Just finished- 'Baby Dragoon' conversion.

[Tinker Pearce]

The other week a buddy of mine swapped me an Armi San Marco 1848 Pocket for a set of custom grips, and I got to thinking about what to do with it.  I'd already converted one to .22LR, and another to .251 TCR, so I thought I'd do something a bit more 'normal' with this one and convert it to .32 S&W.  The bore slugged at .314, and I figured that soft bullets would bump up a couple thousandths just fine. I used some scrap .262 5160 spring steel for the breech-ring, and mounted a fixed firing pin on the hammer. I removed the loading lever and reshaped the lug under the barrel, and unusually for me, left the barrel stock length (5-3/4")  To finish things off I rust-blued the barrel, cylinder and breech-plate.



Of course I wanted to test fire it, so I came up with a 'Gallery Load.'  I swaged some 58gr. HBWCs and loaded them over 1.0 gr. of Red Dot. They're very quiet, and have just enough power to firmly embed the bullet in a 2x10 at five yards; pretty much perfect for shooting in my shop. Pretty accurate, too.  The second pisture shows one of the loaded rounds next to a bullet recovered from the board. Not much distortion of the fired bullet.


It's occurred to me that if I reverse that bullet and seat it over a skosh more powder it might make a fine small game round. Going to have to try it.  At some point I'll refinish or replace the grips with something nicer, but the stock ones will do for now.

[Major 2]

as per usual, more of your impressive skill 

American Holly grips would be my vote

[cheatin charlie]

Very nice pistol.  I appreciate your work.  It is satisfying to make your own conversions.

[Gus Walker]

   Awesome job pard.

[Kent Shootwell]

Very nice and a handy gun now. Only thing it needs is color case hardening. Wished I had more ambition to follow your lead.

[riflee]

Howdy Tinker,
I like the profile of that barrel. Use a mill? Hand file? You did a nice job on that gun. Thanks fer takin the time and effort to share.

The bullets seem to work well from seeing your target. 

I wonder how you secure the breech ring. Held in place by the ring on the recoil shield? 

When I see the ratchet on the cylinder I wonder about the hand. Use the original hand? Hard to see the ratchet teeth in the pic. I did a 36 Navy once to 38special and left the ratchet and the hand the same as they were. I had a cylinder made to work like that. I wanted the chamber throats and all since the barrel was sleeved to .357 size.

Since I'm the way I am I have to offer a word of caution. Under powered loads of smokeless can cause a detonation. Of course....I haven't looked at a loading manual so I don't know what loads are min. for 32's.

You mentioned small game hunting. I used to do that a lot with my Navy "51".  While the dogs were runnin I'd look fer "sittin" rabbits. Hard to get them critters when they are runnin.  Hard to find them sittin too.

[Navy Six]

It looks like a beautiful job, but I especially like your re-shaping of the under barrel lug.

[Tinker Pearce]

Howdy Tinker,
I like the profile of that barrel. Use a mill? Hand file? You did a nice job on that gun. Thanks fer takin the time and effort to share.

The bullets seem to work well from seeing your target. 

I wonder how you secure the breech ring. Held in place by the ring on the recoil shield? 

When I see the ratchet on the cylinder I wonder about the hand. Use the original hand? Hard to see the ratchet teeth in the pic. I did a 36 Navy once to 38special and left the ratchet and the hand the same as they were. I had a cylinder made to work like that. I wanted the chamber throats and all since the barrel was sleeved to .357 size.

Since I'm the way I am I have to offer a word of caution. Under powered loads of smokeless can cause a detonation. Of course....I haven't looked at a loading manual so I don't know what loads are min. for 32's.

You mentioned small game hunting. I used to do that a lot with my Navy "51".  While the dogs were runnin I'd look fer "sittin" rabbits. Hard to get them critters when they are runnin.  Hard to find them sittin too.

Thanks for the kind words everyone!  I reshaped the under-barrel lug with a Foredom tool and sanding drums.  I've been making knives for going on 30 years, so I'm fairly handy with tools. The ratchet and hand are stock, as I used a cylinder made for the gun, so timing was unaffected. 

