Problems with a Webley revolver

[Old colt]

I have a Webley that has had the cylinder cut for use with the .45 acp. I'm hoping someone can give me some direction with and issue it has. The double action works fine, but it seems like I'm getting a light strike on the primer, with plenty of faiures. The single action works if care is taken cocking it, but it will not strike hard enough to set off a round. The other problem with the single action is that if you pull the hammer back till it stops it acts like it snaps over, and you can't pull the trigger. I'm not a gun Smith and would like some input. Thanks in advance

[Ballistics in Scotland]

It sounds like something is rubbing, possibly due to parts substitution. One of the commonest (though this one wouldn't cause the light hammer strike) is the cylinder rotating hand or pawl being overlength, and therefore pressing on the cylinder star and pushing the cylinder hard against the cylinder stop on the trigger. In perfectly timed Webley there should be a tiny amount of rotational play on the cylinder at full cock, which disappears but doesn't produce tightness when the trigger is pulled. The pawl is no.11 in this drawing, if it makes it through the system with good enough definition to tell.

If you have this condition, the cure is to remove a tiny amount of metal from the tip of the pawl with an oilstone. I have always suspected that spares were supplied to armourers overlength, to be treated in this way. But it has to be very tiny amount of metal indeed. A given amount removed from the tip will give about six times as much play at the edge of the cylinder. If I had a pawl which was short, or too much shortened, I would silver solder a piece of high speed steel into a notch in the tip.

Even if the condition has been produced by substitution of another cylinder or extractor, altering the pawl is the way to tackle it. It isn't practical for the amateur to remove metal from the little faces on the extractor star which the pawl contacts.

For tightness elsewhere I can only recommend two stratagems. One is to coat the parts with candle smoke or black felt-tip, and see if anything is rubbing where it shouldn't. The other is to try what happens to the hammer movement as it is raised to full-cock position with various parts removed in turn, such as the pawl, the trigger, the hammer catch (7) etc.

If the weak strike is due to a weakened or substitute mainspring, you can get a modern made one (I think) for the MkVI from http://www.gunpartscorp.com/Manufacturers/Webley-33564/MarkVI-42569.htm . Beware of the MkIV on their listings. While a spring for the MkIV large frame Webley might well fit, what they list is the Second World War MkIV, built on what is more or less the frame from their smaller pocket revolver series.

It is a great pity the Webleys don't have a removable sideplate, to reveal the parts in their working positions, as the French had had for over forty years. I think that was also Webley's contribution in design work they did on an improved .38 in the 1930s. But the government produced it in their own Enfield factory instead of contracting with Webley. In the best examples it was genuinely a better .38, but it was badly treated by wartime economies and contracts with firms unused to firearms production.
161317

[blackbike]

First off, if the cylinder is shaved then you need to use a moon clip, to set head space.

Second max chamber pressure for webley is 13000 psi, and gi ball is 19000psi. You need to down load your own ammo.

I can not clam to be a gunsmith either, but that is what I ran into on the one I worked on.

Double check that psi info. That's just off the top of my square head.

Also I think the bore is a little bigger than .451.

Hope this helps, bb

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The .45ACP conversion can have nothing to do with the OP's problem, unless through parts substitutions used in the process. The conversion can indeed be dangerous, but the problem isn't so much with the pressure as with the throat diameter and nature of the bullet.

While I don't recommend the practice, you can hold a shotgun shut with no locking mechanism whatever, in the moment of firing. The force is a longitudinal one, and the resulting rotational force tending to rotate the barrels open is much reduced and retarded by leverage and inertia. It is much the same with the Webley, and under the stirrup inclined planes on the topstrap and standing breech meet in a way much stronger than the large break-open Smith and Wessons.

