Why a 4" barrel?

[micsteam]

Oh by the way, Mountaineer, thank you very much for my Raiders holster for my WWI HE2 it is still spectacular !!!

[Mountaineer]

LOL.. Alright! Thanks again, I like hearing my stuff is still holding up.

[chenricy]

Thanks micsteam. You're correct, the Heavy Duty was an N-framed revolver (sized to take the 44, and technically 45) barreled and bored for a 38.

Chenricy, I'd not cut it. I'd consider buying one already cut, but would NOT ever do it to a revolver under my care.

As for "buy another barrel and have it cut", I've considered what you're suggesting and once you find a period-correct, pinned barrel, you need to find a suitable ramp blank to have shaped, fitted, and silver soldered to the barrel. You should add the cost of rebluing the piece because the two parts probably will not match. THEN you should consider the gunsmith costs (usually $25-50 per hour) to have all this done. In my attempt I figured I'd be about 1/2 way to the cost of a whole other revolver. So I gave up on this quest. Additionally, the gunsmith is correct, you've now decreased the value of the original to the point where you'd never get back what you've spent on it, even around here. Eventually I bought one which had been cut and had all the work done by someone else. It turned my stomach when I got it because it was a U.S. Property and not a Brazilian revolver.

If you're dead-set on cutting one down, buy a modern S&W 1917 from their released "Classic" line and use it. The parts are much more available than the old ones.

Ah yes, parts. The additional piece no one considers, until you have a part break. If an internal part breaks on the 100-year old piece, good luck finding replacements. I broke the hand on one of mine and it required a new one, fitted by a gunsmith, otherwise the revolver is a paperweight. I was lucky, because the hand is one of the few modern aftermarket parts you can buy for these old guns and have fitted. (The springs being the other parts that will work.) You can occasionally find old-stock stuff, but you pay for it.

Again, modern stuff is cheaper and more readily available in the long run. It's your revolver, so do as you will, but for me the decision is easy.

Makes perfect sense, I'm still torn but I appreciate the expert advice.

On one end it's a shame to make the gun weaker, on the other the only reason I bought it was for the movie authenticity.

Since the numbers don't match anyway I will take that into consideration as well, here she is:

http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewIt ... =541038806" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Cajunkraut]

Beautiful pistol, chenricy.

You're gonna hafta getcha some SA grips too then.

[chenricy]

Beautiful pistol, chenricy.

You're gonna hafta getcha some SA grips too then.

Thank you sir! I have the grips but the medallion is silver not gold, thinking of just getting some paint..

[Mountaineer]

Very nice revolver! At that price, you practically stole it!

Having seen this, I'd be even less apt to cut it. It's nice.

If you want some aftermarket wood grips that look correct, I know will fit because I've put them on my pistols, and won't break the bank (I'm talking less than $45 and to your door in about a week) I can let you know of a place I've bought from on eBay. It's a Taiwanese seller who has a permanent store, and his work is pretty fantastic.

[chenricy]

Very nice revolver! At that price, you practically stole it!

Having seen this, I'd be even less apt to cut it. It's nice.

If you want some aftermarket wood grips that look correct, I know will fit because I've put them on my pistols, and won't break the bank (I'm talking less than $45 and to your door in about a week) I can let you know of a place I've bought from on eBay. It's a Taiwanese seller who has a permanent store, and his work is pretty fantastic.

I already bought the grips, just have to paint the medallions.

[temple_runner]

I know this thread hasn't been used in a while, but I figured I'd throw in my two sense:

While they(prop makers for ROTLA) probably weren't thinking in terms of story, they probably were thinking in terms of practicality. As a modern concealed carrier, I find shorter guns are easily concealable, obviously. As Indy wears his holster out in the open, he probably wasn't worried about concealing it. However, shorter guns are easier to draw and maneuver, as well as less of an obstruction to the carrier.

