frontier copy

[Able Wood]

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howdy,  i have a old spanish made copy of a S+W .44 frontier DA.  it belong to my great grandfather witch i was told he got it in 1900.    the gun is in about 90+ nickle and the action is perfect and the barrel latch to frame lock is very tight.and has a rebounding hammer, however the cyl. is like an old iver johnson it free spins backwards when the hammer is at rest as many of the cheeper guns of that day were made. the prob. is there is a little side play in the cyl. at lock up. the cyl. notches on these guns only have a stop or "wall" on one side. the bolt stops movement in one direction but what stops movement in the other? the hand?  a little tightening in this respect is all this old girl needs to be a shooter again! anyone got any ideas?   thanks

[St. George]

You're not going to be able to tighten it like you might think.

They weren't built for that sort of lock-up.

What you 'can' do, however - is to 'thoroughly' clean the piece - inside and out.

While you're in there - look to see if there's any burring and take this opportunity to stone it away.

Then - use a high-quality grade of gun grease - I use Pro-Shot's 'Pro-Gold' - on bearing surfaces and at points of brightness/wear.

Reassemble and insure that your screws are snugly in place.

You should notice two things - increased smoothness and 'possibly' a tighter 'in-battery' lock-up when the hammer's been dropped as if fired.

The hand is what helps hold they cylinder in place as the weapon is indexing and when the firing sequence is in play - it bears against the cylinder 'star' to assist in locking the cylinder in place.

These guns were wildly popular - but they suffer from relatively 'soft' metallurgy.

You can 'shoot' them - but if you want to 'compete' with them - you're going to break something sooner than later and parts are generally found in other folks' guns...

Vaya,

Scouts Out!