How to THINK you can disassemble a Colt Woodsman.

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Lavan

New member
I recently got a prewar 1936 vintage Colt Woodsman.

image.jpg


It shoots pretty dang good. But not PERFECT!

VERY occasionally I get a FTF on a mystery basis.

Sooooooo..... I get to thinking.... "Hey, I bet the firing pin has some gunk in the channel."

HA!

So today I switched from HiSpeeds to Standards ..thinking... maybe it just wants some "easier" shooting ammo.

oop.

Another FTF.... But only ONE instead of several during the session.

Still.... wouldn't hurt to clean it GOOD!
Oh, I cleaned it MOSTLY good when I got it.
But....FTF....hmmmm? Maybe not good enough.

So I gets me down my Firearms Dissasembly book and go to page 42.
YAY!

But it's a MATCH TARGET schematic. So what? How different can the innards be?

Well QUITE different it turns out.

So I goes to my faithful Internet to LOOK UP the subject.

There are more entries on Colt Woodsmans (Woodsmen?) than there are on Justin Bieber.

And NONE pertain to the 1936 serial number 1046XX kinds.



Good grief! There are even FIRING LINE posts by the jillions.

And....none... show what ...I... got.

I got it all to pieces easy enough. BUT.... taking out the firing pin to scrub the channel or maybe inspect for glumps of crud?
Noop.

They show ways to twist the extractor and remove it.
uh-huh.

MY extractor don't know the TWIST.

AND I'm not dumb enough to FORCE a gun piece to come out if it REALLY doesn't want to.

And they say you put the GRIP SCREW in the plug in the slide and take out the firing pin.

Well, MINE has a slotted screw where EVERY i-net source says there shouldn't BE one. :mad:

So, thinks me, how about firing pin strike?

Well, the pix show what I think is adequate strike to fire any 22LR ctg around.

The one in the pic shows 2 indentations. The lesser one is from a round DRY FIRED while the BIG ole whack is from live fire.

Both look good enough to me.
( I use an empty from a session for a dummy to save the firing pin because I'm too cheap to pop for snap caps and I lose them anyway.)

So.... way too long story short.... I just ran some penetrating oil down the firing pin from the front and added some drops of oil to kinda work around.

Here's the pic of what MY Woodsman slide looks like from the bottom.

stuff_laid_out.jpg


The first pic of all the crap is to prove that I ..did... take it all apart.

Now... has anyone seen a similar setup on a Woodsman that they actually took the firing pin out of? :confused::confused:


I think I'm done now. ;)
 
J

James K

Member In Memoriam
FWIW, the staked screw type firing pin stop was the original and was used at least into the WWII era; parts houses distinguish the guns as pre-and post-war. My Pre-Woodsman #366** has it, as does #1800**.

i suspect the change was made because the screw battered. I can't prove that, but it looks pretty small to take the pounding.

People who cuss the Ruger takedown usually know nothing of the Woodsman, which was the inspiration for the Ruger and can be infuriating also. The worst condition, shared by High Standards of the same era, is letting the recoil spring guide slip off the assembly lock. That creates a real PITA!

Oddly, for a few minutes I forgot about that change. It has been 60 years since I had to look at instructions to take down a Woodsman.

Jim
 
J

James K

Member In Memoriam
One more tip if I may. Be careful with that Colt Woodsman; those guns look sturdy, but a lot of steel is cut away leaving the grip frames pretty thin and prone to bend easily if dropped or warped, especially without the grips, which provide some stiffness.

Jim
 
G

gyvel

New member
Bottom line: That "slotted plug" is, in fact, a screw. Take the screw out (CAREFULLY).

These might help:
 

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L

Lavan

New member
I......carefully...... STARTED... unscrewing it and ran into MAJOR resistance.
(like needing vise grips on the screwdriver_
So.... I stopped "trying" to turn it.

Ran penetrating oil down the pin from the front and followed up with 3in1 oil and put it BACK TOGETHER! :)

After thoroughly cleaning the rest of the innards up and doing a general wipe down and put away.

The mystery (which I forgot to mention) was that the FTF cartridges show

NO....ZIP....NADA.... marks from ANYTHING

and they will fire on a reload. :confused:

My ONLY diagnosis was that the firing pin is NOT hitting the rim at all.

