Gunsmithing Questions

[acrosome]

I need a revolver which Tony Manzano would have found at an estate sale, taken in trade or otherwise rescued, which someone else didn't see anything special in, but he recognized good bones and an action that could be smooth as butter.

It has to fire double-action smoothly and break predictably enough so that there's never any reason to cock the hammer. Same pressure every time, same faint sensation of surprise that it breaks so easily, same point of impact.

The Smith & Wesson Triple-Lock is nigh legendary. Among the best revolvers ever made. Any gun nut would appreciate it. I don't think that it was made in .357, though.

Lever-action rifles are traditional, but tubular magazines tend to limit one to unaerodynamic bullets. The answer to that are rotary or box magazines, like Savage 99, Browning BLR or Winchester 71 rifles.

Or the Winchester 1895, if you want a lever gun. (I admit that I have a bit of a fascination with the 1895. I have no idea why. Same goes for the Remington Rolling Block.)

What are some cool examples of hunting rifles, shotguns or other utility firearms for rural work that skilled and budget-minded gunsmiths could have made from anything available free or at least cheap back in the Depression era?

They probably wouldn't build things from scratch, other than some sort of muzzle-loader. Far more likely is getting their hands on used actions, and then refurbishing, re-barreling, re-sighting, and re-stocking them. M1903 Springfield actions were popular because they were available and cheap. Krags, too, though they were a weak action that couldn't take much more than the .30-40. I'm sure that there would have been Mauser actions around to be had, too.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by acrosome

The Smith & Wesson Triple-Lock is nigh legendary. Among the best revolvers ever made. Any gun nut would appreciate it. I don't think that it was made in .357, though.

If you're distinguishing by the actual triple-lock design, as opposed to the official model name (which was originally the Smith & Wesson .44 New Century, but is now referred to as the Smith & Wesson .44 Hand Ejector 1st Model New Century) it was primarily chambered in .44 Special and .445 Webley, the latter a WWI order. So few .44 Russian, .38-40, .44-40 and 45 Colt versions were made and even fewer survived that a gun in any of those calibers would be a Holy Grail for wealthy collectors, who like their firearms factory-original and without any 'Bubba-ing' intended to make it more practical for ranch work, protection, law enforcement or sport.

If a Manzano found a collectable firearm, they'd sell it, not ruin the collector value with any work that isn't purely restoration which a rich buyer explicitly asked for. So, collectable firearms aren't really what I see as part of the inheritance of modern Manzanos, I'm more considering custom pieces with sentimental value, perhaps some practical utility, and a mystical element, for the family history, if nothing else.

I want an inexpensive revolver which an expert could see a way to make a good hard-use firearm from, with extensive gunsmithing, which would ruin any collector value, but a hard-use handgun used by an ancestor, for sport, rattlesnakes or their two-legged kin, could have sentimental value (and, in a campaign with subtle supernatural elements, be easier to bond with your aura, anima, life force or whatever name you give your paranormal essence).

In any case, the Smith & Wesson .44 Hand Ejector had a 2nd Model and a 3rd Model, neither of which actually came with the redundant third lock. And it's actually the 2nd Model which is the least collectable and best value, as it was one of the two handguns designated the M1917, in .45 ACP (the other was a Colt New Service), and used as an alternate standard in place of the Colt 1911, .45 ACP pistol. These were around for various uses in WWII, Korea and even Vietnam, but most of them were eventually sold as cheaply as surplus through mail order from 1958-1968.

In fact, I gave one Manzano a Colt M1937 revolver in .45 ACP, essentially a Brazilian contract of the same handgun, just the Colt version, not the S&W one. In real life, I gave him a Brazilian model because it was the only revolver I could find a photo of with the exact modifications I imagined they'd want. The in-setting explanation is that the Brazilian contract revolvers were declared surplus a couple of years before the US ones, which is true enough.

As for the Smith & Wesson Hand Ejector, no Triple-Lock or .44 New Century was ever chambered in .357 Magnum or .38 Special, but a S&W Hand Ejector with the size and strength of that legendary frame was, though. Smith & Wesson 38/44 Outdoorsman Hand Ejector or Smith & Wesson 38/44 Heavy-Duty Hand Ejector was a .38 Special built on the frame that could handle hot .44 Special ammo. As you can imagine, you could load hot .38 Special in it too, which eventually led to the commercial .357 Magnum.

