Ruined, Just Ruined!

[Whitespider]

My Ruger Bisley Blackhawk .45 Colt is has always been deadly accurate, one of the most consistently accurate revolvers I’ve ever owned, but sadly now it’s been ruined. :x

The piece has always shot cast boolits, bet it hasn’t had more than 30 jacketed bullets down the bore in its life. I don’t remember how long I’ve had it, but I ordered it just days after Ruger introduced the Bisley model if that gives a hint. It has launched boolits from just about every commercial cast outfit you can think of, I’ve used boolits from 4 or 5 hobby casters in my area and boolits of unknown origin at various gun shows. Round nose, flat nose, SWC,... from .451 through .454 diameter, weighing from 185-grains to 300-grains, and probably every alloy known to man. It’s never really hated a boolit, I could always count on it to shoot very respectable groups. I don’t ever remember the barrel having a leading problem, maybe just a little at the forcing cone after a long shooting session. But now it’s ruined, just ruined. :x

When y’all got me into this casting-my-very-own thing a couple years ago, I took inventory of my boolit stash and started collecting molds for the diameters I was short on. I was long on .45s and hadn’t worried about a mold yet... until last night when I decided to slug the bore/cylinders of my Bisley and order a mold and sizer die. I started a lead slug with my mallet and used a rod to drive it, about a quarter of the way in the slug became so loose I could’ve pushed it with a plastic straw for about an inch or so, and than it tightened back up, even requiring the mallet to keep it moving. The bore slug measured .4516-inch. Next I slugged the cylinder holes... .4549 to .4551-inch.

The gun has been ruined. Now that I know the bore has tight and loose spots and the cylinder mouths are over-size it will never again shoot cast accurately or without severe leading.
:groner:
Ruined, just ruined!

[hunter64]

Man, and it is not even April 1st. lol

[Maineboy]

Yup, it's ruint. I'll give you $20.00 fer it though.

[Gunslinger]

Come on guys... don't step on the Spider, can't you see he's already lying down :)

Could firelapping maybe correct some of the inconsistencies in the barrel??

[Charlie Sometimes]

Terrible! :cry: I am deeply touched by your situation, and you have moved me to offer my services to help you in your time of grief. I would be willing to remove it from your sight, so that you may never have to look upon it again, and suffer mental anguish and duress that it will continue to bring upon you, and relieving you of any possible mental breakdowns that would eventually have to occur by it's mere presence. I am happily willing to place myself in harms ways and take the distress that you would be placing upon yourself. [smilie=s:

And it would cost you little, to nothing to have me help you in this time of sadness, too. I may even be willing to pay you for the privledge to assist you in this serious problem. I'm sure we could arrive at some very insignificant sum that would allow both of us to assume better lives? :kidding::bigsmyl2:

[Slow Elk 45/70]

:cry::violin: So Sorry Whitespider, sometimes a man just has to nuch information.
Looks like your pards are lining up to help you with your grief situation...


[smilie=1: S.L.

[mike in co]

i don't even like revolters, but i do like casting. it would appear you have a double edge sword at this point. a gun that will not shoot and an excess of same caliber molds. if you were to ship all the molds to me , i would consider paying the shipping on the revolter in order to ease your pain and allow you to get on with life.
pm me for shipping instructions.


feeling the pain of a brother caster,
mike in co

[beagle]

Whitespider. Remember the old addage: "If sh_t don't stink, don't stir it." /beagle

[targetshootr]

The surprising part is that it would shoot .451 boolits. The may have passed through everything without touching the throats or the barrel.

[44man]

I don't feel sorry for you at all because you never demonstrated what "deadly accurate was!" Was it shooting one hole groups at 7 yd's? :mrgreen: Or 7 FEET? [smilie=1:

[montana_charlie]

Back before it got ruined, that revolver was capable of 'respectable' groups.

