bad revolver

[brassrat]

I was wondering if .22s were cylinderized by Dougguy

[bedbugbilly]

I'm assuming you are talking a throat job? Send him a PM and ask him if he can do what you want done - that's the quickest way to find out.

[wrench]

I had a S&W 34 that wouldn't chamber .22lr 90% of the time, chambers too tight. When I could ram 'em in there, I'd get misfires cause they weren't seated all the way.
A trip to 'Dougguy' fixed that cylinder right up! It looks great, and now it functions the way it should have in the first place.

[Piedmont]

I have a couple of tight chambered .22 revolvers. They happen to shoot exceptionally well. I have another couple that are looser and don't shoot as well. My solution is to clean the tight ones with solvent and a brass bore brush after shooting and be thankful.

If you were setting up a .22 target rifle would you want a sloppy chamber?

Your .22 revolver is not a defense gun that must have absolute reliability. Of course, if you keep it clean it WILL be 100 percent reliable.

[brassrat]

I guess he can handle .22s. The gun is a Dan Wesson that works fine but isn't very accurate. I will continue with it and maybe figure it out. The chambers are rough, I just noticed, and look like they could shave down a round before leaving chamber.

[DougGuy]

I have a 22LR chamber reamer. The thing about using a finishing reamer is it will only cut the offending parts, or the high parts so to speak, it won't cut the whole chamber unless that is needed. The cylinder wrench sent here is a S&W with notoriously tight chambers, it is likely the reamers that S&W used had considerable wear on them, so they cut smaller and smaller chambers as they wear from use. Hers was so bad that a good amount of factory ammo wouldn't chamber.

NO amount of cleaning or other treatment would have fixed her cylinder. There simply was too much interference from undersized chambers.

The Manson reamer I used on it cut a LOT of shavings out of each chamber. Each chamber is now at proper SAAMI spec for the 22LR cartridge. That's what a finishing reamer does. The throats on her cylinder were .2245" and didn't need any work, they were surprisingly even, and until you have precision tooling like pin gages and precision ground go/no-go gauges, you can only guess at what the real problem might be.

Match shooters using the S&W revolvers tend to be divided into two groups, those who have had their chambers reamed, and those who are intending on having it done. There's no more frustrating thing than to be in a timed match and you are looking around for a hammer to beat the empties out with.

If you have rough chambers, the reamer will smooth it out.

If you were setting up a .22 target rifle would you want a sloppy chamber?

There is NOTHING sloppy about using a finishing reamer to PROPERLY size a chamber. This is what S&W SHOULD have done to begin with but I guess they were too concerned about production costs to replace worn out tooling. Which by your text above, sounds like you have at least one or two that may respond very favorably to a little time and effort on my bench with the same reamer.

This is the 22LR cyllinder referenced in the discussion above, this is as machined, before touch up bluing was applied.

[Nueces]

My Smiths, pre war and post war, all have large chambers and throats, up to 0.228". Only two long rifle revolvers here have proper tight throats, a Colt Diamondback that goes 0.2230" and a 1950s Colt Officer's Model that goes an incredible 0.2221" all around the wheel. I measure these with a Starrett dial bore gauge, calibrated with a Pratt & Whitney bore setting ring. With this setup, I can detect bore tapers and out of round situations, often the result of a gun drop bending in the front of a throat. My 5-screw M-27 has been caressed like that - bloody heart breaking. Interesting, too, is that my older Smith M-48s in 22 WRM, are all tight at 0.2243" or 0.2244".

[brassrat]

I put a tapered nailset into my cylinder ends. I guess the important end. While looking under a magnifying light it seems they are uniform and a tiny bit larger than the barrel muzzle.