Some time back I was trying out some loads for accuracy from my SBH instead of simply blasting away with full power loads for recoil giggles. Results were pretty nasty. I got home and was inspecting the gun for some source of an issue. For some reason I measured the chamber throats and found that three were undersize by almost .010 compared to the other three. How it got out of the factory like this is a bit of a wonder. But according to my 'smith it's not unheard of as he's seen the same thing before a couple of times over the years.
Anyhow, I just got the cylinder back from him. He reamed the three small throats out to match the .432 size of the three larger ones. Yesterday I shot off the remaining test rounds that I'd saved until the work was done. The gun groups MUCH better now...
The winner looks like it's my load of 8.5gns of Tightgroup behind a 240gn .429 cast RNFP. Resting my elbows to sight the gun I was getting a 5 shot group of under 1.5 inches at around 17 yards with one flyer where I saw the sights pull to the right as I was pulling the trigger. The velocity of these is 1130 and 1150 fps for two rounds shot over the chrono. A nice stout but pleasant round to shoot for plinking.
I shot the same powder charge with some 200gn RNFP cast but the group was noticably more open at a little over 2 inches. I guess the lighter bullet doesn't like the twist rate as much. I'm going to try some .44Spl like loads with these to see if I can come up with a nice accurate indoor range load for the winter so I can use up the bullets.
Anyhow as I said I'm in love with my SBH all over again now that I know it can be this accurate if I do my part. And for those that say "no pics or it didn't happen" here's a picture of the SBH sitting with my other two .44Mags. Sharp eyes may notice that the grips are not stock. I made up some zebrawood "fatty" grips to increase the size around the neck so the gun fits my hand better. The increase in grip size nicely prevents the dreaded "dragoon guard bite" of the trigger guard slamming the back of my middle finger like I had with the factory grips. Sorry, but the target was so damp by the end of the day that it wasn't worth trying to keep it together to include in this report.
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