forensic photos: weirdo 22 jgr OMS

I recently picked up a .22lr OMS that had a rebored cylinder for .22jgr:



It was cheap, given the relative lack of ammo (i.e., 0 rounds from what I can find), but I like OMSes and perhaps installing a .22lr cylinder to convert it back is not a big deal.

In any case, one interesting thing about it was that whoever did the conversion did some tricky machining to convert from a hammer-mounted firing pin to an internal firing pin. I'm not entirely sure why, given that the hammer does support center-fire, but in any case in the 1950s, I don't think this was trivial.

So the big question is what do things look like inside? Unfortunately I wimped out from taking apart the firing pin assembly, but there's still some interesting things.


Here's the gun --- unfortunately when they mounted the scope the coltmaster rear went bye-bye:




You can see from the slightly out of alignment stamping that this was probably not done by the factory (though perhaps UAW would jack it up this much):




Notice when it's cocked that there is no firing pin on the hammer. Also, you can see a pin in the frame underneath the rear sight groove --- this is to hold the firing pin assembly in:



Taking things apart, there doesn't seem to be anything else unusual about the internals:



Though it looks like whoever did the work stamped their initials on the frame ("E E"):



Here's a closer view of the hammer in the OMS vs a normal E-frame hammer w/ a firing pin mounted:



Looking at the hammer from the front (modified on left, pristine on right), you see the smith actually just filed it flat --- you can still make out the outlines of the firing pin:



You can see where it was migrated to, which looks tricky:



It looks like he removed and the installed a newshell plate to hold the contents --- on a normal OMS, things aren't as bright and shiny:









And at this point we stop, since I bought it and don't want to break it.