Because as you can see in the pix, the cases that FIRE are very satisfactorily smacked.

Thus the assumption that something was gunking up the firing pin


but I ain't a gonna strip sumpin to check for sure. :D
 
J

James K

Member In Memoriam
That screw is staked in for a reason. If it loosens up, it could come out part way and really tie up the gun. If it tightens up, it could cause misfires, so I would leave it alone.

If you must remove it, you should be able to break the staking, but you risk buggering up the slot and having to drill out the screw. If soaking the slide in a solvent won't work, AND YOU MUST TAKE IT, get an extra screw in case you destroy the old one.

The Woodsman is not known for light hammer blows; it usually gives the round a heckuva whack. Have you checked to be sure the slide is closing completely? Failure to close is a problem, and obscured by the fact that if the slide doesn't close and there is a misfire, the force of the hammer will close the slide and the result will look like a light hammer blow.

One possibility for keeping the slide from closing is dirt under the extractor.

Now, before you get into trying to remove the extractor, soak that slide good, then use a small brush under the extractor. If you can do that and are pretty sure that area is clean, and you still have misfires, come back at us.

Jim
 
L

Lavan

New member
Shall I try checking eBay for Colt pre-war Woodsman firing pin retainer screws? ;):D:D


Oh, the extractor is clean as a whistle. Full travel and sharp angle.

I...DID... have non closing bolt in a Ruger MkII til I learned not to EVER use flat point bullets.
 
T

Tactical Lever

New member
I've got a Norinco copy, and I didn't realize it was that good a copy! The Norincos sometimes have a light strike also. Through a bunch of shooting, I think it's loosened up (around the striker) some, and may be a little more reliable. One thing that I did, was switch to CCI, as they have slightly softer brass. With CCI, mine is 100% (or close).

If you must mess with it, get an impact screw driver, the kind that you tap on the top of to get a partial rotation. You may want to use some kind of a "gripping" compound to further lessen you chances of stripping the screw head. I am not sure about assembly, but they may have used a thread locker on there, also. If you can get it apart use a small butane torch to heat it up. Otherwise a soldering iron (or equivalent temp) applied directly to the screw head for a while may be enough to burn it out.
 
C

Clark

New member
I bought some woodsman pistols in 2013.
I have been reading gun stuff off the internet since 1994, before the www forums.

Woodsman owners are a courteous and intelligent lot [compared to discussing long range sniper optics].
Because of the collectibility premium, I don't think the old woodsman pistols deliver functionality in proportion to cost [ compared to other new pistols] but they do have cache one can see and feel. Ernest Hemingway wrote glowingly about them.
 
T

Tactical Lever

New member
Hi Lavan; if you were on this side of the border, I would probably try getting you to sell it to me way too cheap.... Not that I really need another one, except that yours says Colt on it. Otherwise mine is the spitting image. Shoots really well too. Give those CCI a try. I have a few bulk packs of Blazer just for that gun...
 
J

James K

Member In Memoriam
I don't know whether this will encourage you to sell the Woodsman or not, but they have a bad reputation for drawing blood, so stock up on Band-Aids ®. There are two reasons. The first is that the interior of the gun is full of sharp edges which can slice an unwary finger pretty quickly. The second is that when re-installing the mainspring housing, its rear lug doesn't always snap back into the frame until the gun is held in the right hand and the slide retracted. The failure of the lug to seat leaves a gap between the frame and the MSH into which a piece of skin almost inevitably will find its way, only to be pinched off (lots of blood here) when the MSH snaps into place. Colt corrected that problem with a second MSH pin, which is itself a PITA.

Jim
 
L

Lavan

New member
they have a bad reputation for drawing blood, so stock up on Band-Aids
Click to expand...

I had a 6" bbl one back in the 60s that my cousin wanted to shoot.

As he gripped the gun, I noticed he had wrapped the web of his thumb around the BACK of the slide?

:confused::confused::confused::confused:

JUST as I yelled, "NO" he found a way to draw blood. :D
 
J

James K

Member In Memoriam
Actually, the slides on those .22's can be stopped with the hand rather easily, the main problem being sharp edges on the slide. With a Ruger, simply placing the palm on the back of the bolt is enough to stop the bolt. With a Colt or High Standard, the sharp edges of the slide will usually dig into the hand, followed by "ouch!!".

Jim
 
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