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A Broomhandle was always one of the "sexy" guns that I had to have. But raising two kids on a county cops salary didn't leave a lot of room for a such "toys".

Some years ago the Chinese cut loose with their large inventory of Broomhandles here in the US. Some beautiful pieces came out of that bunch and a great deal of junk. I picked out a junker fixer upper needs repair special from one of the outfits sellling the stuff dirt cheap, that was with in my meager budget, as long as the wife didn't find out.

The bore was beyond sewer pipe. The exterior, rough rusted and about like a rusty farm tool that had been hanging in a barn for years. But as it turned out not heavily pitted. Chamber was rought but shootable. Wood grips were in the last stages of terminal wood rot. It looked like a good winter project fixer upper to me.

I tried shooting the gun. It did fire, but only one shot at a time and real close up it even hit the target. Something was wrong inside and the slide would not go closed and lock after firing.

The gun got set aside for the future. We got the kids raised up and sent off in life, I went back to college, and started doing Gunsmithing for food. Deciding that I didn't have the artistic skills needed of a gunsmith to be able to make money enough to eat more than beans, I went back to Law enforcement work at the federal level and kept the gunsmithing as a side business. Much more profitable and I have put on a little weight.

I now had sometime for my projects.

The junker broomhandle was a good place to start. I first had to figure out why it wouldn't function. Everything pointed to something being wrong with the locking block. Stone and peen, no matter what I couldn't make it work. Back on the shelf went the gun. I looked around for a replacement block, but none was to be found.

I was at a gunshow in Houston and as I went by one table here was this guy with a table full of replacement parts for Broomhandles. Yipee. I went home and got my locking block and went through the fellows parts and found one of the same pattern as mine. (They ain't all the same, trust me.)

The part dropped right in and the gun hand cycled. Later that week at the range the gun functioned flawlessly. Okay flawlessly as far as the bullets coming out of the barrel. The target was only in moderated danger.

I now had the choice of sending the gun off and having the barrel relined to .30 Mauser or rebored to 9mm. The cost was similar but 9mm ammo Parabelum is cheaper. The gun became a 9MM.

When I got the gun back from rebore it shot reliabily , hit the target everytime but was dog ugly. Time for refinish.

I already had a set of new made replacement grips, it was the metal that needed work.

One thing I am very concerned about is that some where down the road someone gets their hands on a gun I restored and it gets represented to some one less knowledgable as "original". On the other hand I want the gun to look as nice as the original as possible.

I used soft polishing stones to polish this gun. One of the characteristics of the broomhandles is the machine cut-outs on the side of the gun have tool marks in the bottom of the cuttout. These are the swirly patterns made by the tip of the tool. I used a slightly coarser grit stone to polish the tool marks out but make them linear as if machine made. A collector will know they aren't real. But they still look nice.

I gave some though to having the Markings recut, but again to make sure this gun is not mistaken as original I left them washed.

With the gun polished out it was time for refinish. Rust blue was considered, but again to identifiy this as a resortartion I went with hot blue.

Here is the finished prodcut:

How did I do?

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DD, Ret.

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