Rachet indents on brass. Options?

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I seriously doubt that the brass frame on a 19th century spur trigger revolver was anything but cast. Forget the forging business.
This revolver was damaged by abuse - firing ammunition that was beyond its limits.
End shake in a revolver is usually dealt with by the use of bushings. Doubt that there is any place in this design where a bushing could be used.
It might be possible to mill a recess in the breechface of the frame around the cylinder pin hole, and fit a steel insert to hold the cylinder forward. This way the cylinder would be bearing against a steel support, rather than battered brass.
Forget trying to fusion weld the frame cracks. It might be possible to flow silver solder into them.
Fundamentally, though, this revolver was ruined by abuse, and is used up. Realistically, is not practical to repair it.
 
The "technology" of forging bronze and brass (and iron) is known at least since the early bronze age, especially to make swords and spears.
But, no, you can't hammer forge such a piece with an hammer, as hardness will be all over the place - and the piece will look like crap and it will surely collapse when the surfaces are not supported from below.
In the days (and stilll today) it was done at once, all over the piece, evenly.
Up to about 1875's, they would have cast the piece and heat it to the correct temperature - which varies with alloys - and hammer it with an hydraulic hammer (usually water powered) until they get the desired hardness. That is a very simple action (when you have industrial tooling) and the piece will show it's final final shape and almost the finish - less polishing and some milling and drilling operations.
If in doubt, just go to a metal working shop which can perform a Brinnel or Rockwell "B" hardness test and you'll know for sure how much it was originally worked.
But it's definitely not something you can easily fix yourself at home.
 
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Sure, but were the brass frames for spur trigger revolvers forged? Doubt it.
The brass frames for the modern cap and ball reproduction revolvers are cast, not forged. And they can batter with use.
 
tiriaq,
Tensile strenght of brass will almost double when hammer forged. A lot of new production parts and frames of brass (other than trigger guards etc) are CNC machined from pre-hardened brass. The hammering opreation was very common and almsot mandatory in the days before alloys and heat treaments were made availalble and any firearm manufacture would have got their own hammer(s) - steam or water powered. Axes and other tools were also forged that way - to a very large extent. Cannons were not usually work hardened, though.
Today, cold and hot rolling replaces this operation.
Is there any particular reason that makes you believe they would not use hammering for this frame?
 
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Kid, the options for restoring the frame are all going to be far more costly than buying a new gun. Even an antique at antique prices. And that assumes that the brass alloy used is even going to respond to the corrective steps. I'm talking about the cracks now, not the indexing on the recoil shield.

You can't brass weld the cracked area because the cracks go all the way through while the welds will only penetrate so far. So you still have a weak spot.

Brass also comes in a variety of different alloys. The cast brass used for making gun frames such as your revolver would have been one of the best of the time that was known to come out of the mold with a good resistance to being battered, stretched and cracking. But as mentioned so often already brass is very much a second fiddle material for a handgun. The use of brass was to allow making a lot of guns in a hurry. The lifespan of the gun was very much secondary in this plan. And your brass frame is clearly at the end of its days.

Finally all the options for welding, or otherwise repairing the damage and restoring the frame to a SAFE operating condition are not the sort of thing that you do off the top of your head. If not done just right and with the right amount of skill and knowledge of the actual alloy of the brass you risk not accomplishing anything or doing further damage.

So yeah, get over it. Allow your antique pistol to move on to the retirement pasture where it can live out its days being shown to folks.
 
In really simple, and much repeated terms, there is no way to do more than a cosmetic repair to make it look good in a collection of otherwise gun shaped objects. Might (might!) make a decent starter type pistol for snapping blanks for dog training, or the like, but probably not that either.

What were you shooting in it that blew the frame out?

Ya can be as stubborn as ya want to be about it, but you won't change the facts. Repairs to the brass frame will be weaker than the original, cost ya a bunch, and not make the gun safer than it is now (which it isn't).

Making a new frame makes it no longer an Antique.

Done!

Cannons and other forged cutting tools were cast of Bronze alloys (copper and tin) rather than brass (copper and zinc) and each alloy set behaves quite differently. Both harden when worked cold, up to a point, but when hot, bronze forges pretty well, while brasses tend to be hot short, which is to say, they crumble when you try to move them around with the hammer.

