. 100+ years old.

 

[clm2112]

Mine are strictly BP. 1888 +/- I think. Just 1886 patent date. Need to make couple more trigger return springs. 1 broke (again) practice makes perfect I rekon.
If I remember right its pushing about 550 fps. With decent back lighting you can watch it go down range- you need a fan to blow smoke away too lmao.

Wolff Part Number: 10072, KIT #7A V-TYPE SPUR TRIGGER RETURN SPRING

That's what I'm going to use. $14.99, should give me a couple of tries at getting a spring that works.

 

[clm2112]

Nothing like a little success to end the day. Ground a new trigger return spring and finished assembling the H&R 44 Webley. Works as a double action again, though the hammer notches are so badly worn that is will not work as a single action. Perhaps I'll try creating a new sear surface to hold the hammer in single action at a latter date, but for the moment it works as a double and the sear surface that holds the hammer in the carry position works just fine. (This seems to be a common problem with these pistols, where the second cut in the hammer chips out. Probably a result of being shot as a single action all the time.)

 

[clm2112]

Making obsolete cartridges....

Now that the pistol is assembled and working, I have to make the brass if I want to shoot it. Taking a 44 Special case and trimming it down to 0.69" long was pretty easy. But to get the brass to work within the clearances of the pistol, I need to thin the rim down from 0.063". The spec for the 44 Webley is a rim thickness of 0.033". However, the first cartridge I did I stopped at a rim thickness of 0.043" and it seems to fit this specific revolver's clearance between the frame and cylinder, so I think for the initial batch, I'll stick to that dimension and see if the pistol will rotate and fire five rounds without jamming.

Cartridge case on the lathe in a home-made mandrel. Just using a threading bit to remove material from the cylinder side of the rim. (so the primer pocket dimensions will remain unchanged.)

One down.... fourteen to go.

 

[clm2112]

Productive range session with two toys, one very very old, and one from this century.

I made up 15 of the 44 Webley cartridges. 230 gr cast lead TC with powder coat, over 7 grains of FFFg powder. Well, it worked. Not very impressive, but the bullets made it the 15 feet to the target and through the half inch of plywood. Reloading this old pistol is not something you can do with any degree of speed. With the loading gate open, you have to rotate the cylinder by hand, and push the empties out with a ballpoint pen before loading new rounds. Five shots is all you are going to get in a fight. Fouling wasn't a problem. The residue from the BP rounds cleans up with just a little hot, soapy water.

For a comparison, I also practiced with a Taurus 605, using two boxes of factory Winchester 130gr 38 Special. This was mostly a practice session to draw from a pocket holster, and use speed-loaders to reload. I sorely needed the practice. I'm still using old HKS speed loaders. I'm itching to try this again using the rubber Zeta6 speed strips.

 

[Bongo Lewi]

I lean toward the cylinder type speed loaders on the rare occasion I shoot a revolver. "Speed loaders" for revolvers always seemed like a contradiction in terms. I also tried the rubber strips for a while. Different but not better in my case. Mainly range guns, so I was never in a hurry to reload.

The thing with me is I lack motivation to train with revolvers. I was a teenager when they began to go out of fashion with LEOs. I like them and have a few very nice wheel guns, but they are collectible items to me. Not working guns. The only revolver I ever carried was a Ruger Alaskan 454 Casull I strapped on in a chest rig when hunting in grizzly country. It was well suited for that. I experimented with J frames as a backup ankle carry but found them too bulky for that purpose, gravitating to semi auto 380's.

 

[clm2112]

I lean toward the cylinder type speed loaders on the rare occasion I shoot a revolver. "Speed loaders" for revolvers always seemed like a contradiction in terms. I also tried the rubber strips for a while. Different but not better in my case. Mainly range guns, so I was never in a hurry to reload.

The thing with me is I lack motivation to train with revolvers. I was a teenager when they began to go out of fashion with LEOs. I like them and have a few very nice wheel guns, but they are collectible items to me. Not working guns. The only revolver I ever carried was a Ruger Alaskan 454 Casull I strapped on in a chest rig when hunting in grizzly country. It was well suited for that. I experimented with J frames as a backup ankle carry but found them too bulky for that purpose, gravitating to semi auto 380's.

I haven't used anything other than the classic HKS speed-loader. It has it's drawbacks, like hitting the holes and the twist to release the rounds with them only halfway into the cylinder. Doing this without looking at the pistol takes awhile to get right. I'm waiting on the Zeta6 reloaders. Having five round that go nearly all the way in might work better. My strategy is to use the 5 rounds in the revolver to retreat to cover, reload behind cover, then retreat some more.

