Not a Colt, but......

[Captainkirk]

Project Remington
Note: This gun was purchased in a modified state from another forum member, in a non-functioning state. I went through it and tracked my progress. Follow along, if you wish.......


This gun is not your usual Remmy. It is a Pietta that someone has obviously done extensive gunsmithing on, consisting of the following:
* Barrel is threaded deeper than normal to allow the cylinder face to be machined so that a "gas ring" (as in the Ruger Old Army) could be machined around the cylinder pin. This was probably done to allow a CAS shooter more shots without fouling the pin. I will show lots of photos so you can see the difference.
* End of the pin has been machined smaller and a bushing installed in the recoil shield to accept it (presumably to also reduce sticking)
* Slot for cylinder pin has been cut deeper into frame so as not to require moving the loading lever latch
* Target sights are installed
* The entire gun has been re-blued.
Clarence was nice enough to include an entire Pietta rebuild parts kit. There were some issues after installing the new parts where the gun doesn't fire or function now; after a quick perusal I think I've got it nailed down, but I'm not gonna get in a hurry. This is not only my winter project, but my Remmy Forum project as well, and I fully intend to document this from start to finish complete with pix, thanks to our man Clarence.
In short, what I have is a very unique and unusual Remmy with a shitload of extensive gunsmithing mods done to it, likely for CAS competition. And we're gonna make it shoot again!
Stay tuned!!!!!! {?|

[Captainkirk]

Well, now that I'm getting my ducks in a row on this project, I think it's time to post a few 'BEFORE' pix of the new Remmy:

LEFT SIDE VIEW:


RIGHT SIDE VIEW:


TOP VIEW:


TOP RIGHT:


BUSINESS END:


The grips need work. There are some scratches and dings, which is not the end of the world, but the wood is smaller than the steel frame which gets on my nerves a little. Since the only way to fix this is replacing the grips, I may go that route. For me, wood-to-metal fit is the easiest thing of all to fix, and there is no excuse for not having a seamless flow between the two. See the attached pix:



I also mentioned the fact that the barrel had been set back and the cylinder face cut back leaving a gas ring. Here is the barrel setback:

And here is the gas ring on the cylinder face (around the bore for the cylinder axle pin)



As you can see in the final photos, the gun sports a set of target sights. At first I didn't like them, but they are growing on me...quickly:




More to follow....stay tuned!

[Captainkirk]

Some more differences as noted in the text:
As noted, the barrel was threaded deeper to allow for the machining of the cylinder face (and hence the addition of the gas ring). This would normally create a problem with the loading lever length, requiring either the latch location to be repositioned on the barrel, the lever to be shortened, or both. The 'smith on this gun chose a different solution. He chose to deepen the groove in the frame and seat the axle pin deeper: (note screwdriver pointing to notch)


And a close-up:


This allowed for the end of the axle pin to be turned down, in essence creating another 'gas ring' at the recoil shield:


And a close-up:


To accommodate the new turned-down pin, a bushing was inserted in the recoil shield hole:


And finally, the turned down cylinder side by side with the cylinder from my stainless ASP Remmy, for comparison:

[Captainkirk]

Anyway, I promised pix, right?
The story so far:
I had decided to try to salvage the original hammer and trigger and had spent a good hour or better smoothing & polishing them. However, after assembling the gun and fitting the new bolt to the cylinder notches, I noticed the bolt was not retracting properly....after not a little head-scratching, I determined the problem to be the hammer cam was just plain worn out. Replacing the cam would cost me 5 bucks plus shipping and the time wasted waiting for it; there was a brand-new hammer lying right next to the gun waiting to be fitted. I decided to sleep on it, and the next evening I had made up my mind to rip into the new hammer like a chimp on a banana. Using the pivot screw to hold the two together, I locked in the alignment between the two hammers using an aluminum nail protruding through both hand screw threaded holes (so as not to booger up the threads) and clamped them in the vise between two wooden wedges. I then marked the material to be removed on the new hammer with a permanent marker:




After marking the material to be removed, I removed the original hammer from the mix and cinched up the new hammer tight in the vise and filed the excess safety notch material from the half-cock position, then followed suit on the full-cock (sear) position using a variety of needle files, making sure to leave a small amount of negative angle on the sear to eliminate a hair-trigger situation. The triangular needle file worked aces for this.
Once I had the profile to my liking, I polished the ramp profiles as follows:
-First, I used a needle file to remove all traces of rough casting marks
-Next, I started wet-sanding with 180 wet-or-dry lubricated with LPS-2. In order to keep the ramp profiles square, I folded the sandpaper over the edge of a thin 2" drywall spatula. Crude, but effective.
-I followed up with 320 W/D and finally, 600 W/D. Once the ramps were polished, I buffed them with Ultra Fine ScotchBrite, after which they were shiny enough that you could use them to see yourself to shave in!

