Bag o’ Gun no more!

SundownRider · Feb 16, 2023

Story time.

About 30 years ago I picked up a little Forehand & Wadsworth .38 5-shot top break pocket gun. Shot it a little, then decided to take it completely apart and clean it. Problem was, I was very inexperienced with gun repair and couldn’t get it back together. Stuck it all in a baggie and promptly forgot about it. That was about 20 years ago.
Time passes and while cleaning out the back of the bins like we all do from time to time (Found a set of sights for a Savage 99 that I never owned), and lo! I found my bag of gun parts.
After about a year of off and on tinkering, using the accumulated wisdom of the last 30 years, I finally put that gun back together. Not sure what I’ll do with it or what lesson it’s supposed to teach me, but it felt good getting it to run again.

Col. Harrumph · Feb 16, 2023

I hear ya Rider! My uncle gave the 16 year old me a .32 top break and I did what any stupid kid would do when I got home: I took it apart. And it stayed apart for about 50 years. Then 3 years ago I stumbled across the cigar box the parts were rusting in. I don't know why I didn't reassemble it back then, but it's together now and here, in all its glory:

Yes it's loaded (of course).

Ohen Cepel · Feb 16, 2023

Good on both of ya!

My Father left a few "bag guns" when he passed. I think my Brother got one or 2 of them back together.
Happens to all of us sometimes.

Pat Riot · Feb 16, 2023

Cool! Glad you got your guns together @SundownRider & @Col. Harrumph

I recall a guy at gun shows in SoCal that sold what he called Cigar Box Guns back in the early 90’s. I never bought any of them. He was very proud of them. High prices for what they looked like they might be. No guarantees all the parts were there.

SundownRider · Feb 16, 2023

Pat Riot said:
Cool! Glad you got your guns together @SundownRider & @Col. Harrumph

I recall a guy at gun shows in SoCal that sold what he called Cigar Box Guns back in the early 90’s. I never bought any of them. He was very proud of them. High prices for what they looked like they might be. No guarantees all the parts were there.

I wonder if he was the same guy I used to see at Wannamakers in Tulsa back in the 90’s. Had a table full of old break tops and boxes of parts.

Pat Riot · Feb 16, 2023

SundownRider said:
I wonder if he was the same guy I used to see at Wannamakers in Tulsa back in the 90’s. Had a table full of old break tops and boxes of parts.

Could be. I really don’t know. This guy had lots of gun parts and lots of older revolvers and pistols.

Tallball · Feb 17, 2023

Congratulations!

RevolvingGarbage · Feb 17, 2023

It’s a great feeling when you convert essentially a bag of decades old junk into a working firearm. I like to think I didn’t waste any money on buying old junk guns since I’ve gained a project for later.

I have a friend who at the start of the pandemic was wishing he had purchased some kind of handgun before everything went out of stock. I managed to assemble him a working Iver Johnson .38 Safety Hammerless from parts of about four different guns.

I still have at least two frames for the same variation of top break just waiting for parts to come along. Counting various other frames needing parts, I probably have about 10 different guns to build over the next half century or so if I don’t get any more (and if I’m lucky).

Monac · Feb 17, 2023

I just got a Spanish 380 automatic back together after a year or more in a cigar box. (I used to be able to get cigar boxes for a quarter at Schrank's Smoke 'N Gun in Waukegan, IL, so I have a bunch of them.) It was just so poorly made that nothing wanted to fit. I was glad I could do it, but I'm still sorry I bought it. I bought it because it was an FN 1910 up front, but a hammer-fired Colt 1903/Ruby at the back. That doesn't interest me as much since it turned out to be so bad.

PS - It was one of these, but in 380: https://www.gunauction.com/buy/8307073

Mk VII · Feb 18, 2023

Like those Belgian pinfires, making parts for those if they break is so difficult that it is unlikely they ever function properly again.

Japle · Feb 18, 2023

Back when I was an Army armorer, guys were buying Makarovs by the truckload. Every week or so, one of them would drop by the arms room with a “bag-o-parts”, asking me to put the thing back together.

Always happy to oblige.

74man · Feb 22, 2023

I have one just like that except it is an Iver Johnson .32 Top Break 5 shot made in 1911. Shoots just fine and at 7 yds shoots to point of aim. I had to reassemble the ejection spring which someone put in backwards but now it works fine..

sparkyv · Feb 22, 2023

I usually use the you-toob for directions, and I take pictures as I disassemble. These help me when I'm ready to reassemble.

entropy · Feb 22, 2023

When I was ten, the budding gunsmith I was took apart an Iver Johnson Top break .22. I put it in a Ziploc bag, and put it in a drawer in the basement near the reloading/gun bench. My mom found it, and thinking it was junk, tossed it.
The joke was on her, it was her dad's gun he'd given to my dad when my folks got married. My dad was not happy with either of us. He finally replaced it many years later with an H&R 999, just in time to let his grandsons (my two boys, anyway) shoot it when we went down to TX to visit about 20 years ago.

GunnyUSMC · Feb 22, 2023

I have a few bag guns in my shop. It’s not that I can’t put them together, I just haven’t taken the time.
One is a Lyman black powder revolver, another is a Falcon 38 Spl DA revolver.
I also have enough parts to build eight or so ARs and a 1911.
I’ve just been to busy playing with other things.

1976B.L.Johns. · Feb 22, 2023

GunnyUSMC said:
I’ve just been to busy playing with other things.

And those wood lathes are fun.............

Bag o’ Gun no more!

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