Howdy Tinker,
I like the profile of that barrel. Use a mill? Hand file? You did a nice job on that gun. Thanks fer takin the time and effort to share.
The bullets seem to work well from seeing your target.
I wonder how you secure the breech ring. Held in place by the ring on the recoil shield?
When I see the ratchet on the cylinder I wonder about the hand. Use the original hand? Hard to see the ratchet teeth in the pic. I did a 36 Navy once to 38special and left the ratchet and the hand the same as they were. I had a cylinder made to work like that. I wanted the chamber throats and all since the barrel was sleeved to .357 size.
Since I'm the way I am I have to offer a word of caution. Under powered loads of smokeless can cause a detonation. Of course....I haven't looked at a loading manual so I don't know what loads are min. for 32's.
You mentioned small game hunting. I used to do that a lot with my Navy "51". While the dogs were runnin I'd look fer "sittin" rabbits. Hard to get them critters when they are runnin. Hard to find them sittin too.
Thanks for the kind words everyone! I reshaped the under-barrel lug with a Foredom tool and sanding drums. I've been making knives for going on 30 years, so I'm fairly handy with tools. The ratchet and hand are stock, as I used a cylinder made for the gun, so timing was unaffected.
Modern .32 S&W cases (not balloon-head) don't hold a great deal of powder, so 1.0-1.2 gr. of powder is not very under-loaded. I went ahead and chronographed two different gallery loads, a 58gr Hollow-base wadcutter and a very soft lead 64gr Wadcutter. Both have an identical slightly domed point. Results from this gun's 5-3/4" barrel were as follows:
58gr HBWC, 1.0gr Red Dot, Federal #100 Primer
478 fps. 29 ft./lbs ES: 40
65gr. LWC, 1.2 gr. Red Dot, Federal #100 Primer412 fps. 24 ft./lbs ES: 38
For a short-range indoor gallery load these are about perfect, firmly embedding themselves in my wooden target but not penetrating deeply. This five-yard group was shot with the 58gr HBWCs-
When I was stationed in Kansas (long, long ago) I used an 1851 Navy and an 1860 Army for calling coyotes. I'd go out with both guns loaded with five rounds each instead of carrying reloading paraphernalia.