Victory over entropy! And over regular maintenance, competence, and expertise.

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Last time I shot my more-than-well-used S&W Model 19-3, the crane and action were feeling draggy and then the action locked up entirely, fortunately with the hammer down, so I was able to open the crane and unload. I didn't try to force it TOO hard, but neither a pretty hard pull on the trigger nor hammer would move anything. I was mostly shooting pretty mild reloads, either .38 +P or very weak .357s, so it probably wasn't due to any drama in the recoil/pressure.

I've never opened up a revolver like this, so I wasn't about to start then. Also don't want to sink money into this old beater, even if I knew of a competent smith nearby. Lacking any better ideas, I removed the grips, put the gun in a gallon ziplock bag, poured in half a bottle of Ballistol, wrapped a couple of rubber bands around the thing on either side of the action to keep the pool of liquid mostly where it needed to be, and left it sitting on the rear sight and hammer overnight in a plastic tub (the sharp corners of the sight blade probably made a tiny hole, because a small amount did leak out, but not enough to matter).

Drained it out after about 20 hours and blotted off as much Ballistol as possible. Action still seemed locked. At this point, I decided to go for broke and remove the three sideplate screws, and amazingly did not immediately lose one in my chaotic garage. Now not sure how to get the sideplate off, but I thought I remembered someone saying to tap the gun screw-side down on the bench, so I did that a few times. The sideplate was pretty much unmoved, but a modest pull on the trigger gave a normal DA cycle of the action! Snap, snap, snap. Hey, this is working?!?

Should have left well-enough alone, but since I already had the screws out, I tried again to pry the sideplate off with my fingers and got it open. Uh oh, the hammer block was stuck to it by the thick coating of Ballistol. I was able to figure out where it went back on its little operating pin without resorting to searching for diagrams and got the sideplate back on before I screwed anything else up.

Against all odds, I may have a functioning .357 again. (Well, in addition to my GP100, but that has fixed sights so they're not interchangeable guns.)
IMR4227: Zero to 900 in 0.001 seconds

I'm only killing paper and my self-esteem.

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Re: Victory over entropy! And over regular maintenance, competence, and expertise.

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Yeesh! Glad it seems to be working. For me, this would have meant a trip to the gunsmith. Since I'm way less familiar with firearms, I'd wonder about the cause of the problem-- if something had gotten ground down by friction and was locked up because it was out of spec. You probably know what you're doing and what everything is supposed to look like and where it's supposed to be. I wouldn't!

Your story reminds me of the time I was at the range, rotated the safety on my (brand new at the time) Makarov (that had been over-lubricated where I bought it) and... the safety came off, a few other pieces came off... I think the firing pin came out. Like you, I didn't have the manual handy, so... I just kinda put it back together, stared at it, and wondered, "Did it look that way before?"

It was fine, and has been ever since. But my memory of the alignment of parts, or any objects in 3-dimensional space, has always been shockingly bad. I was great at memorizing monologues, and nearly a savant for procedures-- but those things are two-dimensional, linear.

I'm really not great with tools. Every now and then, I can do something simple myself and save myself $20 or even $100, but it's real easy for me to get in trouble. For example, my friends have clear instructions about electronics: If you ever see me holding a soldering iron, just call the fire department immediately, don't even try to reason with me, it's already an emergency.

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