Hello everyone, this is my first post in TFL (I post on THR).
I wanted to share my project with this forum too. A few months ago I bought an Iver Johnson safety hammer in 38S&W, that I wanted to restore. The gun was very sound mechanically and in appearance, but I wanted it to look new. I bought a nickel stripping solution and got all the old nickel off, and deblued the trigger guard, latch, and extractor cam. I sanded everything up to 600 grit to remove scratches and a little spot of pitting, and then polished it by hand with a compound. I sent the parts to get nickeled, and the ones that needed to be blued I first tried to cold blue (what you'll see in the pictures) but then I decided to send to a hot bluing service, because I realized cold blue doesn't protect at all against rust.
I had to find 2 springs that were missing/broken, and after a few weeks of work the gun was done. I had a guy load me some 38S&W cartridges with black powder, and I took the gun to the range for the first time yesterday. It was loads of fun, it made a great boom and put out a cloud of smoke, but I couldn't hit anything with it! there is good rifling in the barrel, but the sights are very small, and the front blade is very hard to see. It seemed to be hitting about a foot high (me and my dad shot it) at about 10 yards. I'm sure I could learn to shoot it if I practiced with it, but this gun is just for fun and looks, and I don't want to put a lot of wear on it, and the ammo was expensive. But I am very glad I shot it, and will probably do so again on occasion.
Here are the pics: the first two are the "before":
