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.

It is always fin to see old train wrecks put back into shooting condition.

So I can stay far away from that!!

Glad you were able to save it.

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https://facebook.com/M2bKydex/

was trying to shoot the stuck bullet out of the barrel? Or did they not know the bullet was stuck in the barrel and kept shooting?

I saw a S&W .38 Special that had 7 or 8 bullets stuck in the barrel with one protruding from the muzzle. In Vietnam a guy on patrol had a VC raise up in front of him and shoot at him. He nailed the VC and grabbed the guy's pistol that he had tried to shoot him with, tossed it in his backpack and did not look at it til he was off patrol. When he saw the bullet protruding from the muzzle he unlatched the cylinder and saw one stuck at the breech. He took it to the metal shop and they cut the side off the barrel and it was FULL from one end to the other with bullets stuck in it! The VC using it had to reload at least once and apparently never noticed the bullets were not coming out.

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

Rocket, the gunsmith at Anderson Gun Repair had a barrel off a 4" Smith "Victory" .38 Special with 4 bullets stuck inside. He milled a window along the side of the (removed) barrel. He left the bullets in the barrel. They were nose into base.

Bore was a little rough.

All bullets were consistent visually with the 130 grain FMJ, the USAF load which is loaded very light indeed @ 725 ft/sec. I've also seen the 130 USAF type bullet loads sold as white box plinking ammo.

My s.w.a.g. is that the ammo was underloaded, likely from the factory, and the pitted bore increased friction.

In the early 200s, Numrich still had new Parkerized Victory barrels. The revolver and cylinder suffered no ill effects. It was put back in service.

The barrel lay around on the counter until (apparently) someone stole it.