[Parttimeteacher]

I have a new manufacture, S&W classics m1917 and I don't have the heart to cut it. That's why I bought the 1950 in 4" too.

[WetDigger]

Good point temple_runner. Lets not forget that Indy as a world traveler practically lives out of his suitcase. I think a major benefit to having the cut down barrel would be better "pack-ability". You can toss a Bapty into a small overnight bag or a suitcase and keep it low key with no problem. A full size revolver like the Webley might be a bit cumbersome. Just a thought...

[cm289]

I’m going to hypothesize that the end of his barrel was somehow damaged on an adventure and the local in-country gunsmith didn’t have a replacement, but was able to cut Indy’s down and build a new ramp. He liked the look and feel of the 4” barrel so much he had his spare S&W cut down too. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it, evidence be darned!

Why on Earth he later went to a Webley is anyone’s guess.






Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[WetDigger]

Do I remember correctly that in one of the books, Indy was given a webley by the father of one of his romantic flings at the time? It may have been Dance of the Giants by Rob MacGregor. Memory is hazy, it was probably 20 years ago when I read them.

[Michaelson]

Years ago I was doing some side research on period guns for Rob MacGregor when he was writing his Pirate series of books, and I asked him why the Webley?

He said that he had seen one in a gun store one day, thought it was a monster, and decided to just drop it in Indy's holster. That's the ONLY reason it showed up. Rob just liked the looks of it.

Regards! Michaelson

[bearbeast]

Heh, makes sense! The Webley is a looker for sure!

Nice story, Michaelson!

Cheers,
Bear

[Michaelson]

I told him it just confused us. He laughed, and that was the end of that.

Regards! M

[Indy_Dave]

Dragging up an older post, I know, but I never had a problem with Indy going with a Webley. He spent a lot of his formative years in England so why wouldn't he go for an English revolver if one was around? Of course, the real world implications is it looked cool on screen. As for the four inch barrel, I'm sure the production company picked up a cut down revolver and just used it. From the type of "guerrilla" filmmaking they were going for, I wouldn't imagine a ton of thought went into it.

[JPdesign]

Y’all are thinking too recent. After WWI it was common to take 1917/HE2’s and cut them down, through on a sight of some sort, and resell them. Thus the different sights, different people doing conversions. It was also not uncommon to fill the lanyard hole will lead and paint the frame. This was done to the one I bought. The gun that he had was not uncommon for the time period, and would have been relatively cheap compared to a more recent model, and it was a gun he was familiar with from the war. Basically an “upgraded” version (at least considered that at the time).

[skipcress]

I think the real question is, which came first, the Bapty, or the Stembridge? As JPDesign notes, after the First World War it was not altogether uncommon for 1917s or Second Model Hand Ejectors to be customized in a variety of ways, such as by shortening the barrel, and/or very commonly removing the lanyard loop. However, I’m not convinced that both Bapty and Stembridge happened to have on-hand two such guns that happened to have been shortened to 4”. I think it’s more likely that one of the guns was chosen for the film, and the other gun rental company took a gun with a longer barrel and shortened it to 4” for an attempt at continuity.

This is pure speculation, but I personally think it likely that the Bapty gun came first, and that Stembridge took a commercial Model 1917 they had in inventory and shortened its barrel, and even gave the front sight a slight ramp. There a few of reasons I think this is likely the case:

• Firstly, because if you watch British films and television from post-WWII through the seventies, you’ll see that adding a Baughman-type front sight to revolvers was not an uncommon modification. You also see that all or nearly all firearms used are from the Second World War. This is likely because British gun laws during this period made the commercial acquisition of new guns effectively impossible, so there was a lot more customization occurring in Great Britain than you see in the States, where you could simply go out and buy a gun with whatever sights you wanted. It’s even possible that Bapty did not make this modification, but rather it was done by a competent gunsmith for a private British citizen before Bapty even acquired the gun.

