Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Iver Johnson Supershot 22LR

I was out and about this weekend and came across this handgun at a local shop. It caught my eye because I was looking for a Schoffield revolver and it has a similar hinge pin set up. This one needs some work or I might be interested. Anybody familiar with them at all? They a good gun?

https://www.gunbroker.com/item/871134573

I always liked top break 22 revolvers; but you'll have a tough time getting parts for that one, if you need them.

Maybe new parts, Sarge, but IJ made a whole bunch of those and similar revolvers on the same frame. Bound to be some parts out there if a guy looks.

Iver Johnson was a bicycle company that also made guns. Cheap revolvers were their forte'. Saturday Night Specials. Skeeter Skelton oftentimes mentioned them as an example of such. When I was a kid, they made a Colt Single Action Army lookalike in 44 Magnum. Of course, the real SAA was not made in that caliber. I think I saw one once in a gunshow. The first re-issue Colt Blackpowder Series were actually not "made" in the Colt factory nor by Uberti in Italy. They were made by Iver Johnson in New York.

The above gun looks a lot like a Harrington and Richardson model 999. Very clean looking piece. Unfortunately IMO, priced easily double what it is worth. Probably unfixable.

No, EthanEdwards, that picture is of an Iver Johnson 'Safety Hammer" .22 Supershot Sealed Eight. They were inexpensive compared to Colts and S&W revolvers, but serviceable and pretty tough, no matter what Skeeter Skelton said.

There are indeed parts for about anything available via ebay and the various parts houses, though you may hunt awhile to find them.

I recall Skelton using the term 'owl head' when referring to two-dollar turn of the (previous) century 32s and 38s.

My recall may not be perfect.

The IJ "Supershot Sealed Eight" revolvers with Roper-type grips like that one, especially the single-action ones, had a decent reputation as target revolvers back in their day ('20s-30s). I've had a couple, one DA and one SA) and they worked and fired just fine--as accurate as the shooter, and made up to handle .22 LR HV if you wanted to.

My main objection to them and the H&R "Sportsman" (also a decent gun) is that they are largely assembled with pins to hang the moving parts on, and thus are a little hard to work on should something go wrong. These target models are FAR from "Saturday Night Specials."

IJ also made some very decent double shotguns in its time (like their "Skeeter"), although the vast majority of their scatterguns were hammer singles. Which work just fine as long as you settle for just one shot at a time. Millions could.

The late Hal Swiggett was a fan of the Sealed 8, he wrote an article about them in a Gun Digest years ago.

Hai was one of the nicest people in the business.