Now, knowing the limitations you have to deal with (and a man's gotta know his limitations) you might continue to get something close to 'respectable' if you switch to something that resembles a Minie ball for revolvers.

Or...you could make an adjustment to your definition of 'respectable'.

CM

[R.C. Hatter]

The bulge (or loose area) in your bore did NOT get there by itself. It had to have help from somewhere else, i.e. firing a round AFTER a squib was lodged in the bore, unknown to you even. You can (A) have the gun re-barreled, (B) put up with it the way it is and use .4549" boolits, or (C) go whole hog and replace both the barrel and cylinder, with one of proper dimensions. Failing the foregoing, just buy you another gun and make a doorstop out of the old one.

[Wayne Smith]

Whitespider, a few months of therapy will help. I'll take the gun in trade!!

[jdgabbard]

I would say its time to customize that Bisley. Like R.C. said, time to rebarrel and put a new cylinder on that cannon. With the right barrel and cylinder installed by a good gunsmith you'd probably have a wheelgun that shoots far better then when it did when you bought it. Drop the cash. Can't be worse then buying a new one.

[w30wcf]

Maybe not ruined......
Try some .454-.456" diameter bullets in it.:-D I have an old Ruger Blackhawk with a .4525" groove and .455" throats. If I do my part, 1" groups @ 25 yards. :Fire:

w30wcf

[mpmarty]

Ignore the ack ack. Shoot it as you did before and enjoy.

[Gunslinger]

Maybe not ruined......
Try some .454-.456" diameter bullets in it.:-D I have an old Ruger Blackhawk with a .4525" groove and .455" throats. If I do my part, 1" groups @ 25 yards. :Fire:

w30wcf


What is the right thing to do when the difference between grove and throats are that "big"? Do you size them to fit the throats or do you go .001 over grove? Or just somewhere in between :confused:

[hithard]

I would suggest some duct tape and crazy glue. Of course use the military type as it with stands the higher speeds better than the Home Depot stuff. If you wave a chicken's foot and some incense over the boolits too all of these problems will be offset. Once again leaving your revolver to shoot as it did before.

A full moon might help too.

boy ya got alot of bites on that one

[HangFireW8]

The bulge (or loose area) in your bore did NOT get there by itself.

You failed to get the humor of the post. The gun always shot well; having supposedly non-favorable measurements somehow never bothered it, nor will it now that they are known.

As for tight spots in the barrel, Ruger is well known for roll-stamping novellas onto their barrels, and these are often responsible for the tight spots. The bulges are just the way it came before Ruger got out their printing press.

-HF

[Paladin 56]

Whitespider,

That right there is funny, I don't care who you are.

Maybe you can do like a computer and look for the System Restore file in your brain. Once you do the System Restore function, you will no longer remember having slugged the barrel and mic'd the cylinder since everything done since the last backup will be deleted.

Make sure you leave yourself a note with a simple explanation, (not the truth or you will end up right back where you are now), on why you don't want to take measurements of your piece since you will be inclined to want to do it again.

That way, your Ruger will continue to shoot as well as you once remembered since you will no longer have the knowledge that the dimensions you discovered are way out of whack and detrimental to accuracy.

I guess you learned a valuable lesson via the old adage (paraphrased from beagle) "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", and be content to live with a fine shooting firearm without knowing the bore is too rough or too smooth, has tight spots (or loose spots as the case may be), the cylinder throats are out of spec for the bore, etc.

The adage can be amended to read, "If it shoots well like it is, don't slug the bore or mic the cylinder to find out it shouldn't", and continue to enjoy shooting without the knowledge it shouldn't shoot as well as it does.

I hope this helps. If it doesn't, I'll up the ante and give you $25 for it.

David

[jnovotny]

Just remember what beagle said and don't stir the pot.

[gon2shoot]

No problem, just find you a mold that cast fat in the middle and yer good to go.:razz:

[rockrat]

Heck, I'll go $35 and I don't care for the Bisley. See how nice I am. Offering to pay you for a gun I don't like!!

