Gun Rebuild

Date started: March 2020, Senior year of high school

My grandpa had an old, broken, 7 shot, .22 revolver. When he died I ended up with the gun. Here it is in original condition

Below, is one of two springs I had to fix. The tail on the right side, is a piece of a binder clip that I soldered onto the original part.

Next, I completely disassembled the gun.

After that, I got to work building new handles out of a piece of walnut that Mr. LeBlanc gave me. I hand filed and sanded them.

Next, I put all of the parts into vinegar to soak. This removed rust, and cleaned the parts. After that, I electro-plated the parts in nickle. This was my first time electro-plating. I made a solution of vinegar and salt, and then put a nickle anode and cathode on opposite side of the jar. Next, I ran a current through them using an old alarm clock power cord that I modified.

Here, I practiced electro-plating on a box cutter. You can see how shiny the upper portion of it is.

I then electro-plated each and every part in the gun. This took a long time

Here are the plated parts.

And here is the final product.

After having refurbished it, I took it out and shot it. It works fine not great but it shoots. It was a lot of fun to build!