Will the Ruger constriction.......?

[philthephlier]

Will the Ruger constriction in my 45 LC Blackhawk be removed by continued firing with normal loads or does it have to be removed by other methods? It shoots quite well after about 500 rounds. Will it continue to break in and dissappear or is it something to live with?

[Outpost75]

Measure with plug gages. If the constriction is less than .001 and the gun shoots well, dontworry aboutit. more than .001" cast a lead lap and take it out with 2A Clover.

[DougGuy]

It depends on two things mainly. First is how bad it is. Some are worse than others. The dry patch test won't give you any numbers per se, but it's an excellent way to determine how bad it is. Take a brass or plastic cleaning jag and patch it TIGHT to the bore, push this down the bore and when it gets to the choke, if it gets a little hard to push, it's not too bad and you can probably firelap it or cold lap it like Outpost75 says. If it stops the cleaning rod and you have to dang near beat it forcefully to push it the rest of the way then it's pretty severe and you should call Ruger and get them to issue an RMA for it, let them fix it on their dime. The only other alternative is to Taylor throat the barrel which also works but expensive and time consuming sending it off to be done. I Taylor throated one of mine that was badly crushed, bore was .4485" and it fixed it up pretty good, shoots great no leading.

Second thing is how hard the alloy is you are shooting. With softer alloys like 50/50 and 20:1, also jacketed boolits and enough gas pressure (Ruger only loads, NOT standard pressure .45 Colt loads) the boolit will go through the choke and still obturate in the bore and it will shoot pretty good. With harder cast boolits, once they are swaged down by either a tight cylinder throat or a thread choke, they stay swaged down and there isn't much you can do about it without removing the tight spots in the revolver.

[Outpost75]

At the Ruger and S&W factories when they repair these, they measure the bore diameter with plug gages at breech and muzzle ends and determine the correct size which enters the muzzle, but does not enter the breech. They then use a hardened carbide cylinder of that diameter, soldered onto a range rod, which has been surface ground to a razor edge on its end, then they immerse the barrel in cutting oil and hammer the sharpened carbide plug through the bore with a dead-blow lead hammer.

I once saw a guy at the S&W factory doing this and he had multiple ten-boards of stainless .357s from customer service waiting in line....

Doesn't touch the grooves at all, which remain slightly constructed, but the tops of the lands broached in this manner are mirror smooth and the repaired guns seem to shoot well and no longer lead ahead of the forcing cone. Seems to be an easy fix if you have the right tools and a bit of gumption.

[DougGuy]

You would think Ruger or one of the major mfgrs would come up with a simple way to broach each barrel after they clock the barrel onto the frame. With as much overnight UPS shipping in and 2-day shipping back out, they could recoup the cost of the tooling right there. If they made a dual broach setup, one for the lands and one for the grooves I would buy them. I have the Taylor reamer for .45 caliber, and it works but it's not an improvement over a properly dimensioned barrel by any means.

[historicfirearms]

You would think Ruger or one of the major mfgrs would come up with a simple way to broach each barrel after they clock the barrel onto the frame. With as much overnight UPS shipping in and 2-day shipping back out, they could recoup the cost of the tooling right there. If they made a dual broach setup, one for the lands and one for the grooves I would buy them. I have the Taylor reamer for .45 caliber, and it works but it's not an improvement over a properly dimensioned barrel by any means.

Probably most people arent good enough shooting a revolver that they would know what's going on. Also, cast boolit shooters are a minority to boot. I agree though, I wish they would build them right to begin with.