Colt New Police from 1905 chambered for .32 Colt long.


Needed to come up with some heeled bullets, so I made a die that would swage heels on .32 caliber hollow based wadcutters.



Drop it on some parallels in a Kurt milling machine vice, stick in a wadcutter,..*OOMPH!*,..there ya got it,..a heeled hollow base wadcutter.







Ready fer bid'niz.



[img]http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h225/FalMike/spout.jpg[/img]

CCW with panache'

[img]http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h225/FalMike/holster.jpg[/img]

Very cool! You did good on the die too.

Now that is just cool.

Pretty slick, B. I like it.

Wish I was that smart and Handy..

You always do amazing work, B...this is just more of it. Well done, sir!

Very cool!

Nice work, Good looking revolver, I want that holster, please?

Bad ass!

Why do the bullets for these need to be heeled? I'm not familiar with the cartridge.


Travis

Very sweet Bristoe, you da MAN!

That's just the way they used to do it.

Lots of old cartridges used heeled bullets.

Sweet!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heeled_bullet

Nice explanation at wikipedia.
Very cool revolver Bristoe and nice work on making bullets for it. Hope you'll let us know how it shoots.

Cool. Thanks.



Travis

Bristoe,

Given your obvious skill and love of machine work ect, have you never thought of becoming a gunsmith?

Regards,

Peter

Took the words from my mouth.

I've done a little bit for myself.

It would be satisfying work.

That's really cool. No doubt it's really fun to shoot that old-timer too.

Veddy nice!

You need a Thunderer now!

The problem now is chasing down brass.

I bought an old (partial) box of .32 Colt long ammo off of gunbroker. Had to pay a dollar a piece for them and they were all duds, but I just wanted the brass, anyway.

The brass started splitting on the second reload, so I gave it up.

There's a full box of Remington on there now,..but they want $80 for it.

I bought the old revolver down at Bud's. Didn't give much for it. It came with the pocket holster. It's still very tight with a nice bore.

I put a pic of it on the Colt forum and found out that the snub version is very scarce. The vast majority of them were made with 4" barrels. A fairly serious Colt collector on the forum has been hounding me for it.

I'll probably sell it to him eventually.

Yep.

I know Starline makes 32 SW's, but my conversion manual doesn't mention them as useful.

"Re-body" 223 head with 5/16 tubing. FL size and ID neck ream......

Ouch.

I got one of these Colt New Pockets in 32 Colt Long ~ 10 days ago.

I found some 32 S&W Long brass that had been swaged and cut down from 0.335" to 0.320" at the base.

I just shoved the 0.313" cast bullet in backwards, and the nose acted like a heel, and it snapped into place.

That is beyond cool!

Very cool.

Lover your bullet swager, that's slick and simple.

As for the revolver, you always seem to find the small revolvers that most people just overlook. Most don't know guns well enough to know how fantastic those small revolvers truly are. That New Police is just uber cool, and very nice shape.

It's fun if you're working on guns you love. It's a real chore when you're working on guns you loathe.

I wish I were a better machinist...I'm really a crappy machinist to be quite honest. Oh I cut my sight dovetails as well as anyone in the business, but when it comes to non-gunsmithing machine work, I'm not real good. I've never been trained as a machinist. What I know I've picked up from a need to know (meaning I figured it out) or little things I learned from other gunsmiths.

You could cut down .32 H&R brass.

Nice score!

Have you tried Muledeer's candle annealing method?

It has worked well for me for vintage revolver brass, but that .32 case might be too short to handle with bare fingers .........

nnnnnn....
The base of a 32 H&R case is the same as 32 S&W short, 32 S&W Long, and 327 Federal. That is ~0.335"
Meanwhile the base of a 32 Colt Long is the same as a 32 Colt short.
That is ~0.320".
Necking down and trimming to length is easy.
Conversion of the web diameter requires lathe work on the brass and a couple of custom dies.
Right now there is no easy to find 32 Colt Long nor 32 Colt short ammo nor brass.
Heeled 32 caliber bullets are available.
Bristoe and I showed different ways of using non heeled bullets.
The real problem is the brass availability.
That is why I revived this 1.5 year old thread.
I found a guy who converts 32 S&W long Starline brass to 32 Colt long for ~~$1 each.
There is hope for those who just bought a 32 Colt long revolver:
http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.aspx?Item=456428552

Yeah, .32 S&W long brass isn't the same diameter as the old .32 Colt brass. I tried running .32 S&W long brass up in a .32 long Colt die but encountered the same issue with reducing the web.

Up until a short while ago it was fairly easy to find new made .32 short Colt brass. I've got a hundred pieces of it around here somewhere. If I decide to shoot the old Colt again, I'll use the short brass.

I may have some. I'll check.

I just went back and re read the original post and a few after it. What a great way to get this old gun runnin again! Like Jorge, I can only WISH that I was as handy and clever with such things.

Great work, Bristoe.

Well, thanks. But actually, making a little mini die shoe like the one pictured is pretty straight forward if you've got a milling machine to fiddle around with. Every one is basically the same.

If there's anything complicated about it, it's the cavity. In this case, the cavity is a simple 2 diameter hole.

I make no claims about being a super dooper machinist, but I think I'm better than average at coming up with the simplest way to do whatever it is that comes to mind.

Basically because, if I can't come up with a simple way to do something,...I just don't do it.