Originally Posted by
DougGuy
And now that the wheels are a turning, let me further opine on a subject that you may have right in front of your nose, and just yet to find out about it, thread choke. You mentioned leading after the first inch of bore, which would be a hint that the bore gets slightly larger after it clears the threaded portion that threads into the frame. You can check this with a pin gage, OR the poor man's way with a tightly patched cleaning jag pushed down the bore. IF it gets tighter when it gets to the threaded part, this is thread constriction, brought on by Ruger when they torqued the barrel to the frame in "clocking" the front sight up to 12:00 noon. If it gets REALLY tight, the choke is severe, likely .002" to .003" which brings up yet another problem which is very common to the .45 caliber revolvers, less common to the .44 caliber, as their barrel walls are thicker and less affected by this torquing action.
If you have a thread choke, the pilot you fit into the muzzle to ride on the lands will go down the bore until it gets to the choke, and it will stop. When it stops, it may stop short of going right down to the cutter bit, and you have to either make a smaller pilot, or go very slow and easy so the cutter doesn't get deflected and cut off center, if the existing cone is not perfectly centered in the bore. If it is concentric, then it will all work out for the better, but like I said, a lot of them aren't concentric, and it is your aim in this endeavor to correct the issues with it, concentricity being the most important part.
Depending on how many rounds have been put downrange, and how well the cylinder throats index to the bore when in lockup, the forcing cone can become eccentric just from normal wear of shooting thousands of rounds. If several of the throats tend to index to one side, this side will show more wear and this is what you want to correct when you recut a forcing cone.
OTOH, a revolver that shoots really well, that has worn it's own pattern in the forcing cone, that doesn't spit or lead the bore excessively would be better off left as is, or with minimal polishing of the existing cone, since it will just start this wear pattern all over again and accuracy may indeed suffer because of this. This is a problem that left the factory with a cylinder that didn't index well, but has been "shot in" to the point that it has indexed itself and should probably be left as is when it comes to the forcing cone. The forcing cone in a revolver like this would look a bit odd when you cleaned it up and got a bright light and a mirror where you could see it really well, it would look to the mechanical eye like something is not right about it. THIS is where you LISTEN to what the gun is TELLING YOU, instead of what your EYE thinks things should LOOK LIKE.
Ruger stainless is 400 series alloy, it is TOUGH STUFF. It is not that difficult to machine, but it is a BOOGER BEAR to firelap. You could likely lap a choke of .001" to .0015" using normal firelapping techniques, but if you have one that is .003" by the time you firelap that much out, the rifling in the remaining good part of the bore is very likely to become damaged to an unpredictable degree. These need to go back to Ruger, OR have the choke removed by Taylor throating. Blued carbon steel is much easier to firelap, and smoothes up nicely in roughly 1/3 the amount of work as stainless.