Antique pistol restoration

My grandpa gave me a pistol that belonged to his dad. It’s a Eli Whitney .32 cal breechloading pocket revolver made from 1871-1879. I’m striking out finding someone to restore it. It currently isn’t operational, missing the hammer spring and who knows what else. Anyone know of a place to get it working?

Eli Whitney revolvers are a common replica, first ensure that it is a true Whitney production. Eli Whitney Jr had a strong relationship with Sam Colt. Not sure if you know the history of Eli Whitney, but they started making revolvers when Sam Colt asked them to produce a few for them with some of his old tooling.

You may have a tough time finding ANY gunsmith who will want to work on it. I would first try calling Ahlmans gun shop in Morristown, MN. If they aren’t interested, they will know someone who is. I am not a fan of the work Ahlmans does and I feel weird recommending them to someone, but they deal in stuff like that quite a bit.

Now for the good part, lets see some pictures!

Interesting pistol for sure.

I would contact a Colt restoration specialist. It may be worth a call to one of the better firearms auction houses like Rock Island to ask their advice on the right specialist to contact. I believe there was an outfit in Oshkosh that specialized in Colt restorations, I don’t recall the name.

I have to warn you that it very likely won’t be cheap. I had some work done on a small .32 new police that my great grandfather owned. It is not hard to completely eclipse the book value of the gun by several times when having something like this repaired.

If it is a really a .32 and a genuine Whitney, I believe Whitney pocket pistols of that era were actually one of several .32 rimfire cartridges that were in use back then, most of which have been obsolete since the early 1900s and most commercial production ceased before WW2. I’m not sure if there is any modern source for any of the .32 rimfire cartridges.

If you have designs on firing it after restoration, I would make sure you know what you have and determine if there is ammo available. The .32 pistol area especially is a tangle of overlapping cartridges. There are obsolete rimfires, a few centerfires of which some are safely interchangeable, and then many that are NOT.

Post some pictures. Sounds like a neat gun.

Grouse

Thanks for the reply guys. I have called the place in Oshkosh several times with no answer, believe it is called Rons guns.

I believe this to be authentic. My great grandfather carried this gun during a packing house strike in 1914. I’m pretty bummed to hear I might not be able to get ammo. The way the hammer is I think this is the .32 rim fire model.

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It does look to be real and I don’t see any references to any of the Whitney “pocket pistols” of this type having been reproduced.

Unfortunately, that is almost certainly a .32 rimfire, I believe it was .32 Long Rimfire, but regardless all the .32 rimfires have been out of production for decades. I believe there was some company in South America (Brazil or Argentina) that was making .32 rimfire runs occasionally, but IIRC the last run was in 1988 or so. Lots occasionally come up for sale, but be prepared to shell out several dollars per cartridge when they do.

Here’s a rather interesting picture of just some of the .32 cartridges from the late 1800s and early 1900s. There are more, just to add to the confusion.

Grouse