45 blackhawk help!!?!!!

[bdicki]

Send it back, I had one that shot like that and it turned out that there were voids in the barrel just below the rifling. I didn't show up until some high pressure loads were run through it. Some of them stripped the metal off so they looked like pitting others looked like a bubble. Sent it back and new barrel shoots fine.

[44man]

Not an answer to my questions. What parts does the OP talk about?
Nothing wrong with a .45 Colt at all and is as accurate as anything else. I have shot groups of 3/4" at 75 yards with opens from Creedmore and cast. Vaquero. Dropped a deer, neck shot at over 100 off hand. If you can't get a .45 to shoot, you can't get anything else to shoot either.
I had an argument once and grabbed my Vaquero, stuffed in 5 shots and shot this at 50 yards Creedmore.Attachment 178883 A little vertical but a 335 gr LBT with 21.5 gr of 296.

[44man]

Notice the grips? Nobody ever got 6 shots off with the wood panels without pain. My loads are nasty.

[scattershot]

Just noticed that you reamed your throats to .4545. (Good catch, 44 man!) If that is indeed the case, your bullets may be UNDERsized for the throats. Shoot a few as cast and see what happens. It will probably get better, but then squeezing them back down again for a .451 bore may throw the accuracy off. .4525 is the proper throat diameter, hope you haven't ruined your pistol.

[DougGuy]

I feel our pain. I had a stainless bisley .45 colt .45acp that just sucked. Every combination of boolit and powder produced mediocre accuracy. The gun went back to Ruger twice. On the second trip back they kept it and sold me a .44 magnum at a much reduced cost. I tried a second Blackhawk convertible and it did ok with the acp cylinder but never did shoot as well as any .44 in the stable with the .45 colt cylinder. I love the idea of the .45 colt cartridge but in my experience the reality has never measured up. I fill the .45 colt standard pressure niche with .44 specials. Much better results with .44 special and .44 magnum. I feel that the .45 Colt is overbore and has a lot of space for the powder to slosh around in. Some folks have .45 Colt guns that do well for then but I am done with it.

This I am assuming was back before you heard of tight cylinder throats, which if the BH you had were factory throats, that would perfectly explain groups that looked like you were shooting a coach gun.

When the cylinder throats are properly dimensioned, and the forcing cone is not a collection of radially oriented tool marks, the .45 and .44 caliber revolvers will equal each other. When they both are configured correctly, neither will outdo the other.

.4525 is the proper throat diameter, hope you haven't ruined your pistol.

He ain't hurt nothing as long as the throats are EVEN. That's the biggest thing in a nutshell. My Uberti Old West has .4565" throats and a .451" barrel, I size to .456" and it works great. Accurate, no leading, never have to clean it.

[Thumbcocker]

Had the throats reamed before I sent it back. Still sucked.

[GSaltzman]

My Ruger Bisley has .455 throats. I size to that. Until I started using a 50/50 + 2% alloy accuracy was not very good. 454424 or the new NOE Keith slugs shoot very accurate in this gun. Also have had good results with an Accurate 310 grain slug. My easy shooting load is 20 grains of 4227. Wish you the best!

[white eagle]

Hey all, been pullin' my hair out with a 2yr old, bought new 4 5/8" Ruger BH in 45 colt. Slugged @.451+. Bought an older lyman 454424 Keith swc mold and it's casting perfectly @.456, Lee sizer them down to .454 and shot them before anything done to gun. Use felix lube and it is really cool stuff for all my other boolits. Terrible groups @ 7-8" at 25 yds. Uniformed cylinder to .4545 and tried again-no joy. Put an 11 degree forcing cone on the barrel and fire lapped out with 320 with clover(like I do with other revolvers/rifles) and nothing better. Using cast wheel weights plus a little tin(use the same for my 7mm, 30-30, 357 44, etc) and unique from 7-9.5 in 1/2grain increments--no better grouping. Tried green dot, promo, 2400, and titegroup, from mild to wild, in increments, and all were trickled out...got it down to 5" with promo @ 6.5 grains. I get absolutely no leading, except with 2400 at the upper end and after 12 rounds. I'm an ex sihlouette shooter(20 years ago) using 44 blackhawks predominantly, and 325grainers and hard lead, have a small hobby mill and lathe, re-barell actions(ex bench rest guy too), do trigger/action work for sass friends and can still see fairly well enough get 1-2" groups with all my other revolvers. I can shoot heavy loads accurately enough, still, so I believe this is the guns' performance and not mine.