[defib]

I'll go fifty but you'll have to pay for the shipping. ( seeing as this is a favor and all )
See you got a lot of people trying to ease your misery!

[mag_01]

Oh hell Ill give you 30 for it if you pay the postage . If you where serious about this post your gun will still shoot good groups but in all honesty you wont because you have lost faith in the gun itself. Under size cylinder would be a problem --- Oversize use a larger boolit if you must the bore will size it when it gets there , what we don't know wont hurt us would apply in this case.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do --- Mag_01:lovebooli

[Char-Gar]

That just proves once again that firearms can't read.

[Whitespider]

I want to thank y’all for your kind and generous offers to rid me of this scourge that has, for so many years, hidden in my revolver case. It’s nice to know a feller has friends he can count on when they’re really needed.

But I decided to take matters into my own hands this evening; I decided to make the revolver into a shotgun. I clamped a vise-grip on the barrel and unscrewed it from the frame (wow they put them barrels on tight, the vise-grip slipped the first three tries) and than removed any trace of the rifling with a ½-inch drill bit. The bit wasn’t long enough so I had to go at it from both ends, didn’t quite meet up perfectly in the center but I think it’ll be OK. I opened up the cylinder mouths the same way; you’d think a new drill bit would do a smoother job, wouldn’t ya? Figured I wouldn’t be needing a front sight on a shotgun so I took a hacksaw to the barrel just behind the sight. The barrel wouldn’t tighten up properly when I put it back on so I split the frame with the same hacksaw and put a cross bolt in it, boy that cinched her up. I should’ve removed the ejector housing before removing the barrel though, because it just don’t fit right now. I’ve always liked the looks of a hammer mounted firing pin, so I bored a big hole in the recoil shield and welded a chunk of iron on the hammer, looks really cool. Tomorrow night I’m gonna put an action job on her, gonna slick her right up.

If I’m still not happy with it when I’m all done, I’ll let it go to one of you fellers.
Hmmmmm..... I believe the high bid is $50.00, from defib.

Hey defib, PM commin’ your way with details on where to send the cash.

[docone31]

Kinda reminds me of someone else.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPQM4h-UZtc
All it needs is beer.

[leadman]

Well, you could ream the drilling marks out, but you might go over the 50 caliber limit. I think you ought to ream it 54 caliber and weld it up and make a muzzleloader out of it. It would be a real unusual weapon then, just not an ol' bisley that won't shoot.

[waksupi]

I think it will be ok to use a Dremel on this one.....

[Rattlesnake Charlie]

Fire lapping.

[giz189]

Dang, I wanted to offer sumpin', but it appears it has all been offered.

[DickK]

Well, I don’t know a whole lot about barrel making but it seems to me if there is a bulge on the inside, there ought to be a bulge on the outside. too. I would take a steel straightedge to the outside of the barrel and see if there is a high spot on the outside that corresponds with the bulge on the inside. If there is none, I would say the bulge was there when the barrel was made, probably a bad barrel blank or an error during the rifling process. As for the cylinder, that is another question. I would question the allowable manufacturing tolerances. Also to consider is the fact you bought the gun just as Ruger began manufacturing the model. There is a possibility that the manufacturing process still had some flaws that eventually got worked out. The flaws may have produced guns such as yours but didn’t warrant a recall. Ruger does make very strong guns and I doubt if your loads would have produced the kinds of defects you mentioned..

I would gather as much detail as possible and then contact Ruger and mention the quality assurance aspect. I say this because just last week, a few of us were swapping stories and one fellow said he had received a Ruger revolver without rifling. Not having seen it myself, I can’t vouch for the veracity of the story. He did say that Ruger replaced the gun. However, I do know that quality assurance departments don’t always catch all the defects.

If it is a quality assurance issue, I’m quite sure Ruger would be more than willing to repair or replace the defective parts. That’s been my experience with manufacturers.