old 32 top break

[chevyiron420]

guys, i have a old one marked empire state arms co. its in good shape except one bad problem. its got a ton of cylinder gap. i think someone has filed on the barrel or maybe the cylinder. i belive that the brand is just a re stamp kinda like J C HIGGINS and it was probably made by someone else. im guessing its a H&R or Iver Johnson. does anyone know how to tell for sure? im hopeing someone has one and can measure the cylinder length for me. thanks--phil:castmine:

[dubber123]

The large barrel/cylinder gap is likely for use with black powder ammo. They left them loose to allow functioning with the associated fouling. I have a couple H&R's in .38 S&W that are set up similarly. One was a real clunker, and I welded up the gap and filed it to a more normal spec. It gained about 50 fps. as I recall.

Other than a loss of speed, it should cause no problems that I can forsee. I would suggest loading well on the light side for the old top breaks though.

[chevyiron420]

if i had to guess, its prolly got .060 gap!

[dubber123]

Yep, thats about right. I could read a newspaper through mine! I'm sure there is more cylinder blast, but as far as shooting, it posed no problems. Seeing the increase in Fps. after tightening it up was fun though. It turned out to be one of the most fun guns I ever fooled with. Nothing in it, nothing to lose, type of deal.