I've done many other things to this gun and really don't want to have to get rid of it and start over. Could this particular gun not like SWC and possibly shoot RNFP or another boolit well? I've only tried this one mold for this gun and heard that the lee 255grain RNFP works well in 45 colt. It's getting to be very consuming and i'm going to get this thing shooting well as long as my retirement holds out, which is 2-3" groups at 25 yds, consistently. Any help, suggestions, thoughts, remedies(and maybe even medications!) for an old guy before he goes BONKERS, will be very much appreciated.

All I can say is best of luck on your journey
I had the same issues as you are having with 2 or 3 (can't recall for sure) 45 colt
Ruger Blackhawks,tried everything like you molds,cylinders,lapping different powders,primers
but just could not get decent accuracy.I switched to Ruger Blackhawks in 44 cal and have been having
much better luck and great accuracy

[GoodOlBoy]

Well this is a familiar song, let me throw my opinion in the ring. Number one, a two year old blackhawk probably has a barrel that is undersized so you are most likely looking at a .4515ish to .4525ish. Yes on an older blackhawk reaming all the cylinder throats to .4545 would have been advisable, but mainly because the bore on older blackhawks was closer to .454. That being said you haven't necessarily "ruined" the gun by reaming out the cylinder throats because at least now they are uniform. As for SWCs in 45 long colts I am about to get a bunch of people mad at me and get all kinds of hate for saying it but STOP trying to use SWCs in blackhawks in 45 long colt. I have only ever seen 1, that would group them accurately and that was my dads, and only in a 270gr .454 in a design very close to an actual Keith. My old blackhawk loved 250 to 255 grain .455 or .454 Round Nose Flap Point bullets, period. It didn't like lighter bullets, it didn't like jacketed bullets, it didn't like smaller diameter bullets. My carbine in 45 long colt will shoot 255gr swcs just fine for hunting (3" group at 50 yards), but if I put 250-255 rnfp in it the group drops to about 1.5" at the same distance if I am having a good day on the trigger. Honestly it outshoots me.

Now I am going to say something that may tick off the OP, and WILL tick off alot of other people. STOP. STOP "working" on your guns before you shoot the things! You CANNOT reliably put metal back, and I can't count the number of posts of people complaining that they "fixed" issues on a brand new gun and then found out "it didn't shoot". Shoot at least FIVE HUNDRED rounds through a gun before you start hacking away at them like a back alley surgeon! I don't care if you have "worked" on a hundred other guns just like it. Each gun is it's own critter, and until you know what it does and doesn't like and actually need the only thing you are doing is introducing alot of new random factors in the "why don't it group" chart.

When my blackhawk was brand new it shot a pie pan sized group at 25 yards no matter what I put through it. I was devastated, but I wanted to shoot up the ammo I had bought and get to reloading (20+ years ago). By the time I got to the 250th round I had settled down, and so had the gun. I had gone from a pie pan to a 4" group not counting an odd flier with every group. By the 400th round It was shooting a nice 2" group with one bad flier every single time if I did my part. Dad, and a buddy of his started helping me go over the gun, and his buddy had a cylinder reamer. The 6th chamber on the cylinder was actually throat-ed at .449ish.... Number 5 on the cylinder was .452ish, my bore is .454+-, and the rest of the cylinder throats were fine at .454+-. We had to ream the #5 and #6 chamber throat, and what do you know. Grouping nice and tight. In fact it shot better than I did. Dad could outshoot me with my own gun any day. Only problem to this day with that old blackhawk so long as I do my part is that the grip frame is warped and bites the ever loving crud out of you randomly every once in awhile. I thought it was the grips, but a grip maker checked it for me about a decade back and nope.. warped grip frame. Never had the money to fix it, so there it is. At least it shoots straight.

