S&W .38 Brake top

[Scattered Thumbs]

Evil is right, the bottom one is not a Smith & Wesson.

[Qball]

Right you are Evil and Scatterd Thumbs
That star, seen on some belgian revolvers i have
The dealer was shure it was a Smith so i did not look closly on the picture. Shame on me
On the other hand $25 for each
Boy do i hate guncontrol laws
Opinions on the Iver's please, with or with out safety trigger?
The gun will be used in pocket revolver.

[Evil]

Qball,

The exposed hammer topbreak, while not a S&W, may be by some other reputable American manufacturer. It seems like everybody and their dog manufactured a topbreak .38 at some time or another. And they were being made by American companies into the 1970's, at least. See if you can have the guy tell you exactly what the markings are on top of the barrel and elsewhere are.

As for the Iver Johnsons: They're pretty good and durable little guns, maybe like a Volkswagen(Iver Johnson) is to a Mercedes(S&W). My understanding is that the top pistol (which has a separate hammer shroud) in the picture is pre-1899 and the other one is early 20th century. My information comes from here:  http://www2.arkansas.net/~sws1/ij-antiq.htm  Some more information on Iver Johnsons is here:  http://www2.arkansas.net/~sws1/ij-faq.htm 

Are your local "silly gun laws" such that you can't just buy all three at once. Twenty five dollars each is a "give away" price, and any of those pistols is worth much more than that.

Good Luck,
Evil

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[Qball]

My hope and intention is to bye them all (think he had five?)
However the "law" is not easy to convince.
We have a point system  where a rifle is one point pistol is two and full auto wepons is five.
As individual person i can not own more than 40 points before the storage laws get realy silly.
and full auto wepons is not realy alowed for private citizens. If you are not in the "military home guarde"
And to top it all you have to specify each wepons indivdual use, and the "law" thinks that you
can not compeate in many different types of disiplines meaning that if one likes target shooting
you have to sell thouse guns if you would like to try something else, and the license is for FIVE years
then you have to aplye for renewal.
My points is way over 40 points so i'll have to sell some of my modern revolvers, but with these laws
no one is bying 
The only guns not included in the law is original front loaders made before 1896 
identical replicas? License and gun safe. The original? no license an a nail to hang it on the wall

[Evil]

Qball,

What a bummer! And all those laws have absolutely no effect on criminals, they just make life harder for honest folks. Don't they have any special category for collectors?

Evil

[Qball]

You are absolutly right Evil.
The bad guys don't have to aply for licens and the police don't have the resource to hunt them down.
And the customs can't close the borders for arms smuglers.
As a collector i am not allowed to fire the wepon.
By the way the so called S&W is belgian.
http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-weapons/revolvers.htm
Scroll down to the middle of the page.
Never mind, i'm aplying for licens for the Iver's and a friend for the Smith.. sorry belgian
so wish me luck

[Qball]

And another funy thing hapend, i talked to a local dealer if he could order some .38 S&W brass?
He offerd me loaded Lapua ammo cheaper than new Starline brass. Guess he's been sittin' on them some time.
Think that some one is trying to tell me some thing.

And dont worry, i have a bullet puller hammer. i'm not going to shoot modern ammo in them.

[Evil]

Qball,

Be careful of those bullet puller hammers, I had one go off in the same room I was in. None of us there at the time could figure out why it went off, but it did. So always wear safety glasses and gloves when using one. I've been using a regular RCBS pullet puller for years, and if you are trying to pull more than a few cartridges, that is the way to go. As I recall, they cost less than a set of dies. They will leave some marks on the bullet, but the marks are even, so just run the bullet back through a sizing die, and they're good to go.

Lapua has always had an excellent reputation, but Lord knows what gun that ammo was intended for, so better to pull the bullets and reload them. Besides, black powder is more fun to shoot.

Have Fun!
Evil

[Qball]

Thank you Evil, i will keep that in mind.

A friend and me was preparing some brass for a 12,17x44R
the reloading dies was not at hand so he held the shell in his hand and with a nail and a small
hammer poked the primer out. Think that you can guess the rest. Yuup found a live one
Man.. blood everywere something for the CSI team
Luckely the hand healed just fine, but the shock when it went of.....