Chances are the frame was cast brass, cheap as dirt whn originally sold, and completely clapped out even before you got near it with whatever you shot out of it.

It's done.

Post pictures.


Cheers
Trev
 
The best option would be to get a new frame for it. One that is about 2 or 3 inches deep and lined maybe with a nice velvet. With the cracks in the frame that this one has, it is at best a candidate for a nice shadow box.
 
Well, that's the point, Trevj, the fracture point of cast brass of the days will not be much over 30 000 PSI (I bet even less) while the bronze cast would reach around 39 000 PSI. The tensile strenght would then be much lower than that, about half the fracture load, this means the (annealed, or cast) brass will start stretching at around 15 000 PSI. This means that if the frame section is less than 1 square inch, the strenght will be less too, in accordance with the surface area....
Hammered brass (they often used cold hammer forging for soft alloys) will bring close to twice the strenght of cast.

Anyhow, I know it's somewhat redundant, but if it was simple brass cast, it would braze without changing much the properties of the brass, as long as the bottom of the crack can reach the fusion point - without melting. If it's not, then, the brazed spot would be annealed.

In all cases, to me, this frame is beyond repair point, as the cylinder gap and cracks are "likely" stress signs and over stretching.
 
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Keep in mind that we're still talking about a nickel plated antique. None of the potential options that have been tossed around for any sort of repair will leave the plating intact. All will cost a bundle to perform and all options will render any collectable value pretty much nil.

With the cracks it can still be used by someone that wants to fill a hole in their collection. With the repairs no collector will look at it.

With the cracks it should not be shot any longer. With the repairs it will cost so much to have it done that he won't be able to afford to shoot it.

Bottom line is that it's no longer safe or properly functional. And any attempt at the costly repairs to it will easily exceed the cost of a similar pistol in good condition.

Trevj's notes about the bronze vs brass are spot on. It is the same concern I mentioned above in my other reply. Without knowing what alloy is used and the specifics of the alloy amounts any repair is highly questionable. It will take a VERY good gunsmith to figure out what the alloy is and perform any sort of proper effective repair. I'm pretty sure any of those folks would tell Kid to simply sell it as a display only piece and buy something else because they KNOW they will have to charge more than the gun is worth along with the fact that it'll ruin whatever remaining collector appeal it has.
 
Id keep it as display or sell it to a collector somewhere and buy another spur trigger in .38RF. A lot of nice .38RF revolvers floating around in excellent shooting condition in affordable price ranges. They don't tend to command as much of a premium due to explicit need to roll your own ammo.

$350.00 later and you will have a really nice tight shooting .38RF.
 
Baribal said:
Well, that's the point, Trevj, the fracture point of cast brass of the days will not be much over 30 000 PSI (I bet even less) while the bronze cast would reach around 39 000 PSI. The tensile strenght would then be much lower than that, about half the fracture load, this means the (annealed, or cast) brass will start stretching at around 15 000 PSI. This means that if the frame section is less than 1 square inch, the strenght will be less too, in accordance with the surface area....
Hammered brass (they often used cold hammer forging for soft alloys) will bring close to twice the strenght of cast.

Anyhow, I know it's somewhat redundant, but if it was simple brass cast, it would braze without changing much the properties of the brass, as long as the bottom of the crack can reach the fusion point - without melting. If it's not, then, the brazed spot would be annealed.

In all cases, to me, this frame is beyond repair point, as the cylinder gap and cracks are "likely" stress signs and over stretching.
Click to expand...

It's important to understand that when hammering was used to harden brass, it was cast, then worked, then machined, not generally hammer forged to shape.

Half-hard brass, is the description of brass that had been beat or rolled, to half it's original thickness, it does not mean it is half as hard as some other brass.
Some grades of Aluminum get work hardened as well, as part of their temper process, for similar reasons. It increases strength, and generally, improves the machining or wear characteristics. Many grades use combined heat treating and work hardening.

Bronze would have been a much better, but much more expensive, material to utilize for a gun like this, but they were made as cheaply as they could be, to sell as cheaply as they could be, and the ammo they were meant to use was not very energetic by todays standards.