Modern .32 S&W cases (not balloon-head) don't hold a great deal of powder, so 1.0-1.2 gr. of powder is not very under-loaded. I went ahead and chronographed two different gallery loads, a 58gr Hollow-base wadcutter and a very soft lead 64gr Wadcutter.  Both have an identical slightly domed point. Results from this gun's 5-3/4" barrel were as follows:

58gr HBWC,  1.0gr Red Dot, Federal #100 Primer

478 fps.  29 ft./lbs    ES: 40

65gr. LWC,  1.2 gr. Red Dot, Federal #100 Primer

412 fps.  24 ft./lbs    ES: 38

For a short-range indoor gallery load these are about perfect, firmly embedding themselves in my wooden target but not penetrating deeply. This five-yard group was shot with the 58gr HBWCs-


When I was stationed in Kansas (long, long ago) I used an 1851 Navy and an 1860 Army for calling coyotes. I'd go out with both guns loaded with five rounds each instead of carrying reloading paraphernalia. 

[riflee]

Howdy Tinker,  Salute!
Stationed in Kansas and coyote hunting....good place to find coyote I've heard. I have an X brother in law that has lost several dogs to those coyote. They would climb an 8ft. pen fence to get in. He had to fence the top also to save his dogs.

Anywhoo....I enjoy your good pics of yer work. I still wonder how you secure yer breech ring to that conversion. Does the rebate on the back of the breech plate hold it in place?

I have some loads fer my Navy conversion that have 2.2gr Trail Boss in them. They are sorta peppy. Years ago I used Red Dot about 3gr. ,I think, and those were plenty fer the Navy. I actually used jacketed bullets in 38SW and hit the old dead plum tree in my yard from around 140 yards six times. Chipped away some of that tree pretty well.   

Not being nosey......but do you have a lathe? Mill? 

Thanks fer the tip on those loads you use in your basement. 

[River City John]

Nicely done!
As to those existing wood grips, they look respectfully authentic. Besides, if you put fancy new grips on, it might not shoot as well . . .


RCJ

[Tinker Pearce]

Howdy Tinker,  Salute

Anywhoo....I enjoy your good pics of yer work. I still wonder how you secure yer breech ring to that conversion. Does the rebate on the back of the breech plate hold it in place?


Not being nosey......but do you have a lathe? Mill? 

Thanks fer the tip on those loads you use in your basement.

Well, it's not actually a basement... I have a 500sq.ft. shop attached to the house.  Yes, the ring on the blast shield locates the breech plate.  I have a metal lathe that I use on these projects, and I have a mill but I haven't gotten the three-phase power supply worked out just yet, so I cannot use it.  I really, really want to get that mill running!

[riflee]

I've had R.L. Millington sleeve a few barrels for me in the past since I have no way to take them down to the right diameter. He has retired now. I've had K. Howell sleeve one once to. I like his conversion kits. Never bought one though.

I like the mill for doing 60 degree dovetails so I can do a perfect fit and fit front sights on cap&ball revolvers to get point of aim/point of impact good. Right now something is wrong with that machine. Maybe a bearing.

I hope to get a lathe and learn to use it well enough to do conversions just fer the fun of it. I thought I'd get one after we paid off the land/homestead we bought. Inflation ruined that dream. Anywhoo you must have a large lathe being 3 phase. You'll find time to hook it up I'm sure.

One cool thing is I had a Belgian Centennial 1960 Army sleeved with a "for black powder rifling". When I got it I thought it was defective when I looked thru it. It turned out to be a Alexander Henry fouling free type rifling. Most of the bore is about .445 and very little is .454 about. Very tight for the size chambers I reamed earlier for the original barrel bore. The chambers size the balls to .456 and tight thru that barrel sleeve the gun shoots like a laser beam. The pure lead balls swag into the barrel bore  and fit tight and raise the pressure. Small cylinder gap since I set the barrel back using the mill and the report of the gun is higher pitched than usual.  Hits hard and hits accurate. That fouling free rifling A. Henry was working for almost eliminates the fouling. The rifling was fer rifle and conical bullets I guess.  Anywhooo...what does this have to do with conversions? In a round about way I'm saying I use the mill to good advantage but am at a total lose now fer getting barrels sleeved. Hard to get by without a lathe playing with cap&baller revolvers.

[Tinker Pearce]

It's actually the mill that runs three-phase, and yeah, it's big!  The lathe is just a bench-top unit from Grizzle. It's OK after I tuned it up and replaced some screws etc.

[Navy Six]

FWIW, I just resurrected two old S&W 32's from retirement. I was able to get 5.4 grains of 3F Swiss(measured by weight) into the modern cases with 78 gr bullets.