1930s Harrington & Richardson Trapper .22 Front Sight Repair

I have this old .22 revolver from the early 30's that had a funky replacement barrel on it. I happened to find a old original replacement barrel online so I snapped it up. Upon receiving the barrel, I noticed the front blade sight looked to have been replaced by someone in the long-ago past. I think the sight is supposed to be blued steel, but this sight is made from copper. For all I know, someone flattened a penny back in 1960 and soldered it in when the original broke off. Whoever did the repair really ladled on the solder but it didn't have good adhesion, so it had cracks and gaps in many areas. I didn't get a good photo of it but here are a couple of the best ones I could find, looking through my photos prior to the repair.

The first order of business was to peel off most of the solder before attacking things with a small file.

The sight is removed. Look at that pile of solder that came off. At one time a coarse wire brush or file was used on the barrel and sight, probably after the solder job was done, to make things look better. This original repair was done at a time when these guns weren't worth hardly anything. Ok, so they still aren't worth much, but they're at least a bit more collectible now than they used to be. Time to clean and smooth things up.

I used a file drawn across the barrel flats, then 400 grit sandpaper, to try and smooth out the marks left by the previous repair person.

Test-fitting the sight.

I used a tiny butane pencil torch (barely seen at the top of the photo below) to do the heating. I was careful not to get things too hot.

These next two photo show the sight after cleaning things up with more filing and sanding.

I cleaned everything with acetone, then applied some cold blue solution to the end of the barrel to make it look better than the bright steel color.

This blog post deserves a photo of the entire gun, and I just so happen to have the perfect one. The gun is from my wife's parents, the Elgin pocket watch was my grandfather's (he was a watch repairman), and the Bowie knife is from my Uncle Tom (Dad's brother in law). The two antique 22 ammo boxes have been floating around in my gun collection for eons. I don't know where they came from.