After assembling the spring, hammer, trigger and bolt in the frame, I checked the half-cock and sear positions by dry-firing (NOTE: this causes no harm, as there is nothing for the hammer face to strike except the frame on the inner curve of the hammer body). Half-cock (safety) position was solid and could not be budged or knocked loose with thumb pressure. The hammer went to full cock and locked (hooray!-I fixed that bug!) and released cleanly with very little creep or trigger pressure. A very pleasing & rewarding return on my work investment!!!
Now, it was time to turn my attention to the bolt.

[Captainkirk]

Ahhh....the bolt.
It was pretty much a no-brainer; deciding to use the new bolt. The old one looked like it had been run over by heavy earth moving equipment-on concrete! One of the spring legs was broken off:



Anyway...junk.
So I checked the cylinder stop grooves for width:

Reading about .035 on this pic, but when held by hand, it was closer to .040
After measuring the bolt stop width, it was easy to see why there was a cylinder ring...the bolt width was around .050 (shown here around .055) (It tightens up a little when held instead of resting on the bench)

The theory here is the same as in the Pettifogger article; the cylinder rotates clockwise as viewed from the rear with the bolt offset to the right.
This means, as in the article, 1) you want to remove ONLY the material from the bolt that extends above the frame, and: 2) You ONLY want to remove material from the LOW side of the bevel (see picture)


Here is the bolt marked using permanent marker:


And here, after removing the material:

After altering, the bolt head is checked for fit in the cylinder slots (all the way; not just starting) As Pettifogger says, all that will do is give the cylinder a 'wedgie'....LOL!
I also blended the sharp, flat area of the spring leg where it rides up over the hammer cam. Everything needs to be a smooth, polished transition.
I decided to re-use the original trigger, as the 'smith previous had done a bang-up job of polishing the show surface, and I had spent almost half an hour polishing the bearing surface on it.

At this time, I decided to polish the area on the mainspring where the hammer roller rides:
Before:

After:

Same procedure as the hammer; 180 followed by 320, 600, the finally ScotchBrite. Shines like a mirror!
After deburring and hand polishing everything, I did a trial assembly (ok, maybe like 25-50 trial assemblies) and found:
1) The hammer goes to full cock and releases just like it should
2) The bolt head drops into the frame just as it should, and pops up to lock the cylinder at full cock; just as it should. However, a trial assembly with the cylinder shows the timing is off; the hand wants to push the cylinder a little past the stop bolt, causing it to miss lockup in one or two positions on occasion.
Next up; trimming the hand assembly.

[Captainkirk]

(For those of you who skip to the end of the book after reading the third chapter....)

The article, as is usually the case, suffers a bit of 'jet lag'...as we speak, the gun sits fully assembled and functional. I'm far from finished, but it cycles perfectly, locks up tight as a bank vault, and I wouldn't hesitate for one second to stuff it full of powder and torch it off. However, the gist of this whole project was not simply to make it function, but also to make it function perfectly. And while it works just fine right now, it's not quite 'there' yet. Besides, it hasn't even snowed yet. How the hell can I be finished with a 'winter project' before Halloween, anyway?

[Captainkirk]

I had a few hours last night, so I totally stripped the gun down to the frame and spent some quality time with more sandpaper, needle files, and ScotchBrite, polishing and burnishing the parts I previously worked on. Unbelievable difference! The action is now smooth as glass and the trigger is crisp as a fall morning. As far as I'm concerned, the internals are done on this pistol. There's nothing more to improve inside. I still have some ideas on what I may or may not do to the grips, and I removed the peened areas that were occasionally dragging on the hammer. You simply would not believe how nice this gun is now, from the non-firing gun it was only a few weeks ago. I feel I have a much more concrete understanding of how the internals work together now...and I'm already thinking about what my next project might entail!
But for now, there is still detail work to be done on this one, and besides.....I'm broke! (?^

Here are some photos of the burrs on the frame slot (for the hammer). A quick pass with a needle file removed the burrs on either side; no more dragging. Since I didn't have any cold bluing available, I did a remporary touch-up with a Sharpie (permanent marker) and Presto! File marks vanished!

[Captainkirk]

OUTSTANDING!!!!
And it's a tack-driver, too!