So, I bought a lamp...

[Vincent]

You are making a nice job of it, Tom. Thanks for the pictures and Jasco paint remover tip. I haven’t tried that.

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[RCS]

This is my Officer's Model 1889 made in Reggia Brescia with a three digit serial number

Came to the USA from a US Army veteran who was in Italy during WW2, he gave it to my father. Condition is very nice

[oldpaul]

RCS, very nice example. Most of the pictures on the net show a date stamp near the manufacturers name, mine doesn't and your officers model doesn't seem to. I cannot seem to find any definitive information why some have a date and some don't.

None of the usual parts houses had anything listed for these guns but I was able to source a mainspring from a member on another forum and a hammer, hand and some extra internal bits for a reasonable price from a gentleman in Florida. Sometimes luck works out. In that same lucky vein, the bore has deep sharp rifling and promised the possibility of decent accuracy if I could repair the bigger problems, most serious of which was the rather large hole drilled in the rear of the frame for lamp cord access. The hole measured about 11/32" (0.3438") and was slightly oblong in shape. A letter drill size T at 0.3580" cleared the hole and made it round. The hole was tapped to 10mmX1.00mm and I turned a plug to an interference fit with the same thread pitch. With the plug in the freezer for a couple hours and the frame warmed up to glove wearing temperatures the plug was screwed in quickly before the temperatures equalized and when cooled the protruding parts were faced down with hand tools. A moment of paranoia caused me to stake punch around the plug on its periphery(pic 5) but in retrospect was probably unnecessary. The picture of the plug repair on the inside of the frame(pic 6) appears to be wavy but is perfectly flat. The tapered firing pin hole was next and certainly the most tedious and time consuming task in this project. I will save that for my next post. Best. Tom

[RCS]

Tom,

You are doing an excellent job of restoration on your Bodeo revolver, part are very difficult to find and often you have to make them.

You can make 10.35mm from 44 maganum brass, cut to .890 inch length and use a 303 sizing die to provide a slight taper. I did make some cartridges from 45 auto rim years ago
too. I used some 44-40 lead bullets worked down to .422 inch. My revolver is very old and was advised to use black powder only, you might be able to use light loads of Unique
powder, Robert