Help

So, my “new” (if you can call a 70 year old gun new) ’37 Brazilian Contract S&W shoots like there is no tomorrow. Target picture here, 18 shots at 25 feet.

However, there’s a small hitch in her giddyup. After about 40-45 rounds, the cylinder became very difficult to open and close. It turns that this is because the ejection rod (for some weird reason) is now stick out further than it did before I started firing the gun. Now, instead of sliding neatly into place and locking up, the knob on the end of the ejection rod is making contact with the lug on the underside of the barrel, preventing the revolver from going into battery.

Countertop suggested that this is likely the result of crud inside the cylinder set up that has “frozen” the revolver, and that a good bath in mineral spirits followed with a thorough cleaning should solve the problem. At the very least, I’m going to try that before I ship this off to a gunsmith and actually pay for work to be done.

However, the title of the blog today is “help”. Since I am no expert on S&W revolvers by far, I have two requests for assistance. 1) How do I get the cylinder off this thing (it’s a 1937 Brazilian Contract, which is just an M1917, which I believe is just a big M&P), and 2) can someone get the attention of Tam on this? Since she’s sort of the guru of old S&W revolvers, I’d love to have her input on this, if she’s encountered this sort of problem before and if there’s anything I can do to fix it short of sending it off to the gunsmith.

While asking for help on a gun related issue is sort of a blow to my pride, I’d rather be humbled and have a working gun than keep my pride and have a broken gun. I mean, come on. Look at that target. This gun can flat SHOOT.

Update: Thanks to Tam and my dad who both correctly pointed out thta my ejection rod was backing out under recoil, and a few turns fix everything right up. I can’t wait to shoot this in this month’s e-postal.