Hopkins & Allen Revitalized

Hopkins & Allen Arms Company was founded in the wake of the Civil War in Norwich, Connecticut in 1868 and went out of business in 1916. In the 48 years they operated they were responsible for making many of the unfamiliar brands of firearms we find on gun show tables to this day. Probably the most common product they made for other gun "manufacturers" were the Merwin & Hulbert revolvers. In fact, H&A had a separate dedicated space just for manufacturing Merwin & Hulbert revolvers.

When you look at spur trigger revolvers—or suicide specials, as some call them—it was usually Hopkins & Allen that was busy turning them out for various customers under names like Acme, American Eagle, Blue Jacket, Chichester, Defender, Dictator, Imperial Arms, Monarch, Mountain Eagle, Ranger, Universal, and several others. They also made rifles and shotguns for many retailers under whatever name the customer wanted.

Hopkins & Allen closed their doors for the last time in 1916 so any firearm we find today made by them is over 100 years old. That, of course, suggests many will be in heavily used condition and that was certainly the case with the Model 922 falling block .22 rifle that recently came into my shop.

In one of my videos for my 45 Alpha Charlie Papa channel on You Tube I discuss why gunsmithing is so expensive and that it can be really impractical to take grandpa’s old .22 in for restoration unless it has sentimental value far in excess of its resale value. This was exactly the case with this old H&A 922 rifle. The owner wanted it put back into shooting condition despite the reality of its resale value.

It was a pretty typical barn find in that it was covered with moderate pitting, the finish was gone, and the buttstock had been replaced with one from another rifle that didn’t fit correctly. The rifle didn’t have a buttplate and had apiece broken off at the comb. To keep the restoration cost something close to reasonable, the customer wanted it cleaned up, repaired, and put back into shooting condition using only the components on the gun or that could be repaired or made inexpensively.

Beginning Restoration The first step was to disassemble the gun and check it over mechanically. Inspection revealed the hammer wouldn’t stay cocked. This required cleaning up the notch on the hammer because the original had been damaged. Removing the pitting from the receiver was basic gunsmithing. The receiver was draw filed until the pitting was gone. Working on this part of refinishing also pointed out once again how receiver sides on these old guns are never really flat.

As the photos here show, the edges of the receiver cleaned up long before the middle did. Once finished, the receiver was as flat as I could expect it to be. The barrel was stripped of its sights and placed in a Clymer Barrel Spinner (Brownells # 184-020- 000AQ, about $150). I then started with 80 grit abrasive on my Lyman Sanding Drum (Brownells # 539- 000-016AQ, about $110). Working with the barrel held at about a 30-

degree angle to the drum, I sanded the worst of the pits out. This left a very rough surface. By working down to finer and finer grits it was possible to polish the barrel to a mirror finish. In this case I only took it down through 120 and ended with a 220-grit finish. The receiver was polished down by hand. I similarly worked the lever down from its as-cast finish to a 220 finish to match the barrel and receiver. The metal was then blued, oiled, and set aside to await the refinished gunstock. On to the woodwork.

The first step was to completely strip all the old finish from the stock and get it down to bare wood. Any of the commercial paint strippers work well on these old guns as most of this old wood seems to have been stained and painted with varnish. Once you use this setup you will never shoeshine a barrel again. This tool makes the old shoeshine method of taking the pits out of a barrel a much easier and faster task.

As mentioned, the stock was not original to the gun and the inletting for the upper and lower tangs was too short to allow it to seat properly against the receiver. That was easily remedied by simply elongating the inletting. The piece that has been split off the comb of the stock at the butt was a bit more of a challenge. The procedure for fitting anew piece to the stock without leaving an obvious glue line required the new piece to fit closely to the butt.

I save old broken stocks and bits of walnut from other projects and can normally find apiece with a similar grain pattern and structure to match closely to the stock. In this case I took a rasp and flattened the top of the comb where the piece had been split off. Once all traces of the broken wood was removed,

I sanded it with 120 grit sandpaper using a hard backer and checked the fit between the stock and the piece I was going to glue in place as I went. When the two matched up with no gaps showing I glued the new piece in place and held it in place for 24 hours with a strip of latex to be sure the wood glue was totally cured. From there it was relatively easy to blend the two pieces together to form a properly configured stock.

I used the rasp to blend the new wood to the old, making two flutes in the nose of the comb and reducing the width of the stock to eliminate the initials someone had carved into the wood. I then decided to make anew steel buttplate using an old Mauser plate from a military rifle I had in my parts bin. I simply coated the old Mauser plate with Dykem, used the lower screw hole to hold it to the stock, and scribed a line around the inside of the buttplate using the stock itself as my guide.

A hacksaw took off the bulk of the material of the oversized military buttplate. I finished off by grinding until I had a good fit. In this case the stock had a bit of a curve for the original buttplate so I heated the steel replacement with my torch and bent it to match the curve of the stock. Then it was a simple matter of sanding, staining, and finishing the stock before reassembling the rifle.

The payoff, of course, was when my customer came in with his son, paid the agreed upon price, and Bottom: Refinished, the repaired stock fits and the repair is nearly invisible. The buttplate is in place and the pits are gone. A young man has the same family heirloom to learn to shoot with that his dad did. proudly handed his son the gun grandpa had bought long before either of them had been born and had taught him and his brothers to shoot with.

Now the gun was his son’s and they were headed to the range to use it to teach yet another generation the fundamentals of marksmanship and how to make old empty cans dance. AG