High Standard cylinder

[Taxidermist]

I have a high standard 9 shot revolver that I bought about a year or 2 ago that is giving me a problem. I haven't shot it enough to know which chambers are giving me the problem but there are 2. I'll have to get it out and mark them one of these days. The thing is when firiing it a couple chambers are very hard to get into place. If I am shooting it in DA but when I get to the bad spots I need to use both thumbs to pull the hammer back to get the cylinder to roll into place. I can't tell what is catching what to stop it from going into place but I like the old thing and there are no gunsmiths in my area. Any ideas what I should be looking for and maybe I could just buff it up to get the cylinder to quit locking up. Thanks for any tips.
John

Here is the revolver.

 

[gyvel]

Sounds like you might have badly buggered steps on your cylinder ratchet. Definitely mark which chambers are the culprits, then see if they correspond to any obvious damge on the ratchet. Another cause could be a slight distortion (a slight bend) of the cylinder axle itself, which would cause uneven pressure on the ratchet by the hand.

Does this also happen when you are dry firing the revolver, or only when the chambers are loaded and you are actually shooting?

 

[Dfariswheel]

Several common causes of "hard rotation" on one or two chambers are a sprung cylinder crane, or debris lodged under the ejector.

The weakness of modern double action revolvers is that if the gun is dropped or the cylinder is slammed open and shut with a Bogart flick of the wrist, the crane, or "arm" the cylinder rides on can get bent. This causes many revolver problems just as you mentioned.

If burned powder particles get trapped under the ejector it causes the ejector to fail to seat fully.
This often causes stiff cylinder rotation on a couple of chambers.
To check this, hold the ejector back and use a stiff brush to thoroughly brush the under side of the ejector and its seat in the cylinder.
Debris can be almost impossible to see, and can get embedded into the metal, making removal difficult.

If the crane is bent, that will take the services of a good gunsmith to correct.
You have to be careful with these kind of problems because "Buffing" or doing other such operations will NOT correct the problem and WILL ruin the gun.
Sorry, but something like a bent crane is a major problem that's not easy for an untrained person to correct.

 

[James K]

Examine the ratchet at the back of the cylinder carefully. That gun does not have a ratchet quite like an S&W or Colt. Instead it has radial grooves into which the hand fits to turn the cylinder. If any of those grooves is pinched in or blocked in some way, it will be hard for the hand to move.

If that is not the problem, check back and we can talk about some other problems.

Jim