Carrying a small wheelgun is a compromise for traveling out of state. I can't know the local laws in every state I pass through. I tend to only go through states that have reciprocity, but there may be local laws I can't know about. So, a little 5 shot is innocuous. If a locality has enacted some kind of ban on magazine capacity, there's a pretty good chance it is larger than 5 rounds. Something is better than nothing if I can use it with proficiently.

Even the ancient H&R has a potential use. It's an antique in a obsolete cartridge that the feds don't even consider a firearm anymore. That might pass muster in a jurisdiction... depends if the officer has a sense of humor.

 

[Bongo Lewi]

I haven't used anything other than the classic HKS speed-loader. It has it's drawbacks, like hitting the holes and the twist to release the rounds with them only halfway into the cylinder. Doing this without looking at the pistol takes awhile to get right. I'm waiting on the Zeta6 reloaders. Having five round that go nearly all the way in might work better. My strategy is to use the 5 rounds in the revolver to retreat to cover, reload behind cover, then retreat some more.

Carrying a small wheelgun is a compromise for traveling out of state. I can't know the local laws in every state I pass through. I tend to only go through states that have reciprocity, but there may be local laws I can't know about. So, a little 5 shot is innocuous. If a locality has enacted some kind of ban on magazine capacity, there's a pretty good chance it is larger than 5 rounds. Something is better than nothing if I can use it with proficiently.

Even the ancient H&R has a potential use. It's an antique in a obsolete cartridge that the feds don't even consider a firearm anymore. That might pass muster in a jurisdiction... depends if the officer has a sense of humor.

I have a C&R FFL license and have also wondered about how vigorous state law would be enforced if I were pulled over and a 'vintage' gun was discovered. I'm thinking it's a crap shoot. Like you said, depends on the cop. No amount of documentation or logic deters a numb nuts LEO from creating drama. In my former professional life ... every now and then I'd cross paths with a cop that was dumber than a box of rocks and got off on his or her authority a bit too much. Thankfully that was very rare.

I gave my wife a hammerless S&W .38 revolver because she had zero interest in futzing with a semi-auto. She has little interest in firearms. The revolver is a no brainer to operate and being hammerless can easily be stowed in a simple holster in her purse with no fear of a discharge if she drops the purse. She was much more comfortable with the small wheel gun. Point and pull the trigger. For home defense, the drill is she grabs the 20 ga Shockwave and barricades in the master bath. There's a semi pistol in there as well, but I doubt she would use it.

Like they say... the gun you have is better than the gun you left at home. I can be effective defending myself with any handgun, but upon realizing I was outgunned, retreat would also be my priority.

 

[clm2112]

Zeta6 "J-Clip" speed-loaders.... so far, they appear to work rather well. You grab the rubber tab with your thumb and finger, use pressure of your thumb to push the rounds all the way into the cylinder, then tear the rubber away like you are pulling off a band-aid. Done it a couple of times now, it doesn't harm the rubber. There's more clearance between the speed-loader and the frame, so no issues getting the rounds to index into the cylinder's chambers. I did change the grips on revolver to wood to get a smaller, slimmer grip. While that didn't help with the fit of the HKS loaders, it makes these rubber ones very easy to use.

 

[Bongo Lewi]

Zeta6 "J-Clip" speed-loaders.... so far, they appear to work rather well. You grab the rubber tab with your thumb and finger, use pressure of your thumb to push the rounds all the way into the cylinder, then tear the rubber away like you are pulling off a band-aid. Done it a couple of times now, it doesn't harm the rubber. There's more clearance between the speed-loader and the frame, so no issues getting the rounds to index into the cylinder's chambers. I did change the grips on revolver to wood to get a smaller, slimmer grip. While that didn't help with the fit of the HKS loaders, it makes these rubber ones very easy to use.

View attachment 21659

Those look like they would work! The metal ones are fine for the range but bulky to carry. The rubber, long strip type never appealed to me. Best of both worlds.

 

[serger]

Another endorsement for the Zeta's. I've got a half dozen for my J frames and they work quite well. The elastomer they use is good.

 

[serger]

As far as rim thickness goes, on the S&W Forum there are those who shoot .455 Eley (.455 Webley). Turns out that the .45 cowboy action shooter round will fit the chambers but the rims are to thick. So what they did was to get .45acp sizing dies and surface grind them flat past the rim. This allowed the .45CAS brass to have the rims swaged to the right thickness in a single stage press. Maybe with an ebay used .44mag die you could do the same thing.