Hello fellow Jow Forumsommandos!
I have recently purchased a U.S. Revolver Co. Iver Johnson pattern .32 with a serial number a little north of 88,000 for $20. Why? Shits and giggles. I'm going to order a couple boxes of ammo and shoot some cans and such with it, but I had read that some of these old .32 S&W Short guns weren't safe for black powder. Does anyone have more info on this? Google search inconclusive on my particular gun.
Pic related, not my gun but same model.
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For the record, the one I got isn't in nearly as good a shape as the one in the photo, it looks like something that would show up in a police evidence locker, traded a case of beer and $20 for it for the hell of it
You'll be hard pressed to find much .32 short around. Yes the gun was designed for black powder cartridges and no the cylinder is too short to accept .32 long like some other guns can. You can get away with shooting .32 acp but the tiny rim makes extraction a pain. If you stay away from federal or spicy defensive loadings of it the first thing you'll notice is wear on the latch and hinge with moderate shooting.
Check the serial number under the left grip. If it has a letter prefix then it was made after 1909 and is safe for smokeless
I kinda feel like .32 ACP would be an awful lot of chamber pressure for this thing. I just really like my fingers is all.
Those are nice gats.
Keep in mind the USRC-branded guns kept being made on the old pattern associated with "black-powder-only" guns, without the action improvements of later Iver Johnson-branded guns. Some know-it-alls mistakenly identify them all as being pre-smokeless guns on that basis, but that's incorrect -- check the serial number like says.
Yeah it is, I sure wouldn't do it in my gun. That user may have meant handloading .32 S&W Short loads in more-available .32 ACP brass -- that's certainly an option. Anyway, factory option isn't even hard to find:
ammoseek.com
But while I wouldn't try it, you might well get away with actual .32 ACP, for a little while -- the smokeless-era guns really aren't particularly weak w/r/t chamber pressures. The big problem is recoil impulse battering the catch loose, and that'll happen even without going overpressure, e.g. if you use modern powders to increase velocity (and thus recoil) while keeping pressure down.
Anybody still manufacture .32s ?
Sure, if you count .327 Federal. You can technically shoot either .32 S&W Short or Long in it, though I'm not sure why you would want to.
Not , really. Just asking for general knowledge.
I've been wanting to get one of these for Fallout 3 larping. Looks like .32 S&W Short isn't too terribly expensive anyway.
I have about 8 rounds of .32 S&W short sitting here in case I ever find one of these guns.
Just be careful, the grips in these crack like fucking crazy.
The safest way to handle these puppies is probably to reload for them. Since cycling is not an issue you can probably go quite low.
would Jow Forums risk their hand firing one of these in 38sw with 50 factory loads if the gun at least appeared to be in working order
It is 100 year old metal manufactured with the absolute minimum of costs and by standards that today are deemed unsafe in the Khyber Pass. No thanks.
I shoot 32 long with my 327 revolvers all the time.
Ill take your advice
Just be mindful about squibs
I want someone to make a modern break action. I don't get why that isn't a thing. Actually, something like the revolver in deus ex would be the tits. The force is perpendicular to the hinge, so you're not looking at the same wear on the latch as normal break actions, also trounds. Which are even sexier than tits.
>appeared
Gotta be careful with that; I'm a professional machinist and amateur gunsmith -- what "appears" like working order to you may not be the same as to me. But yeah, if it passes my inspection, I'd shoot a cylinder-full through it. If it still seems okay (including checking for increased play in the barrel lockup, etc.) at that point, I'd keep shooting.
Sounds like you may already have one, but if not, and you're looking to buy an ancient poorfag gat to shoot, IMO you're better off with one of the solid frame ones like the "Young America" rather than a top break.
>I want someone to make a modern break action
Hope you like loli-gats.
Recheck the serial number to make sure it isn't an older black powder only .32.
Go here and ask the old timers who has THE BOOK covering all the serials.
Protip: the serial number under the handle grips. Take pictures before posting.
The gun is really safe, you can hit the hammer with a hammer and it will not fire.
They shoot, they plink, and still better than a .22lr for lethality.
