Help identifying a revolver?

[Tangentabacus]

Hey all,

I unfortunately/fortunately inherited a revolver from my grandfather who just recently passed away. It says 32 Winchester on the barrel, but there's literally no marking anywhere else except on the bottom of the handle, a marking that says "SPAIN", 293, 40494. Just some numbers.

It's double action, no safety, not blued. Found some similar pistols online, but they had different rivet/screw patterns. Looked danged close though. Not really worried about the value other than sentimental as every grandfather that has passed has given me some sort of firearm and I plan to give them to my grand kids.

I'll post photos here in a second.

P.S. I have two other pistols that I got from him and maybe a couple rifles that I'll probably need help identifying sooner or later.

P.P.S. Also, the advance feature on the DA seems to have worn the drum out bad enough that one or two of the chambers won't advance sometimes. Anyone got any suggestions for fixing this?

[Tangentabacus]

Photos

[Tangentabacus]

More photos

[Tangentabacus]

More photos 2

[peggysue]

I did a google search of spinish 32 Winchester revolver and came up with this...
The revolver was made in Spain in 1924 and imported into the US by J.L. GALEF NY. It is chambered in .32 Winchester and is in perfect working order. These revolvers are basically Spanish made copies of the Smith & Wesson Hand Ejector (Model 10). These revolvers were very popular in the early to mid 1920s but are becoming harder to find. These revolvers often have a bad reputation for being poorly made or cheap copies but most of that was due to misinformation sent out by the American companies who were worried about these guns eating into their profits. Many owners of these older pieces can attest that these were just as good or even better than some of their American cousins.
Not worth a whole lot of $$ due to caliber and manufacturer.

[carguychris]

Old Spanish copies of Smith & Wesson revolvers vary widely in quality. Some were factory made and of reasonably good quality, but others came from shoestring operations literally located in someone's garage and were borderline junk. This particular gun shows obvious signs of poor workmanship (uneven finish, poorly struck lettering), so I'm tempted to place it in the second category.

Regarding the double action problem, it's very difficult to find parts for these old Spanish guns because of the difficulty in determining the actual manufacturer. Even if this CAN be determined, these guns are a product of an era when technology was expensive but labor was cheap; the parts were often laboriously hand fitted, making it highly unlikely that a part taken from any particular gun will fit properly on another. Repairing these guns can be a matter of finding a skilled machinist willing to recreate the broken part from scratch, and this is generally uneconomical.

Btw the cartridge this gun fires is better known as the 32-20 Winchester or .32 Winchester Center Fire (.32 W.C.F. for short). Calling it ".32 Winchester" may create confusion with .32 Winchester Special, a much larger, more powerful, and totally incompatible rifle cartridge. However, I STRONGLY discourage you from attempting to fire this gun.

[Jim Watson]

It looks like a revolver made by Suinaga Y Aramberri in Eibar Spain in the 1920s. But there were a lot of similar looking knockoffs of Smith & Wessons.

I have read that a lot of them are in .32 WCF = .32-20 because they were tooled up for the 8mm Lebel caliber made for the French in WWI. So all it took was a new chamber reamer to come up with a gun for the cheap US and South American markets.

[RJay]

During WWI dozens of both large and Small gun makers made pistols and revolvers for the conflict, After the bloodletting was over these same backyard gun shops and the larger ones went from good times to bad times. What to do, hey, some very sharp exporters had guns made up for export to the Americas, copies of the very same automatics they had been making, which were unauthorized Browning copies , and revolvers , which for the most part were copies of the North American Colt's and S&W's. While the larger makers, Astra, Star, and LLama used steel that was the equal of any used in Europe, the same was not true for the shops in the stables ( and in many cases that is were the shops were ). As carquychris and Jim Watson has already stated, there were dozens of these small makers and many times the guns are not marked as to maker. The use of soft steel is not misinformation put out by the American gun makers, it is a fact. There are cases of these guns blowing up using blanks. These guns are a crap shoot, if you get a good one, Merry Christmas, if you get a poor one with inferior steel, well, count your fingers before shooting it so you know how many to search for when the guns blows. The wearing of the cylinder star is not unusual in these guns, it is very common and as carguy said, parts are not a drop in, even with another revolver of the same maker. Me myself and I would clean it up, and put it in a display case. Just my 2 cents.