Cast iron was cheap but brittle, and hard to cast soft parts in small sizes, cast steel was expensive, and not generally available, and machining the guns from solid stock ate up man-hours of expensive labour.

Forgings cost a bunch for the dies, a cost which had to be amortized over a long production run, and a reasonable expectation of a long product 'life' as a profitable venture. Just not on, in a one room workshop manufactory.

Cheers
Trev
 
That's correct. Rolling a thick piece of pure iron, brass or bronze would have been a lot of work for them in those days. They sure not work harden brass to the max, as it would also been hard to machine for them. It was much easier to batter it.
Brass was mostly chosen for it's easiness to machine / process, but also for it's relative corrosion resistance against oxydized BP residues (over say, low alloy steel or iron).

I think the best solution would be, as mentioned earlier, to try to locate a frame somewhere, but I suspect it may well end up being in the same state.
 
Alright, so I've been thinking over the discussion and I've got a few questions, regarding the receiver crack, since I plan to play around with a temporary bushing on the cylinder ratchet issue for now.

First, I may be able to help conclusively answer the question of whether it is forged or not by dissembling the gun partially and taking pictures of the rough texture of the interior of the frame. Some parts, like the cylinder area, were cleanly milled out, whereas other parts (on the inside of the frame) have clear rough casting marks. I do not know if this helps at all.

Continuing on;

Assuming I go the route of silver brazing the receiver crack (56% silver), I'm going presumably to be left with a partially annealed frame, assuming this gun was forged. And a really ugly nickle finish.

So, the next step would be re-plating it. And there are a lot of options here, which vary by part. Electro and electroless, nickel and/or chrome, base copper plating or none, inner barrel/cylinder plating or no.

Questions on plating:

- Does the existing nickel plating need to be stripped?

- How should I plate the exterior of the steel barrel/cylinder? Simple nickel, or copper / nickel?

- If I were to go the route of hard chrome (copper/nickel/chrome I believe) for the brass, could the side benefit of increased hardness compensate for the partial annealing of the frame?

- If not, can I do it all in electroplated? (since that would be easiest)

- Would electroplating (nickel or chrome) the steel interior of the barrel and cylinder with nickel or chrome be durable enough for soft lead and blackpowder? The benefits of plating would be corrosion resistance and reducing friction. The downside would be that it would reduce the diameter of the bore, especially with hard chrome plating, which would not be an option, but a simple electroplating should not be more than .001". I know that electroplating doesn't work for most barrels, but I'm thinking that maybe on a two inch and the cylinder, it could work.


(And to answer the comments that I 'm sure will follow, yes, I am aware that doing absolutely any of this will ruin the already ruined value of this gun in the eyes of certain collectors.)

I'm OK with putting time and money into brazing supplies and plating materials, as long as I learn something from it.
 
Kid said:
First, I may be able to help conclusively answer the question of whether it is forged or not by dissembling the gun partially and taking pictures of the rough texture of the interior of the frame. Some parts, like the cylinder area, were cleanly milled out, whereas other parts (on the inside of the frame) have clear rough casting marks. I do not know if this helps at all.
Click to expand...

No. This will only show you the core piece was first cast. Only a hardness test will tell you the condition. Then, before touching anything, you need to determine the correct alloy... Then, a x-ray with dye penetrant should be taken to know how far the cracks go.... then...
Anyways, you seem to have your own idea of fixing something.
You should already have learned something.

to Michael London;
I'm with you.
 
You're assuming a lot here. First of all you're assuming that the flux will be able to clean the metal in the cracks well enough to get a good joint. Since you've got no way to go in there and check the cracks or mechanically clean the surface prior to the flux chemically cleaning the surfaces it's likely you won't get a really good bond. You're also assuming that the metal of the frame around the cracks has not bent and that is why it cracked. You're also assuming that you know how to correctly silver braze. From the options you've posted and questions you've asked I'm going to guess that you've never actually used silver brazing products.

Anyway, everyone and their brother has said that this gun should never see any sort of live charge in it ever again. How often do you need to read this before you believe it? Or do you simply figure that you have all the answers?

Just do everyone a favour and do not shoot it at the range when others are present. So WHEN it blows up and sends parts this way and that no one will be hurt.

I'm out of here.
 
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