Some reloaders will sell you ammo for about .50-$1.00 a round or reload them yourself.
Pic is a one that I am refinishing.
Huh. I didn't know about that NAA. I might just buy one. Also, now I'm wondering if I made the revolver, if there's any chance of selling the design to a manufacturer. I don't really give a shit about making money off it, I just feel like it's something that should exist. Also, I don't understand the lack of replaceable cylinders. Everyone says the timing is too exact, so you can't have them be quick swap. But the 1858 was fine, and I've never seen mine or anyone else's have excessive leading on the forcing cone even to suggest that the timing is bad.
>I might just buy one
Just so you know:
youtube.com
I think it's only really an issue for the sausage-thumbed, but I've never shot that version.
>Everyone says the timing is too exact, so you can't have them be quick swap. But the 1858 was fine
It's worth noting that cap-and-ball revolvers can, and frequently do, have a larger radius of engagement on the ratchet, because there's no interference from the cartridge rim. So 0.001" difference in hand/ratchet fit corresponds to a smaller angle, and thus to less chamber/barrel misalignment, than in a typical cartridge revolver.
But it's economically feasible to hold tighter tolerances today than in the black powder era, so it still shouldn't really be a problem.
Top-breaks complicate timing in another way, though this affects an individual gun over time more than cylinder interchangeability. As the latch loosens up, the cylinder axis moves both up and down, and front to back -- and depending on the ratchet arrangement, if you try lengthening the hand to compensate for a loose latch, the hand takes a pounding every time you fire and soon goes out of time. The old-school Iver Johnson system (where the "bolt" is part of the trigger) is actually very good in this regard -- it always exhibits a little play when cocked, but doesn't increase badly as the latch loosens.
I've had some thoughts on different cylinder lockup variations to address this, but by far the most practical option is simply to keep the latch tight -- whether by making it with tight enough tolerances to always be tight out of the box, and some combination of beefy enough, hard enough, and strong enough to never wear or shoot loose, or by using a wear-compensating latch like basically every break-action shotgun ever. The latter seems so incredibly obvious, I really don't understand why so many (virtually all) historical top-breaks used non-compensating latches.
I paid almost 300 for mine and it looks a lot worse than yours what the fuck
I wouldn’t shoot one of these even with rounds it’s made for.
These were the SNS of their day and the quality really shows.
Holy fuck do you live in the NYC or something?
These are the some of the absolute worst guns you can buy. I wouldn’t pay more than $20 for one.
But you don't know how bad OP's looks, because he just grabbed that pic off the internet.
They often sell for under $150 on Gunbroker in good shape. WTF are you doing?
Iver Johnson was a serious gunmaker. Their little revolvers weren't crap. The SNS from the time period would have been the Belgian no-name guns.
>You can technically shoot either .32 S&W Short or Long in it
.32 short and .32 long Colt as well. And .32 ACP, and .32 H&R Mag.
Shame most of those are obsolete or otherwise rare rounds, the potential versatility is huge.
Yeah, I feel like .32 H&R can make sense the same way .38 Special is good when handing a .357 snubbie to a novice, and .32 ACP is dirt-cheap for plinking, plus you can imagine a contingency where you're out of revolver ammo but have .32 ACP, so that's nice.
As for the rest -- the weak S&W rounds, and the Colt rounds that are not only weak, but rattle around in the chamber -- you've got to go out of your way to buy them, they cost substantially more than .32 ACP, and it's not like .32 H&R has objectionable recoil even in snubbies. So they're interesting, but not useful.
Well, to be fair, I could see stocking up on .32 S&W Short if you use a wheelgat for small game hunting, and want to minimize meat destruction.
Nah just go ahead and shoot .32 Auto out of it
It'll be fine
Dumb. 4 grains of black powder and a slug is not hard to put in a case with a primer compared to the cost of you losing a hand, or worse.
Afri-cans, Puerto Ri-cans, or Méxi-cans?
You might want a bigger gun.
A good way to check if it’s a black powder or smokeless model is to check the mainspring by removing grip. If it’s a leaf type it’s bp if it’s coil it’s smokeless