Got one of them RCBS gadgets to in 6.5mm, but think you need one in each caliber?
And they work best on jacked bullets not so god on soft lead.
I'll work some thing out.

 

[Evil]

Qball,

You don't need to get a whole new unit, you just need to get a new "collet" in the appropriate diameter. They run about 10 US dollars.

Funny about that primer going off, no way it should have gone off, but it did. Good reason to always follow all the safety precautions that don't really seem necessary.

Evil

[Qball]

Qball,
Funny about that primer going off, no way it should have gone off, but it did. Good reason to always follow all the safety precautions that don't really seem necessary.

Yea.. well... "Murphy" likes to spend time with me

[Qball]

My guns has arrived
Long wait but finaly...

[Evil]

Yippee!!! So you ended up with the two Iver Johnsons? Have you shot them yet?

Evil

[Qball]

Yes the Iver's is mine now
no time to shoot thou, but hopefuly next week.
And they are in verry fine conditions, even the belgian revolver that my friend bought
is verry nice. The dealer did obviously not know what he sold. And at that price
Guess it realy was christmas after all

[Evil]

At 25 bucks each, that IS a Christmas present! Let us know how they shoot.

Evil

[Qball]

Finaly had a chance to try my Iver at the range (the blued one)
Shot it two handed at 10 meters slow shooting dubbel action, grouping under 2" dead center.
Shooting faster pulled the shots to the left just as it should.
Lapua rounds 148gr bullit and some smokeles powder
The triggerpull was verry hard but there is a distigtive "notch" just before release
so aiming was not difficulte.
My fingers do need some training thou. Was shaking so bad that i started to laugh
At 25 meters the grouping open up to 8" and 4" high,
( fortunatly i have never seen a pokertable that was 25 meters )
According to the information that i got here one of my two Ivers was designed to
fire smokeles rounds so instead of using a bullet puller hammer i'll shoot them.
Unfortunatly one of the chambers seems to be damaged.(hard to extract the brass)
And the primers was not performing well (lots of poff's and piff's istead of a solid BANG)
Think i'll use the hammer for the rest.
Fun to shoot thou, now i'll try to get some time to load some Blackpowders for the realy fun work
   

[Qball]

Finaly got some blackpowder loads for my Iver's.
The little handheld gizzmo for .38 S&W loading had been alterd to handle .38 spl
Major Bummer
Never mind fixed it any way with other dies. 8 grains and the bullit from the gizzmo.
Of too the range and try them out.

[Goatlips]

Great thread Qball, Evil & others, glad I stumbled upon it.  I have the S&W and the Iver and love 'em both.  I use the 158 gr Snakebite in my BP cases and find them more accurate than I can shoot.

Goatlips

[Evil]

Qball -- As for one of the chambers being damaged, could be, but more likely it is just a hard piece of crud or a fleck of rust stuck in there. Try scrubbing the chamber really well with a bronze bore brush and some bore solvent, that may solve the problem.
Is the handheld tool the same one shown in reply #19? If so, how was it altered to .38 special? I would think it would be possible to alter it back.

Goatlips -- The great Elmer Keith spoke very highly of the .38 S&W and said it was one of the most accurate cartridges ever designed. I have a S&W .38 single action second model which is my favorite gun, it's also a real good shooter. I ended up getting a new model #3 to go along with it.

[Qball]

The blackpowder test turnd out well.
The blued gun puts them inside a matchbox at 10 meters
The nickel one does the same, however these ones goes allmost sideways.
Never mind, as a pocket revolver i'm happy. As target revolver i'll try the wadcutter's later.
The blued gun's cylinder has a god solid dent in one chamber. Cleaned it inside and out
wonder how i could miss that one when i inspected it
No it could not have hapend when fireing Lapuas, the blueing has weared of at the dent
so it's a old wound. As for the handheld tool, when using bullits casted from it (yes it's the same)
it makes perfect .38 specials when loading and does not crimp the shell when using .38S&W.
Looking at the marking on the tool it says .38 S.&.W.M (does the M stand for modified?)
How would it be posible to alter it back? For now i have used the .357Mag crimp tool
screwed in so lightly that the casing just touch the tool, and the bullit pushed it 2mm to far
No not werry professional, (i know) but what's a poor boy to do
And by the way, it realy works