A few years ago I was in Arizona and spent most of a week with Paco Kelly. One day he dragged out a single action pistol. He said he had bought it from a guy who sold it to him for a little over $100. It had a bullet stuck in the bore and he couldn't get it out. Paco asked if I thought I could and I said I would give it try and put it in my stuff.

A couple weeks later I was home and one day I got the pistol out and began to look it over. It was a .357 Magnum made by Armi San Marco. A copy of the Colt SAA, it was a faithful reproduction of the Colt.

Looking at the muzzle I could see a jacketed bullet stuck fairly close.

Just to see what would happen I used an aluminum rod that was close to bore diameter. I stuck it in the muzzle and whacked it hard with a hammer. All it did was flatten the nose of the bullet. It did not budge it.

As I looked the gun over I pulled the cylinder out of the frame and what to my wondering eyes did appear but ANOTHER BULLET near the breech! It hit me right then that this was not gonna be an easy fix.

I decided that the only way I would possibly clear the barrel was to first of all remove the barrel from the frame.

I tried heating the barrel but could not get anything to budge. It would have been nice if I could have melted the lead out of the jackets but it didn't happen. I knew I would have to puncture the jacket to get the lead out, so when the barrel cooled down I drilled a hole in the bullet's base. Then looking at it I thought, "I can run a big screw in there and pull that bullet!" So I did.

I pulled the rear bullet and then the front bullet and found a 3rd bullet in the middle!

The bullet near the muzzle was a .35 caliber 200 gr. rifle bullet. So was the one near the breech. The bullet in the middle was a 158 gr. pistol bullet.

Once it was cleared I measured the barrel and found several places where it was bulged. So I ordered an Armi San Marco barrel from the Gun Parts Corp. and fitted it to the pistol. I put a set of old Ruger XR3 grips on the gun as it needed grips.

The next June I was at Tedd Adamovich's before the Shootists Holiday. I was going to the Holiday, then drive down to Paco's and return the pistol to him. While at Tedd's I showed him the gun. Tedd took it and fitted a set of one piece burled maple stocks to it. When I gave it to Paco he was quite amazed.

It was a fun project.

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Ele era velho.
Ele era corajoso.
Ele era feio.