• Secondly, the Stembridge gun’s shortening and sighting appeared to be much simpler, which you would expect if you were just trying to duplicate another gun’s look. While it has been suggested that the Stembridge gun has a barrel-banded front sight, I very much doubt this is the case. A barrel-banded front sight would almost certainly result in the band being greater in diameter than the rest of the barrel, as there would have been no point in turning it down to perfectly match the diameter of the barrel (not to mention difficult to accomplish, with the front sight in the way), especially if you had no plans on even finishing the barrel band to match the rest of the barrel. If you look at the front sight, it’s quite clear to me that it is simply the original front sight recontoured and with the first quarter of an inch or so cut off. This would be by far the simplest thing to do. As for the fact that the last bit of the barrel missing its finish, that’s anyone’s guess, but I’m inclined to think they polished the end of the barrel to have a clean spot to resolder on the front sight, and rather than polish only the portion of the barrel that was necessary, they polished it all the way around. Anyway, if the Stembridge gun had been selected first, I very much doubt Bapty would have custom built a Baughman-type front sight for their interpretation of what was supposed to be the same weapon. Instead, they would have done the same thing - solder on the original front sight.

• If the Stembridge gun wasn’t attempting to emulate the Bapty gun, then I have no explanation as for why at any point of time its sight would have been given a roughly 30 degree forward slope. Why wouldn’t they have just reattatched the original front sight unaltered? If on the other hand it was designed to be a stand in for the Bapty gun, then this makes some sense. In fact, it’s even possible Stembridge was going off of a description of the Bapty, rather than a photograph, or the weapon itself.

[Indiana Jeff]

I doubt any special modification was made to the Stembridge gun as part of production. The production was filming fast and loose and SS woudn't have wanted to spend the money nor time on getting a gun modified for what was 2 seconds of screen time.

I think when they moved production to the US, they went to Stembridge and asked for a 4" S&W. As has been pointed out, so many of these guns were modified after the war so it's likely Stembridge had one in inventory that was close enough for SS's needs. Otherwise, why not ask for the gun to be modified to match the Bapty more closely both with the sight and grips that had the S&W medallions?

The production didn't bother to use the same smoking jacket/robe as worn by HF so I don't think they spent too much time on the gun selection.


Regards,

Indiana Jeff

[skipcress]

I agree they would have asked for a 4” Smith & Wesson, my only question is whether Stembridge happened to have one. As stated in my previous comment, in Great Britain a lot of WWII guns were being heavily modified with respect to barrel lengths, sights, etc., and so it doesn’t surprise me that Bapty had one. As an example of this, just look to the Jonathan Cape dust jacket to the book “From Russia With Love.” The gun pictured is a Smith & Wesson M&P with barrel shortened to two inches, a custom Baughman-type front sight added, custom grips, trigger guard cut away in FitzGerald-style, etc. It’s not that this didn’t happen in the States, but you don’t see it as much, because in the post war period new guns were being produced that already suited a lot of these more modern features at competitive prices.

If Stembridge had a 4” 1917 they surely wouldn’t have needed to make another one, so you might be right. But if they didn’t have one, cutting down a barrel and reattaching the front sight isn’t a time consuming actively, and it’s one that Stembridge seemingly did all the time for Western films, as evidenced by the number of SAA revolvers you see with no front sight at all, probably 7.5” guns they shorted to 5.5” or 4.75” without even bothering to put a new sight on.

Another point is that commercial 1917s such as the one used in the film are relatively rare guns because military 1917s were being surplussed at a price Smith & Wesson couldn’t complete with (which they were quite unhappy about), so in all likelihood it was Stembridge that made the modification at some point, because nobody would have paid good money for that gun then sent it to a butcher of a gunsmith to do that kind of job on it.