[Tangentabacus]

Thanks everyone. I'm kinda thinking this gun will be for display only after all that I've read. It's been well used so I'd bet it's probably safe, but if in the off chance it breaks I'd be upset to lose it. So next question... Advice on preserving it? Will CLP be enough? Or should I find some Cosmo and put it in a bag?

[Mike Irwin]

Don't shoot it.Chances are good it is a ductile iron frame, not steel, and thus more suitable to blackpowder ammo.

[James K]

"These revolvers often have a bad reputation for being poorly made or cheap copies but most of that was due to misinformation sent out by the American companies who were worried about these guns eating into their profits."

Sorry, but that is simply not true. While a few (very few) of those guns were reasonably well made, most really were junk and many did blow up. The ones that didn't wore out quickly because they were made of inferior metal and could not be properly heat treated. I strongly recommend against firing that revolver with ANY ammunition; treat it as a wall hanger, preferably deactivated so some future innocent won't get a nasty surprise.

(The hammer shows signs of the firing pin having been replaced. I suspect that someone had already deactivated the gun because it was dangerous to fire, but someone else later decided to restore it to firing condition, not a wise decision.)

Jim

[James K]

Since the subject is different, I will make this a separate post. Most of those guns were not make of "soft" steel; they were not made of steel at all, but of low quality cast iron. That was the same kind of cheap, brittle cast iron from which cookpots were made, and it was generally called "pot metal".

Recently, some people, ignorant of the origin of the term, have contended that it means some kind of alloy that was melted in a pot, but that meaning came about when folks read old books and magazines without the background to understand the terms used in those days.

Jim

[Mike Irwin]

Anyone who has encountered more than a few of these guns (Jim and I, for example) knows that the supposed stories about poor quality are, if anything, understated.

As Jim said, some of these guns were made well and would likely do OK with modern standard pressure ammunition.

Most, however, and perhaps the vast majority, are of such suspect quality that firing anything through them is a crapshoot.

I've seen upwards 100 of the Spanish S&W copies, in .32-20, .38 Long/Special (couldn't really tell as the markings were... nebulous), and .44, and there were only 3 that I'd have had no problem shooting. The rest? No thanks to no way in hell.

The most interesting one I ever saw was one that had a frame made of wrought iron... of such poor quality that it split through the top and bottom straps and the barrel flew down range.

Most of the failures of these guns I've seen have been stretched frames, split barrels, or split chambers. A few have had true blowouts, with chunks of steel missing.

Bottom line is this... If it's a copy of a pre WW II S&W revolver, and it's made in Spain, I'm not shooting it.

[James K]

In most cases, the only thing needed to confirm the poor quality of those guns is to remove the grips. The rough casting marks, hand-filed frames and parts, and lack of any interior finish, will usually serve to convince folks of the low standards of Spanish handgun making in that period. (Spanish auto pistols, were, if anything, of even worse quality than revolvers, but were mostly of low power (.32 and .25) and didn't let go the way revolvers did.)

Incidentally, the latest American Rifleman shows a relic revolver displayed in a Belgian museum and supposedly picked up on a WWII battlefield. They say that it is an S&W Victory Model. It is not, it is a Spanish copy. That just goes to show that even experts like those writers can be fooled.

Jim

[Drm50]

Spanish 32 Win.

Just bought this clunk the other day. Kid showed up with coffee can. Gun
was in " kit " form. Turns out it's missing cylinder latch assembly. Looks to
be dead ringer for you gun.

[James K]

Put the grips on and hang it on the wall. Don't waste money trying to find parts or attempting to fix it.

Note, FWIW, the V spring and the seat in the backstrap that are common in those guns (the museum gun I mentioned above is the same) which look like S&W's on the outside but which have a Warnant or Galand-type lockwork more resembling the Colt.

Jim

[Tangentabacus]

I had no serious plans on using it anyways, but you guys are giving me excellent information. I had no real plans to shoot it since it was sentimental to me... Even if it's a junk gun.