Anyway try RNFP, just buy a box from laser cast, missouri bullets, rim rock bullets, SOMEBODY in hard cast lead and try them over a nice mild load for awhile and see what you get.

Rant off.

God Bless, and One Love!

GoodOlBoy

[High Desert Hunter]

20 rounds loaded with an RCBS 45-270SAA bullet and Longshot powder from a Ruger Flattop 45 at 25 yards. Was testing the powder which is why I didn't adjust for windage.

[plinky56]

Thanks for your insight on this problem. Had to work all day yesterday and couldn't wait to get online to read ur thoughts. My cylinder had 2 chambers at.450, 2 at .452 and 2 at .4535 as new. I have all the fun tools that go along with my mill and lathe and know how to measure correctly. I'm going to buy a lee 90358 and play with it to see what size it will shoot well. Had no choice other than to open them up to the minimum of .4545 and cut them all to that. All the boolits push through with the same felt finger pressure. According to 'Beartooh Bullets Tech Guide', page 49, the last para under revolver bullet fit, cylinder throats for bigger calibes(357-45) are better at around .002-.003 over groove diameter. My barrel is closer to .452 but larger than .451. This would put me into a .454-.455 boolit and that's why I did what I did--needed to open them up , uniformly, to the same min dia that I could get away with. A .451-.452 barrel has no problem shooting this much larger pill. Never hurt anything being that way on my .44's. I appreciate your info.

[plinky56]

Now, for 44man. I appreciated the first few sentences of your first post but after that you went downhill from there. Try re-reading my words. Never said anything about a 'coil trigger spring'. I filed down my return spring for the trigger in order to get the lighter feel I wanted. Also bent it like I do all the others I work on. Instead of buying new, I choose to file stock springs on one radius very slightly, which has worked for me for years. Also, the main spring, which is a coil type, is put in the lathe and 400grit is inserted in the id to help smooth it. Works better than just smoothing the hammer strut by itself. Then, because I was working yesterday you choose to be a smart ***, condescend and attack me or my abilities? I don't want your kind oppressive and aggressive comments on my post. Really a waste of my time. I prefer not to engage on this forum, so, kindly keep your comments to yourself, thanks you.

[DougGuy]

Had no choice other than to open them up to the minimum of .4545 and cut them all to that. All the boolits push through with the same felt finger pressure.

^^^^ THIS is the single most important thing for a cylinder, that ALL the throats are even with the others. It really doesn't matter WHAT the final OD of the throats are, so long as they are larger than groove diameter. It matters that they are ALL EVEN in diameter.

When I finish a cylinder and checking it with pin gages, I "feel" for the same resistance or light drag, in each throat. Before I had pin gages I used boolits. Same thing. You can also slug a bore and use the slug as a gage because at the very minimum, the slug that just came out of the bore SHOULD go into the front of the cylinder throats. If not, your cylinder is serving as a 6-port sizing die each time you shoot the gun.

The reason it is less important what size the throats are is that with magnum loads in 357, 41, 44, and 45 calibers, unless you are shooting BHN22 or harder, magnum pressures will cause the boolit to obturate until the walls of the throat stops it from getting any bigger. The pressure of ignition drives the base of the boolit hard enough that the sides begin to swell from the pressure and they will fill the cylinder throats and will exit the front of the cylinder at throat diameter. If you size greater than throat diameter, pressure forces the boolit through the throats and again they will leave the front of the cylinder at throat diameter. With softer alloys, obturation to throat diameter will happen at much lower pressures.

Uneven throats cause uneven pressure and uneven dwell time in the barrel which causes the gun to recoil differently in the hands of the shooter, and will cause POI to be spread out in an unsatisfactory manner. Evenly sized throats cause the recoil impulse to be more consistent from shot to shot and the gun will recoil more consistently in the hands, and will shoot much closer to the POA from shot to shot.