As for why Stembridge wouldn’t have matched the stocks and front sight, that seems rather straightforward to me. As you said, the shooting pace of “Raiders” was quite quick, and the budget moderate, so they certainly wouldn’t have spent time or money fashioning a Baughman front sight, or even sourcing a contemporary Smith & Wesson one. Same with the medallions, unless they had a better candidate for the conversion that already had medallions, I very much doubt they would have tried to source grips that had them just to match a detail they probably thought nobody would ever notice, let alone write forums about. Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, they might not have even had a photograph of the Bapty gun to even know to match that detail.

[Indiana Bond]

This is pure speculation, but I personally think it likely that the Bapty gun came first, and that Stembridge took a commercial Model 1917 they had in inventory and shortened its barrel, and even gave the front sight a slight ramp.

I think your assessment is right on the money. This was discussed a bit in the "https://www.indygear.com/cow/viewtopic.php?t=57392" thread and I provide some insight below. There is a chance that Stembridge did cut the barrel and then cut the nose off the same barrel and simply attached the nose to the shortened gun with a dowel. They may have not actually removed the sight and re-soldered it back on.

What do you think?

I just had the oportunity to discuss with my gunsmith the Stembridge modification I want to do on a spare S&W 1917 barrel that I have. I brought him the picture below to examine. I told him that it looks like the barrel was cut down to 4 inches and that the bluing was sanded away from the nose of the barrel leaving the bare metal area. The new sight was then soldered on and then never reblued. This has been pretty much the consenus here on COW on how the Stembridge was made.

However, my gunsmith does not think that that is what was done and he points out some very interesting observations that I point out below:




1) At point "1" we can see that the sight has been "pinned" on to the barrel. It may have also been soldered but we can't really tell.

2) This is the most revealing point. The unfinished part of the barrel is NOT part of the rest of the barrel. IT IS A TOTALLY DIFFERENT PIECE!! We can see in the photo that at point "2" the "W" in Wesson is cut in half. We see the back half of the "W" on the main part of the barrel but we don't see the front half of the "W" on the nose! If the bluing was simply sanded away or otherwise removed it still would have left the front half of the stamped "W". These are 2 different parts connected together!

3) At point "3" we can see a bit of a gap and uneveness between the two parts.

4) We can see the horizontal serrations in the nose of the barrel that should also be seen in the main part of the barrel even through the bluing. Also if the nose was sanded or filed to remove the bluing the serations should run vertical around the barrel and not horizontal as we see here. The two parts just look too different to be the same barrel.

My gunsmith thinks that this is either the barrel nose of some other gun attached to the front of the S&W with a sleeve or dowel. Or it could be some sort of "band" that slips over a machined off front section of the S&W. He feels stronger about the "band" idea as we do know the gun was fired so some type of internal sleeve or dowel would make it difficult or impossible to fire. We also see that pin at the base of the front sight which could be actually holding the band onto the machined S&W nose.

I bring this up so that we can start a discussion on these newly discovered facts. I know that the "band" idea has been out there but was discarded for the sanded nose theory. With this new perspective we may need to bring back the "band" theory once again!

Let the analysis begin!

[LNBright]

Good research.


Something I’d like to see changed, regarding the Indygear site about Bapty:
https://www.indygear.com/igguns.html

If you read the description when it gets to discussing the barrel, it puts forward a hypothesis that it had a later barrel swapped onto it.

However, that’s not correct: when the hi-rez auction photos were posted, you could look at the serial numbers, and see that the barrel’s serial number matched the frame’s number. Bapty is a matching-numbers gun.

[Indiana Bond]

Good research.


Something I’d like to see changed, regarding the Indygear site about Bapty:
https://www.indygear.com/igguns.html

If you read the description when it gets to discussing the barrel, it puts forward a hypothesis that it had a later barrel swapped onto it.

However, that’s not correct: when the hi-rez auction photos were posted, you could look at the serial numbers, and see that the barrel’s serial number matched the frame’s number. Bapty is a matching-numbers gun.

Good catch!!

Hopefully one of the mods sees this and can take some action on it.

