Plugged Barrel

by JimT, Texas, Sunday, April 03, 2022, 15:01 (901 days ago)

I was visiting with Paco in Tucson a few years ago ... spent 4 or 5 days hanging out with him. We had a good time and one day we were talking guns and he said he had picked up a .357 Single Action for $50!! I asked why it was so cheap and he told me to wait a minute and disappeared into his shop. Soon he came back with the gun and handed it to me. I took a look at it and could see a bullet stuck in the bore about a half inch from the muzzle. He said, "Pull the cylinder out." so I did and there in the breech end of the barrel was another bullet! He said he had not been able to get them out of the bore and did I want to mess with it? I said "Sure!" and stuck the gun in my stuff.

These photos were taken after I got it home. I had wrapped tape on the barrel in preparation for unscrewing it.

I figured there was no way I was gonna drive the bullets out so I decided to try and melt the lead out of them, then remove the jackets. I pulled the barrel off, drilled a hole into the bullets and then stuck the barrel in my lead pot.

Long Story shortened .. it did not work.

Finally I ran a big deck screw into the bullet, put the barrel in the barrel vise and hammered the bullet out of the barrel .. first the muzzle one and then the breech one .. ONLY TO FIND A 3RD BULLET IN BETWEEN THEM!

The bullet from the Muzzle and the bullet from the breech appear to be .35 caliber rifle bullets of maybe 220 grains? The bullet in the middle seems to be a 158 gr. bullet.

The barrel was bulged in several places so I stuck it in my LOOK AT THIS drawer along with the bullets and ordered a 7 1/2" barrel from Numrich Arms.

The gun is an Armi San Marco and is nice shape other than the weirdness with bullets in the original barrel.

Later Tedd Adamovich put a nice set of burl walnut one-piece grips on it and I gave the gun back to Paco. He was tickled with it.