I have been wanting one of these for quite some time. As you all know, they are very hard to find, and expensive when you do find one. So when this one fell into my lap, I scooped it up. A gentleman on another forum mentioned in a post, that he had one and that he wanted rid of it. He said it was taken apart and he could not figure out how to put it back together. He had even sold it once to someone else, and they too could not figure out the weird mechanism. So he refunded their money and put the gun in a drawer. Until I came along. He offered the gun to me for $200 as is, and I jumped on it. This is how the gun arrived to me.
As you can see, it's a jigsaw puzzle. There aren't any parts that look even remotely "Colt" like. And there isn't much information out there about these things. I found an exploded parts diagram for it and that's about it. So armed with that, I set about putting the thing back together.
You cans see through this window, the slotted and hooked end of the mainspring. It goes over the toggle in that little drum that fits in the hole. Very fiddly to say the least. Then the weird looking cylinder bolt slides up through the trigger hole and snakes up over that drum. I think Ol' Sam tried to make the most difficult mechanism he could!
Once you have all that in place, the hand goes in from the other side. And it's fiddly too, because everything has to be clocked exactly right for the hammer to go on. There was lots of cussing and holding my tongue just right to get this all together. But in the end, I got it. But there was one small problem. I put the spur trigger in place, installed the screw, and tried cocking the piece. No go. The hammer wouldn't hold on a notch and the trigger was flopping around in it's slot. Then the trigger fell completely out! Here is what I found.
The trigger snapped in half right at the hole for the screw. It must have been very thin and ready to break. Here's what it's supposed to look like.
I'm going to try and weld it back together and remake the screw hole in it. If that doesn't work, I suppose I'll have to try and make one. I've scoured the internet and there are exactly zero parts available for these pistols. Unless any of you guys know where to look. The loading lever latch on the barrel is missing as well. I think I can make one from a Navy work by filing it down. I have a couple of those laying around to try.
So here it is all in one piece (mostly) and fully functional (mostly). The hammer pulls and the cylinder indexes and locks up like it's supposed to. All I need now is a trigger. At least now, I have a hard to find Root for my collection.