The French M1873 ordnance revolver, a solid frame with a rather thin topstrap, was often rechambered the slight amount needed to fire .45ACP. I believe chamber reamers were dropped to the French resistance in wartime. They did have some history of broken topstraps, but I have seen a French engineer's very convincing calculations suggesting that there should be a good margin of safety with the pressure the GI hardball load generates in unrestricted passage, e.g. the automatic pistol or a pressure barrel. The villain of the piece is the impact of the hard jacket on the beginning of the rifling.

The French revolver has good groove and throat diameters for the .45ACP, but with the Webleys the case may be worse. Some and perhaps all of the .455 revolvers (though not a late .8 I used to have) had a chamber throat smaller than the bullet diameter. It may derive from the erroneous belief of Owen Jones, designer of the .476 Enfield which preceded the service Webleys, that the full velocity of a revolver is produced in the cylinder, so it needs all the pressure there that it can get. I have measured a beautiful peacetime-manufactured Webley-Fosbery at .448.

This works well with the hollow based bullet intended for the .455 Webleys, and some people report good accuracy with soft lead flat based ones. But a GI hardball bullet making its way through that is likely to be not only inaccurate but dangerous. Reaming the throats to groove diameter should make a big improvement, though not, I think, big enough to shoot hardball. My guess is that some converters of Webleys my have done that, and others not.

[leebuilder]

Sounds like a size problem, ie moon clip thickness. Seen a few webley conversions, beware they won't handle the stouter 45acp loads. 800fps max I was told by a guru, the metal just isn't tough enough.
Be safe

[pietro]

I have a Webley that has had the cylinder cut for use with the .45 acp. I'm hoping someone can give me some direction with and issue it has




Did you read the sticky about Webley's in our wheelgun section ?

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?230257-***WARNING-for-shaved-or-cut-Webleys-in-45-ACP-Auto-Rim*****



.

[Old colt]

I have read other posts on the gun. It's not a ammunition issue as its loaded to original .455 specs. The problem is the revolver's action. I would like to know if anyone has an idea on what may be going on with the action of the pistol?

[Der Gebirgsjager]

The prime suspect in a weak hammer fall is usually the mainspring. Perhaps your revolver was once left cocked for a lengthy period of time (years) and the spring took a set and was weakened. Or, perhaps someone had it apart and tried to do an action job on it. A lack of proper spring tension could also possibly account for the problem you describe with cocking it single action. So, that's where I would start, by replacing the main spring. Next, should that not prove to be the case I would suspect either the hammer or trigger or both, their relationship having been altered through wear or, again an attempt at an action job. It is impossible to precisely diagnose your problem without having the gun on the workbench. Since you are not a gunsmith you need to find one who does revolver work, preferably with some experience working on Webleys. That may not be easy to do, but if you do find such a smith and a replacement part or parts are needed they probably will not be easy to find. Good luck--I hope you get it fixed. They are great old revolvers.

[Wolfer]

I feel silly asking this but you are using moon clips aren't you? If so I would suspect the main spring. Mine will often punch holes in the primer.

[Old colt]

Yes, I'm using the moon clips, I was thinking main spring also. I'll keep you guy posted thanks.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The trouble is that the half-moon clips or a weakened mainspring can't cause the tightness right at the end of the single-action cocking cycle which was described here, and an excessively long pawl can't cause the weak hammer strike. That leaves us with two possibilities. One is that one of the first two disorders exists together with the third. The other is that it is something different entirely, hidden from view. If we are looking for a single cause, it has to be something like a replaced lock part which causes rubbing on the way up and on the way down.

There are two ways a firearm can punch holes in primers. I have seen a 1960s Webley, in a Scotland Yard store unfired until the 1990s, in which contact with the anvil made a tiny hole in the centre of the primer. (The anvil on the Berdan primers originally used in these revolvers may have been deeper-set and blunter.) Nothing but the firing-pin sinking too deeply into the primer can cause this, and that can't be a weak strike.

Alternatively the firing-pin depression detaches itself around the edges, and is blown out. This can be caused by excessive pressure (impossible in this case, with primers designed for +P loads at least), an excessively flat-ended firing-pin, or a mainspring too weak to hold the hammer in place.