Jenrick
Member
A friend of mine picked up an 1851 Navy cap and ball from Cabelas a while back to see if he liked BP shooting. Short answer was no. He offered to give me the pistol with the caveat, that he hadn't cleaned it since that last time he shot it. Well that turned out to have been almost a year that it sat and got rusty.
On the other hand it's a free pistol so why not check it out? The barrel is a candidate for replacement, but who knows it might clean up enough to work as a smooth bore after I get the rust out. The frame and internals are fine (surprisingly enough), though I did manage to break the loading lever latch. No biggie replacement part isn't that expensive.
The big issue is that the cylinder is frozen to the arbor. Hard frozen. I've tried pretty much everything I have in the garage to get it freed up. I'm hesitant to go with heat, as I don't want to mess up the frame. The cylinder is going to be a paperweight with the amount of rust it has in it, so that's not really an issue. I haven't grabbed it with a pipe wrench and a cheater bar yet, as I don't want to risk tweaking the frame if I don't have to.
Any suggestions you guys have would be appreciated.
-Jenrick
On the other hand it's a free pistol so why not check it out? The barrel is a candidate for replacement, but who knows it might clean up enough to work as a smooth bore after I get the rust out. The frame and internals are fine (surprisingly enough), though I did manage to break the loading lever latch. No biggie replacement part isn't that expensive.
The big issue is that the cylinder is frozen to the arbor. Hard frozen. I've tried pretty much everything I have in the garage to get it freed up. I'm hesitant to go with heat, as I don't want to mess up the frame. The cylinder is going to be a paperweight with the amount of rust it has in it, so that's not really an issue. I haven't grabbed it with a pipe wrench and a cheater bar yet, as I don't want to risk tweaking the frame if I don't have to.
Any suggestions you guys have would be appreciated.
-Jenrick