Bore and Chamber Specs of C&B Revolvers?
Continuing my education on the charcoal burning wheelguns. . .
I decided to treat my Frankengun 1858 Remington (Armi San Marco revolver with Pietta cylinder) to the usual business of figuring out internal dimensions. I don't have my notes immediately to hand, but it went something like this:
Pin gauge down the chambers: 0.446"
Pin gauge down the barrel for bore diameter: Nothing unexpected or alarming. As I recall, about 0.01" smaller than the chamber diameter, so pretty standard.
Pounding a Hornady .457" round ball down from the muzzle for groove diameter: The barrel only took the factory graphite/powder coating off the ball with the lands, and left it untouched in the grooves. . .MAYBE compressing it only slightly down to about .455".
Even accounting for slugging up on ignition, this seems like a lot of extra space. Is this one of those BP era phenomenon where they left room in the grooves for powder residue to collect?
With my one serious outing yesterday, accuracy is pretty lackluster with either 25 or 30 grains of Goex 3F. It'll pose a serious threat to a human at 25 yards, but is more shotgun with fragments of grouping than actual grouping. Projectiles are my own cast Lyman .454" RB's with un-tumbled/unpeened sprues facing forward to the best of my ability. Barring better intel in the replies, next step will be to run them through the tumbler. I'm not doing felt wads or Crisco oversmear on the notion that none of that was done back in the day.
T.I.A.