So, while there were never Triple-Lock .38 handguns, you could say that the descendants of the Triple-Lock gave birth to both the .357 and .44 Magnum. If you were the sort of middle-aged man who gives history lectures on handgun family trees.

Incidentally, a Smith & Wesson 38/44 Heavy Duty or Outdoorsman, with little original finish remaining, would be exactly the sort of handgun that a young gunsmith of the Manzano family might find at a gun show or an estate sale; bead-blast, refinish and maybe shorten the barrel down to 3" or 4" if meant for carry or duty use, but maybe keep a longer barrel for PPC

Such a firearm is exactly the kind of hidden gem, in terms of quality shooting handgun, which you can get for cheaply and transform into a nice handgun with some skilled gunsmithing. It's not collectable, especially not if it needed extensive gunsmithing, some replaced parts and maybe a shortened barrel to be concealable or at least compact enough for a duty belt worn while driving a car, but it would be a shooter.

With adjustable sights, either originals on the Outdoorsman or second-hand ones mounted as part of customizing it, would be a great dual-use competition and self-defence or duty gun, as you can load it with light .38 Special loads for practice or competition where speed-shooting matters more than velocity to knock down targets, but load hot .38 Special cartridges of nearly .357 Magnum power (early handloading enthusiasts would, in fact, load 38/44 Smith & Wesson revolvers with loads equalling or exceeding many commercial .357 Magnum loads, but while the N-frame is a generously over-engineered frame for .38 Special and the quality of craftsmanhip of many older S&W revolvers excellent, you'd still be betting your safety on the heat-treatment of a near-century old firearm being as good as a modern one).

Originally Posted by acrosome

Or the Winchester 1895, if you want a lever gun. (I admit that I have a bit of a fascination with the 1895. I have no idea why. Same goes for the Remington Rolling Block.)

Winchester 1895 were fairly common in the Southwest and might be available as surplus. Both the Texas Rangers and Arizona Rangers bought the rifles, in .30-40 Krag and later in .30-06 Springfield. A Winchester 1895 in .30-06 which still shoots hasn't lost much value, no matter when you buy it, but the .30-40 Krag was an older, less fashionable cartridge and any rifle in it could be had for a bargain pretty much as soon as the Army went to the .30-03 and then .30-06.

For a family like the Manzanos, buying guns cheap because they are chambered in older, less desireable cartridges, makes sense. They load their own centerfire ammo and can keep a .30-40 Krag in hunting ammo with no more expense than a .30-06, spending only time, which underemployed people during a Depression have, while saving significant money on the cheaper rifle. Even if the rifle is chambered in something they can't easily reload, if they can rebore or line the chamber to make it take any ammo they can supply, they might buy it as a good deal, something to work on and turn labour and skill into currency.

Originally Posted by acrosome

They probably wouldn't build things from scratch, other than some sort of muzzle-loader. Far more likely is getting their hands on used actions, and then refurbishing, re-barreling, re-sighting, and re-stocking them. M1903 Springfield actions were popular because they were available and cheap. Krags, too, though they were a weak action that couldn't take much more than the .30-40. I'm sure that there would have been Mauser actions around to be had, too.

Rifles built with Mauser and Springfield 1903 or 1903A3 actions weren't often cheap. Even during those blessed periods when surplus Mausers and Springfields glutted the market, a good rifle barrel is not cheap and by the time you've built a complete rifle, you have paid for a whole rifle. People did it because a skilled gunsmith could make a Fine (Accurate and Reliable) rifle that way.

If you want really cheap, you need recycled parts. They don't all have to come from the same source and you don't have to build a high-power hunting rifle just because you are using a Mauser action and stock. If you had enough of a glut on the actions and stocks, stick cheap smoothbore barrels on them and sell them as cheap, bolt-action shotguns, which really happened after WWI. Or buy Italian or Japanese war surplus rifles, which nobody wants while the ammo is hard to get, and figure out a way to chamber those rifles in any kind of ammo you can get.

Fun things to consider, and even more fun if I could find photographs of such firearms, would be the re-purposing of barrels and/or stocks from rifles or smoothbores with outdated actions, like percussion cap or weak rimfire cartridge conversions, with more modern actions from surplus military firearms chambered for cartridges unavailable or uneconomical in New Mexico of the 1930s to 1980s.

If a gunsmith could re-purpose barrels that are not currently doing anyone any good, then a new chambering for a surplus Arisaka or Mannlicher-Carcano might be practical without the cost of buying a brand new custom barrel (which cost far more than a whole surplus WWI or WWII rifle in an undesirable caliber did by mail order in the 1920s to the 1960s). For many years after each World War, the economics of firearms were, frankly, insane, because there was such a ridiculous over-supply of surplus arms chambered for unpopular ammo.