[skipcress]

I’m glad someone noticed that, as that’s not the only problem with the barrel swapping theory (that’s actually what brought me to this forum today). The other issue is that the barrel was clearly marked as .455, and to the best of my knowledge Smith & Wesson did not make any .455 Webley/Eley revolvers in the 60s. I should be able to confirm that a bit later, not that it matters much, with the serial number on the barrel matching.

Now, this is only a guess, but if I had to put money down on why the Bapty gun’s barrel thickness at the muzzle was so thin, I’d say it’s because it had been threaded internally to accept a prop suppressor. I know that seems odd, but hear me out. If you watch a lot of British T.V. and films from the early post-WWII period (through the 80s, really), you’ll notice a couple of things:

• All the guns are from WWII or before. This stands to reason, as the gun laws in the UK has become so restrictive that acquiring new guns was practically impossible

• Suppressors (“silencers”) were frequently used as plot devices (true of U.S. T.V. as well), and were ultimately added to EVERYTHING you can imagine, from 1911s and Browning M1910s (as used in “Dr. No”) to various insundry suppressed revolvers in pretty much every T.V. show you can list

Therefore, it really wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if the Bapty had been so converted for a previous production.

[stuartcoap]

Old post I know, but looking at the Stembridge sight, It looks like after a machinist shortened the barrel to 4" and turned down the end of the barrel on a lathe, they then reused the original sight by again cutting the tip the barrel off, with the sight still attached, and then counter bored it to slip back onto the turned tip of barrel. The difference in bluing loss/color could be attributed to holster wear which is common on the tips of barrels.

[micsteam]

I'm just putting this out there, if it hasn't been stated/covered before. When they made Raiders, George wanted the movie/story to be made, and Steven wanted to show the studios that he could make a movie on time and on or under budget ( I believe Raiders was under budget). They predominantly filmed special effect shots in UK at Elstree Studios where they filmed the first three Star Wars movies, France, Tunisia ( another Star Wars location), and elsewhere in Europe so they used an armorer from UK and that is Bapty. The Bapty revolver is a 4" 455 S&W 2nd model hand ejector British Lend Lease that was originally 6.5 barrel that I believe was cut down not for Raiders but for inventory to be used in films/tv for ease of use. Steven and George, I think, went for that gun because it was period correct, and they chose quickly to keep on schedule. The other revolver that is seen in Hawaii ( South America 1936) that Indy hands Beloq in front of the Hovitos and seen again at Indy's house that Indy tosses into his suitcase is the Stembridge Gun Rentals revolver .45 S&W hand ejector 2nd model ( probably M1917 as there are/was plenty of them and it fit the part) that was cut down to match the Bapty revolver as filming in Hawaii and Indy's house was after Europe and Tunisia towards the end of principal photography. I have an original 1915 British hand ejector in .45 w/6.5 barrel and it does not make running around/action moves comfortable or easy. ( I know some of this info is in the opening pages to this site and some is knowledge I've gotten over the years... I've been doing this 2003). There it is my two cents. TOH:

[Indiana Jeff]

I don't think they would have had the Stembridge cut down specifically for ROLA. If that was the case, why not have the barrel/front sight match the Bapty?

As you said, SS was committed to coming in ahead of schedule and below budget. I think the prop department/armorer went to Stembridge and asked if they had any 4" barrel S-W available. The one they used was what was readily in inventory so that's what they went with. The Stembridge wasn't going to get much screen time so I don't think they were overly worried about continuity.

The scene with Indy and Marcus in his house was shot in England. The close-up of Indy's hand unwrapping the gun was a pick-up shot (the dressing gowns don't match) filmed in the US so the Stembridge was used. If you look closely at the suitcase, you can see the handle medallions of the Bapty.



Regards,

Indiana Jeff

[micsteam]

I'm indifferent, Stembridge might have had the gun in inventory or modified it to be somewhat matching the Bapty, I don't consider the Stembridge the " Hero gun ". What I am positive about is that it's an US S&W hand ejector could be M1917 or commercial model.