My Revolver No 2 Mk 1** has been covered on the blog before, here, and as noted at the time it is not in great condition, but this is made up for by the fact that it is an uncommon Albion made example. I am slowly trying to improve the revolver slightly and one of the major areas for improvement is to replace the lanyard ring that this example lacked:
A lanyard ring is a distinctive feature of many military sidearms. It allows a retaining cord to be attached so that if the weapon is dropped in the heat of battle it does not get lost, therefore it has been on my list of essential repairs I wanted to make to the gun. After some searching I managed to track down the correct pattern loop online and although it wasn’t cheap, I took the plunge and ordered myself it:
In order to fit the ring to the revolver, the first step was to undo the screw holding on the grip panels:
With these removed I had access to the small hole drilled through the frame. This should have a pin through it to secure the loop and still allow it to swivel. Sadly the pin itself is an item I do not have and have not yet managed to track down, so a more creative approach was needed! Hunting through my workshop I came upon some 1” nails and a quick check showed that they would be the right diameter to make a pin from. The first step was to cut off the head of the nail:
It could then be passed through the hole to secure the lanyard ring:
Finally the excess was carefully cut flush with a hacksaw:
With the grip panels reattached, this expedient job is not visible:
And the pistol is a little more complete with the ring attached to the heel of the grip:
I can’t say that repairing a gun with missing parts is a way to get a bargain firearm for the collection, cumulatively the cost will be approaching the price if I had just bought a rough complete example as the lanyard loop is not the only thing I have had to replace, however it has been a lot of fun tracking down parts and bringing this revolver back to life. It will always be a bit of a mongrel, however it is a rare manufacturer and fills an important gap in my collection.
Tales from the Supply Depot 
That’s an exceptionally large cylinder to barrel gap; presumably it’s been “deactivated”[1] or converted to blank firing at some point?
(I owned one once, bought from Tom Collins when this was allowed, mainly to see what “double action only” was like – and it demonstrated that something was radically amiss with my S&W Model 17 target revolver (Bangor Punta era manufactured). A trip to the gunsmith in Birmingham made an astonishing difference to the S&W and my scores improved dramatically. Almost certainly been melted down by now.) 😦
[1] i.e. reduced to scrap metal.
Both, it was coverted to 9mm knall at some point in its life and then deactivated as well! Sadly it’s the only way I can own one in the UK. The revolver is rough as a badger’s behind, but it is an Albion production example which are much scarcer than Enfield made examples
If nobody can see it on casual examination, then it’s a good fix and nobody will ever know, after all it’s for cosmetic purposes not a firing train component 😉
It’s much like the lever screw on my 1894 Marlin, the old one was stripped and a factory identical one was a ridiculous amount plus taxes, duty and shipping on top of it. Luckily I had a bolt in my parts box that only needed a little cutting down and fiddling with to make fit, a swipe with cold blue and a lot of rubbing with a piece of denim to ‘wear’ it down to the match what little finish was left on a hundred year old rifle and it looked perfect.
I’ve fired Enfields, wasn’t impressed, and why they switched from .455 to .38 is beyond me.
For the amount of use a revolver got, a little recoil was acceptable and if fired for business purposes would go unnoticed in the heat of the moment, that it complicated supply lines with another cartridge to ship around the globe. That and if I were a young ‘rupert’ I wouldn’t be complaining about tha tnasty old recoil, I’d be after the biggest thing I could handle to protect my lilywhite arse in the event I needed it to, a Lancaster ‘howdah’ pistol would be about right 🙂
Never had a Model 17, but my old 1917 would cloverleaf at 25 yards all day long with 200gr LWSC over 4.5gr of Bullseye, won a few matches with it 🙂
The old S&W trick I used to make the trigger just right (for me) was to stick a 1/8″ pin punch through the mainspring and cock the hammer on it until it was at the right weight, no worries about light strikes, the firing pin almost went through the primers as it was.