A surplus .30-06 bolt-action rifle might cost $600, because that's a chambering Americans wanted and quickly snapped up all the sporterized surplus rifles in they could get. Meanwhile, surplus rifles in more exotic calibers might be offered for $90 or less by mail order, even if they were not necessarily worse products, they just happened to take ammo the average buyer couldn't easily obtain, so few people wanted to bother with them. Knowledgeable shooters still bought small-ring Mausers in 6.5x55mm or 7x57mm, as the ballistic excellence of those rounds was known.

But some surplus chamberings just weren't easily available or a hassle to reload, which meant you could use parts from such surplus firearms as spare parts for other projects. Because buying whole guns (even multiple ones) from a surplus mail order store was cheaper than buying new, American-made barrels, actions or even stocks. So, rebarrelling, rechambering or outright Frankensteining firearms was economical in a way it wouldn't be absent the huge stores of surplus wartime firearms, some of which were chambered for no-longer-manufactured ammo.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by acrosome

Same goes for the Remington Rolling Block.

I figure old Tommaso did a lot of work on dirt-cheap surplus Enfield and Springfield rifle-muskets, surplus Trapdoor Springfield rifles and carbines, and surplus Remington Rolling Block rifles.

Those were sold from 1866 on (for the earliest to be declared surplus, the rifle-muskets) and through the rest of the 19th century. The prices were negligible, because storing ordnance cost the Army money and this was before selling off surplus had any political implications, so basically, anyone who wanted to buy firearms that militaries had stopped using could do so for literal pennies on the dollar.

Even in the 1910s, when lever-action Winchesters with smokeless powder cartridges were what the fashionable ranchers and hunters carried, I figure that the Native Americans in the pueblos of the Southwest often had to be content with grandpa's old rifle, even if it was so behind technologically that they didn't sell ammo for it at the nice sporting goods stores.

No matter, some of them knew how to reload their own ammo, and for those who couldn't, Tommaso Manzano could either supply them with ammo he loaded, or he could convert their ancient surplus rifle into a more comfortable sporting firearm, shooting something that was still economical to reload, but maybe easier to get brass for.

So, I'm guessing that this was the work that Giancarlo did while he was his father's apprentice before WWI. After WWI, there was a glut of surplus from that war and, for the first time, quality firearms designed to fire smokeless powder cartridges, most of them bolt-action rifles, were available at bargain prices.

Sure, both Tommaso and Giancarlo transitioned to working on more modern bolt-action rifles, as well as the fine lever-actions that were available from Ballard, Winchester, Savage and others. But Tommaso was in his late thirties when WWI surplus became available and Giancarlo had already learned enough about gunsmithing so that he could have struck out on his own (he didn't, but his father couldn't truthfully call him just an apprentice any more, Giancarlo was getting better than his father at some tasks).

So, I figure that both of them might have owned hunting rifles that were built using surplus actions, stocks and barrels from all the 19th century rifles that passed through their hands in the 1910s.

I know the .45-70 is a practical cartridge to chamber both the Trapdoor Springfield and the Remington Rolling Block rifle in.

What are some other cool chamberings that might be attractive if you're using surplus parts from those late TL5 rifles, but doing it just before or during WWI?

Like, what are the most practical hunting cartridges in which you can chamber a rifle built on a surplus military Remington Rolling Block action? How much pressure is too much pressure for it? Will it work for any smokeless cartridges?

How does the .43 Spanish compare to the .50-70 Government in terms of cost of ammo per pound of venison brought back? Which feels nicer or more fun to shoot?

Ideally, you'd want to use a surplus barrel too to save money, but you can bore it out or line it, if necessary. As this is all hand-fitted, I can even imagine using a barrel from a different model of surplus rifle, machined to fit a Remington Rolling Block action, because it's in the caliber you want.

And I imagine that the Civil War era rifle-musket barrels might be your best bet for a shotgun built from surplus parts. Just gently remove the remains of rifling in the barrel and you have a single-barrel shotgun in, 24-gauge or so (maybe you can bore it out a bit, but thick barrel walls are safer, considering the age of the barrel and the uncertain heat treatment), though you have to do a fair amount of custom crafting to make it breechloading.

What are other cool things you might do with surplus Remington Rolling Block rifles and/or Trapdoor Springfields?