Colt Police Positive rescue

[Guest kingarmory]

This gun was carried by a Chicago cop decades ago but got water damaged.  The gun was rusted shut and had bad pitting on a lot of the outside and the last two inches of the barrel were ruined.  Here is the gun after some disassembly and about two hours of soaking/scrubbing.  The cylinder latch is rusted shut so we ended up having to break it in order to remove the cylinder and crane.

 

 

 

 

After a bit of buffing most of the pitting was smoothed out.  The last two inches of the barrel had pretty much rotted so it was turned off to make the barrel 3" long.  The parts were blasted and parkerized to check the surface finish

 

 

Really didn't want to go with the factory "half moon" sight on something that was now closer to a snubby in size, so we machined a custom front sight on the mill to match the factory height and contoured to fit the barrel precisely

 

 

 

The sight was silver-soldered on the barrel.  All the parts were blasted and parkerized to prep the surface for coating.  The parts were coated in gun blue GunKote and baked.  The GunKote was polished with jeweler's rouge and a buffing wheel to give it a very high gloss finish.  The trigger was tuned and timing checked and the gun was reassembled.  We found some NOS Jay Scott pearl grips on Gunbroker to complete the build.

 

 

 

[Troutburger]

Nice save!

[R1100R]

Very nice save

[rugerla1]

Wow, that's amazing!!!

[hipower]

Awesome!

[RED333]

Very nice job!

[bersaguy]

would never believe it was the same gun. Great restoration for sure and something to be proud of..............jmho

[Hotrod]

Great save ... Real nice piece..

[Monkeyman2500]

That's a heck of a restore. Nice job.

[jimmydeuce]

Fantastic job!

[Tuffus]

Good to see it brought back to life!!

[TrickyNicky]

Very nice! I love the Police Positive. Handy little revolvers that shoot where you point them. Had one for a little while and sold it back when I inherited my Official Police. Wish I had it back.

Oh and of course, great restoration. Looks better than new. Edited December 30, 2013 by TrickyNicky

[will_reed]

Very nice! I love seeing these old guns put back into service. I'm getting ready to finish up a similar project, this OP wasn't quite as far gone though. Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk

Edited December 30, 2013 by will_reed

[mikegideon]

Nice work! I may have one for you

[Trekbike]

You guys do some fine work.     :up:

[Bigiron]

Wow.  Great save.  You do excellent work.

[Jamie Jackson]

Heck of a job on the Colt.

 

Man...that would have tempted me to tweak it a bit more into  Fitz Special. Something I always wanted to do, but just never got around to having it done.

 

Thanks for posting the pics.

[TrickyNicky]

Heck of a job on the Colt.
 
Man...that would have tempted me to tweak it a bit more into  Fitz Special. Something I always wanted to do, but just never got around to having it done.
 
Thanks for posting the pics.

A Fitz would be soooo tempting on a job like that. I couldn't bring myself to do it though, I'm not nearly bad ass enough to carry one.

[Jamie Jackson]

A Fitz would be soooo tempting on a job like that. I couldn't bring myself to do it though, I'm not nearly bad ass enough to carry one.

 

 

LOL...me either.

 

 But a man can dream. :pleased:

[Chazmr]

Awesome job.  I wouldn't even know where to start with one in that bad a condition.

Great save!

[Guest kingarmory]

Yeah, the temptation to do a Fitz build is always there, I just have a problem with cutting triggerguards, something seems unholy about that.  Could I do the build?  Yeah.  Would I be happy about it?  Probably not.

[KahrMan]

Thats very cool.  Nice job.

[will_reed]

King, I finally got around to finishing mine. I wish I had taken some before pictures though. Did yours end up being a shooter? Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk

[Jamie Jackson]

That's a beauty will reed. :up:

 

Love those Tyler grip adapters.

 

How does she shoot?

[will_reed]

It shot very well before the work, but I've only put six rounds through it since I got it back together. I wasn't sure about putting the t-grip back on since they are hard on the finish and grips but it's so much easier for me to shoot with it that I went ahead. I'm thinking a black one might look more at home though. Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk