#312 - S&W HE Model of 1903 2nd Change

 Other than having one round fired by its first caretaker, I doubt this little beauty has been fired since...The gun is 100% original including the box...

https://forum.theswca.org/threads/yet-another-anomaly.746024/#post-142085581

 

This is a follow-up about the gun I first posted here...This was an early morning find shortly after the gun show opened, and in my haste I only did a cursory examination for obvious flaws and conditions...I'm used to guns not being displayed to my standards of cleanliness, and I did notice what appeared to be a smudge on the recoil shield of this gun...Wanting to move on, I dismissed it as something that could be wiped off when I ran it through Dunkin Gunwash at home...I also noted the dark spots in the barrel and one chamber of the cylinder, but with no bulges or visible damage I passed it off to negligent attention in cleaning...

Fast forward to this week when I finally got around to cleaning the five new adoptions to my family of revolvers...The "smudge" would not only not rub off, it would not scrub off with anything I had on hand...Using my newly acquired OptiVisor and a stronger magnifying glass to boot, I could see evidence of corrosion on part of the recoil shield under the blackened surface...Another very careful inspection of the barrel and the cylinder revealed the dark spots were more permanent than I thought, but there is zero structural damage to the metal...No misalignment, bulges, gouges, splits or out of roundness...There is also no evidence that the side plate has ever been off, nor that any of the screws have ever been turned...

Herein is the anomaly...The gun shipped 115 years ago, so witnesses to any occurrence afterward are likely to remain silent...We can only theorize from here...I'll present my theory, your speculation is also encouraged...A deep dive request to Mike Helms revealed no additional documentation, not even an original shipping record or factory invoice...There are no factory rework marks nor date codes on the grip frame...My theory is that sometime after delivery to Van Camp Hardware Store in Indianapolis Indiana on March 11, 1909, a customer walked in and saw the shiny little .32 revolver and decided to make it his (or hers)...

This customer may have remembered having some .32 ammunition in a desk drawer at home, and decided to go ahead and shoot it up to break the gun in...Being shortly after the turn of the new century, said ammo may have even been black powder of indeterminate age or quality...Proceeding to the nearest empty field or backyard and setting up a soup can to aim at, the proud new owner may have taken careful aim and pulled the trigger...Here is where speculation takes the lead...

I think the very first shot resulted in a case head separation and a split in the side of the case allowing the expanding gases to escape to the left of the chamber being fired...The surprised shooter may or may not have maintained a grip on the gun, but there is no evidence of it being dropped on a hard surface...The blown out case likely locked the action preventing its being opened, and the bullet probably had just enough energy behind it to push it an inch or inch and a half down the barrel...How long the gun remained in this condition before extraction of the case and the bullet is pure speculation, but considering the corrosive effects of the black powder which may have been the propellant, I believe it was long enough for time and chemistry to work their magic spell on the metal leaving the appearance of the recoil shield and cylinder as it is today...

My theory also suggests that the gun's owner decided it did not need to be shot again, and the gun may have lain in a dresser drawer for decades even before it was opened to inspect for damage...This is as far as my imagination can carry me in guessing at the history of the gun...Your theories are welcome as I relish in owning a gun with an air of mystery as well as its own history...The gun can't speak, so it's up to us...