[44man]

Can I help if you confuse. I did not attack you at all, you were confusion with filing springs.
Since a coil spring is round and only touches in one spot, why sand it to a flatter contact on the strut, You still confuse. Same as filing a coil trigger spring.
Why in the world mess with a hammer strut? Best thing to do is buy a 26# over power variable Wolfe spring.
I eat Rugers and BFR's for breakfast.
If you don't think so, How do I get a SBH to a 1-1/2# trigger without a failure to fire? My BFR is 19 oz with sure ignition. If you are so good, explain how. You will NEVER do it.
Can you do this at 200 yards?Attachment 178954 Can you do this at 100 yards? Attachment 178955
You do not know me so are forgiven. I will not say bad to you but you need to know I know the guns.
There are others here that have my respect and they respect me and even use my findings. I hit at 500 meters with revolvers (547 yards) Sorry nobody has made a SA shoot like I have.

[ironhead7544]

Hate to say this, but try the J-words.

You could try sizing the bullet a bit different. Dont size down the front band. Might work.

I had a 44 Special with 6.5" that would not shoot as well as I thought it should. I used the lead barrel slugs from Lead Bullet Technologies. These will go down the bore easily on a standard cleaning rod and will let you feel any restrictions. I found that the groove size was just right at the muzzle but about an inch down it got loose. It tightened up again about an inch before the frame. This revolver was made about 1926 so I did not know the history. It was a bit of a collectors item, so I decided not to do any alterations. Traded it off for a good deal to a collector.

Just for the heck of it, in your situation I would get the LBT slugs. They are cheap enough. Also, find someone with a range rod and check it.

[44man]

Understand I never shoot 25 yards for any reason. I start at 50 for settings and most shooting is 100 and 200. The .45 Colt is not a 7 yard gun. 25 is sad.
If you complain about me you also complain about my friends like Doug, Lloyd and many others.
I will never go to a Mod to toss anyone. You are new and are still stupid.
You came after me personally. I think it is because you do not know me. I am an old bastard with more experience then anyone and more testing EVER.
Bet if you came here to see, you would be a friend.
When you get to know all here with respect and how great they are, you might not be included.

[Mauser48]

Can I help if you confuse. I did not attack you at all, you were confusion with filing springs.
Since a coil spring is round and only touches in one spot, why sand it to a flatter contact on the strut, You still confuse. Same as filing a coil trigger spring.
Why in the world mess with a hammer strut? Best thing to do is buy a 26# over power variable Wolfe spring.
I eat Rugers and BFR's for breakfast.
If you don't think so, How do I get a SBH to a 1-1/2# trigger without a failure to fire? My BFR is 19 oz with sure ignition. If you are so good, explain how. You will NEVER do it.
Can you do this at 200 yards?Attachment 178954 Can you do this at 100 yards? Attachment 178955
You do not know me so are forgiven. I will not say bad to you but you need to know I know the guns.
There are others here that have my respect and they respect me and even use my findings. I hit at 500 meters with revolvers (547 yards) Sorry nobody has made a SA shoot like I have.

You need to teach me how to shoot a single action. I can shoot rifles pretty darn good but don't really know how to shoot a handgun properly.

[44man]

I must have thousands of posts to look at but if you can't get them. I will do my darnedest to help.

[44man]

Make a trigger too light on a Ruger or BIG Ruger BFR. What do you do? I told you all.
I am the most neglected person on any site and have been tossed from so many it is crazy. I bucked the kings with their stupid and found I was tossed from sites not visited for 20 years. I have a reputation like no other. I sneak in the back door to read and see my stuff repeated by the Sperts. Gun writers hate me and I know some. I taught one to load, cast and shoot and did this with his gun at 50 yards.Attachment 178964 But I hurt his feelings with truth.
I don't beat my drums for me but I really hate the wrong info spilled to you.
The number of revolver shooters that make them work is so small you can test 100 years.

[GoodOlBoy]

yeah I do have to agree that getting all of your cylinder throats to the same size is very important, especially believe that after what I went through with mine.

As for not shooting at 25 yards... I even start rifles at 25 yards on say a new mounted scope, etc. Because I can burn alot less ammo to get closer to where I am going to want point of aim at longer range. For me this works ALOT better than even bore sighting..

Anyway wasn't trying to be too harsh and realized I might have been, if I was I apologize. I hope you get it figured out and get to enjoy the heck out of the gun.

God Bless, and One Love.

GoodOlBoy