Got it reassembled
Hello, everyone. I finally got the North American Arms Mini Revolver .22lr back together and working. Thanks for all your help. I know that I had a terrible time finding information and 90% of all suggestions were to send it back to the manufacturor and I agree with them in most cases. Be prepared for a challenge if you take this little gun on. However, I wanted to write down how to disassemble and re-assemble this gun for those of you who choose to do it. I'll also tell you my problems and solutions.
Disassembly:
Start by going to the NAA site, finding this gun, and pull up the exploded assembly drawing. I'll refer to some parts in it to make things easier. You'll have the most problems with parts 11, 12, 15, and 16. These are two springs and two small parts the size of or half the size of a grain of rice and they tend to sproing across the room if you're not careful.
First, take off the grips. There is one small screw that is the regular righty-tighty. Remove it and the grips come off. Next remove the hammer screw. It's the big one on the left side of the gun. It goes through the side plate, hammer, and frame. It is a reverse thread, meaning it is lefty-tighty/righty-loosey. If you treat it like a regular screw, you'll strip the head and feel stupid. I certainly felt dumb when I figured it out.
Once it's out, carefully pry off the side plate from the back side through the grips. Don't let the side plate come off, just loosen it. As a matter of fact, I suggest putting the whole thing in a 1 gal zip-lock bag in case the springs want to flay away. Lift the side plate up easily and you'll see parts 11 and 12 in there. 11 is the LR Hand Aft. 12 is the Hand Spring and it's become my worst enemy. Remove the hand spring and then lift up 11. Keep careful track of them.
Keep the hammer pinned to the spring and slide it up till the main spring looses tension. Then slowly lift the hammer up so the littlest spring (part 15) looses tension. Then you can catch it and part 16 and set them to the side. Lift out the hammer and main spring and you're now disassembled.
Issue 1: I had a hard time getting the gun together and then realized that the side plate wouldn't go on, so while everything is out just see if your side plate goes on by itself. If it does, great. It should go straight down on the frame and almost snap into place. It's snug. For me, I think they'd put a longer pin in when they made it and ground it down. The hole through the side plate wasn't straight and I had rough edges on the pin that went in it. I took a small drill bit, the same size or smaller than the hole and gently bored it out. I think I used a 1/16th. Then I took a micro file and took the sharp lip off the pin. I filed in a rounding motion and just rounded it up. Then it snapped on fine. I drilled from the backside of the side plate.
Re-assembly:
Lay the frame on it's right side on a flat surface. Turn the hammer right side up. You'll see three holes. A large, medium, and small. Drop the pin, part 16, small end first in the medium sized hole. Put part 15, tiny spring, in behind it and hold in with your index finger. Turn the hammer over and carefully set the spring on the frame so that the frame holds it in. It should push the pin up above the hammer on the left side. Slide the hammer down into the gun so the largest hole in the hammer lines up with the hole in the frame.
For the next step, it's easier if you put the hammer in the fully cocked position with those holes still pretty close to aligned. Drop Part 11 into the smallest hole with the point end sitting in the cutout in the frame. It will move in and out of the hole thats created when the side plate is on. With the hammer cocked it makes it easier to put the hand spring back on.
At this step, I like to put something, I used part 17 which is the rod that holds the cylinder in the gun, through the hammer hole. This helps you manipulate the hand spring.
You have two options here. One is to put the straight end of the hand spring in first or to put the hooked end in first. The straight end goes in a groove in the hammer and the hooked end hooks in a groove in the side of part 11. I like to put the straight end in the groove, the V goes down around the thign I put in the hole, and the hook sits ontop of part 11. Then I can just push the hook backwards toward the top of the gun while holding the straight end in the groove with my right thumb. When it goes past part 11, it should fall down and go in the groove. Just make sure its sitting in the groove and isn't under it.
You can do it in reverse if it works better for you. Just put the hook in the groove and then with a tool, push back and down on the tip of the straight end till you get it to fall in the groove.
Whichever method you use, make sure the bottom of the V isn't sticking up or it could go flying. You can now put on the side plate, being carefull not to pop the hand spring out. Snap it into place, line the holes up and put the hammer screw in, screwing it down till snug. If you have trouble lining the holes up, then hold the hand spring down with your thumb, pull the trigger and then push the hammer to the uncocked postion. You'll get more play in this position. Once the screw is snugged in, you're in a good position. Hardest part is over.
Issue 2: You'll notice you're missing a part and the gun doesn't work. That's because your main spring isn't in. Thanks to Bill DeShivs, I got confirmation that this is really the only way to get the gun together. I spend a week trying to get the holes to line up with the main spring in. I might work if you had a jig, but with nothing, there isn't a way to do it. You can get the main spring in after the rest of the gun is together.
Put in the right side of the frame where the handles go. My father actually did this part while I was gone, so I'll tell you how he did it, but I can't give to exact details. You'll notice from when you were looking at the real hammer or the exploded assembly that the back side of the hammer inside the gun has a crescent shape and below it is a ledge that goes slightly back into the hammer. That ledge is where the sharp end of the main spring goes. You can't put it right in there though, because while the main spring isn't within the frame it's torqued the wrong way. Put the sharp end in first and push and play with it with a pair of plyers till you can get the back end within the frame. I think you would get it up in the crescent. My father actually had it come up through the frame on top of the hammer and slightly stick out of the gun.
Once it's in, put the back of the main spring in the little slot it sits in. Then he used a pair of needle nose plyers to grab the main spring as far into the gun as you can and pull it down. It firsted popped back into the gun in that crescent and then slid down the crescent into the little ledge where it sits. It took him a few tries, but he got it in. The gun was together. We put on the grips and went to test fire.
Issue 3: The reason I had to replace the hammer was because someone had done something where it didn't hit the cartridge, but hit the metal to either side. It chewed up that metal, bening it slightly in and damaged the hammer beyond repair. It's easier to replace the cylinder, but we were getting rid of it and didn't want to put more money in, so we fixed it. It's a very hard spot to get to. The easiest way I found was to lay the cylinder on it's side on some wood I didn't mind damaging. Then I held the cylinder and a nail puch with one hand and tapped it ontop of the flared in metal with the other hand. It either pushed the flare out or broke it off. It looks bad, but is safe and works fine. If you don't get that flare out, the shells don't seat far enough and it won't fire. I cleaned it up with a small file.
Issue 4: I would tighten my grips screw down firmly and it would still work loose with firing. The easiest fix is to raid the closest girls supplies for some clear coat nail polish or pick some up yourself. Unscrew the grip srew just out of the threads on the right side, drop a couple of drops in there and screw it back in, wiping off any excess clear coat. It's like loctite, but isn't as hard to break loose.
Good luck and I hope this helps a lot of people. I know I couldn't find anything anywhere and would have been lost without help from this site.
