Can you sleeve a revolver?

Dave.S

Dave.S

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Hi ,May be a stupid question .I apologize if it is.I have a small antique pocket Revolver with a poor boor.The barrel and frame are one piece.So can you sleeve a revolver barrel?Do they make 32 cal sleeves?Dave
 
A liner could be easily turned from a piece of rifle barrel. .303, 7.62 are the right size. But, the barrel is probably pretty small in diameter, so the liner would have to be even smaller. Might or might not be possible or practical.
 
It was relatively common to reline revolver barrels in the past. The most common being to 22lr. Liners stayed put.

I assume your gun is in 32rf? So ammo is not very available... I haven't seen any change hands in a while but someone here relined a bunch of such antique revolvers to 17hm2 - much more available than 32rf and lets it keep its antique status... though he got a mixed bag of results - some worked great, the others had issues... What I'm trying to say is if you are going to reline that barrel, you might as well change calibers too to something more available... Or keep it 32rf - it's your gun.

I'm toying with an idea to convert an antique SW mod 1 in 32rf to 17squirrel so I can have a centrefire reloadable cartridge, just need to find a sacrificial cylinder... (Just because I want to see how it turns out, it's not an exercise in fiscal responsibility by any stretch)

A member here, Levon12345, was relining c96 mausers and they have the same or near same bore so if your gun's barrel has enough thickness to be relined, his approach should work. Find his thread - some interesting approaches there for barrels that are thin... and if the barrel cannot be saved he has cut one off and screwed in a replacement...

Many ways to solve your issue... just not sure if it's worth it.
 
You can see on this Video if you look Close , How they are Pinned in.
On the Cylinder.
This Pic Should show it better.

351550724_982869049812156_641555354728947165_n.jpg
 
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Dave.S said:
I will be doing my own work,so cost irrelevant.I collect Remington Smoots .
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Soldering or using a proper epoxy to hold in a barrel liner for a use such as you describe is fine, but only if the revolver will be used for relatively low pressure ammunition as it was originally designed to use.

Threaded barrels can be removed and have the breach diameter turned to a larger diameter than the rest of the liner in the bore to deal with the issues you are concerned about.

Care must be taken to leave enough room for the solder to flow, pretinning is almost a must for both pieces and care must be taken to keep the heat consistent to alleviate warpage.

Proper clearances need to be maintained with epoxy as well and the epoxy has to be applied to both surfaces before being installed. Care must be taken to make sure the liner is where you need it to be once the epoxy hardens.

The best way to allow the epoxy to cure is with the barrel pointed down. This allows for an even thickness of epoxy all the way around the liner.

Making up barrel lingers for just about any firearm has its own issues.

A liner for a 22rf rifle is pretty easy.

Once you start getting into centerfire cartridges things can and do change.

Muzzle loading rifles and pistols are also relatively easy to reline.

Your particular pistol, which has a cast barrel and frame is unusual and I am familiar with it.

I didn't do the job but the pistol I worked on had been "sleeved" by a smith from Salmon Arm, Jack Stead.

Jack knows his stuff on such things and even though he's now in his nineties, he still does some very nice work if you can convince him to do a job.

Jack installed a liner in this particular firearm using low temp solder and it appeared to be holding up very well.

The pistol came to me with the indent striker broken off the hammer.

Some of the "new" rimfire 32 ammo is HOT as you seem to be aware of because of your concerns.

The "FIX" for your concern, is to make sure you slightly oversize the forcing cone to make sure the bullet doesn't catch on the edge as it's entering. A slight radius on that edge will also help deflect the bullet towards the center.

The frame of your pistol completely covers the base of your barrel, unlike that of the pic in starpuss's post, so you shouldn't have any issues with weakness at that point, as is often the issue with centerfire pistols with sleeved barrels that aren't part of the frame.

If that were my pistol, depending on its finish, many were nickle plated, I would use a good epoxy, such as Devcon titanium or steel putty to "glue" the liner into place.

Titanium Putty has;

15,000 psi compression strength

2,000 psi shear strength

7,700 psi flex strength

.001 in shrinkage, after 18 hours of cure time.

This is more than enough strength and to hold a liner in place.

If you're at all concerned, rough up the outer surface of the liner and the inside of the barrel.

I've used this epoxy to repair threaded holes to keep machines running, until there was time to shut them down and do a full repair if required. Often as not, it wasn't necessary.
 
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sillymike said:
1- A fool and his $ are soon parted?
2- A some time in the future, a functioning out-of-the-system handgun might be valuable
3- Why not?
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This little pistol is fully worth the effort to sleeve a worn bore. Especially if the OP has the skill set to do the job himself.

It's not going to cost anything, other than time and a few dollars of epoxy.

If push comes to shove, he can make a spud an even rifle his own sleeve.

I see there are manufacturers of such spuds int Czechoslovakia that make and sell them very cheap on ebay.
 
Yaboisharkmouse said:
Why not just make a new barrel?
Most of the same skills and equipment are used in the process of making a sleeve, and a total replacement will be a much stronger alternative.
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The barrel and the frame are all made with the same casting with this particular piece. Look at the first post and later pic.
 
Picture is not showing for me any more...

But it would still be possible to cut the barrel then thread a new barrel in - same as c96 get a new barrel installed even though the upper starts as a single unit with the barrel.

My understanding is that the owner wants the rollmark/markings on the barrel preserved so sleeving is the only way.
 
KotKotofeich said:
Picture is not showing for me any more...

But it would still be possible to cut the barrel then thread a new barrel in - same as c96 get a new barrel installed even though the upper starts as a single unit with the barrel.

My understanding is that the owner wants the rollmark/markings on the barrel preserved so sleeving is the only way.
Click to expand...

Way more work, with adverse visible results than necessary for this particular job.
 
KotKotofeich said:
Agreed, esp. the visible results part :) Just pointing out that it is an option.
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I wasn't dissing you at all.

Back when people were sleeving their prohibs to make them restricted, the odd nimrod only installed a sleeve in the barrel. This caused a few nasty kabooms, one of which was described on this site.

Many self taught lathe operators do not know how to cut threads or as is most often the case they have a very small machine that runs to fast to cut them reliably.

The best way to sleeve a revolver barrel is to take the barrel out of the frame, make up a sleeve, from a blank by cutting the outside diameter of the barrel to be appx .100in larger than the thread diameter needed so that when the threads are cut there will be a shoulder for the sleeve to butt against the face of the receiver.

Machine away the threaded portion of the original barrel and drill it out to fit over the sleeve with a few though clearance, for the epoxy/tin.

When I was still doing this work, I liked to cut the muzzle of the old barrel at 90 degrees, removing the crown, so that I could leave a section of the new threaded sleeve with a radiused and crowned tip to match.

This worked well when screwing the sleeve into the frame, after slipping it through the original barrel.

There's more to it but I think you get the idea.

Not the same as cleaning up a C96 barrel, which is a whole different matter but doable.
 
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