Ruger Does 45 Barrels right.

[Char-Gar]

After having fought the "leading demon" as we all have over the years, it is very nice to see it gone. I am a nostalgic type and like the 45 Colt round, although it does have it's limitations. I have two Ruger SA sixguns in 45 Colt of fairly recent vintage. One has been extensively modified by Gary Reeder of Flagstaff AZ and the other is a Lipsey's Flattop 45. Neither of these show even a smidgen of lead with my loads.

I used several different 250 - 260 grain bullets loaded over either 6.5/Bulleye or 8.5/Unique. The bullets are of medium hardness (9 - 11 Bhn) and lubed with Xylox or my home brew beeswax/Vaseline mix.

These are two great sixguns and kudos to Ruger for making smooth barrels. Neither has been polish or lapped in any way. As an aside, the charge hole throats are a uniform .4525 in the Flattop and Gary opened up the Black Hawk's throats to .453. They both get .452 bullets and shoot far better than I can hold. Many sixguns, do not require extensive work to get them to shoot well and clean.

[9.3X62AL]

Though my BisHawk's throats came undersized, its barrel was and remains EXCELLENT, no choke point at the threads or anyplace else that I can discern. Once the throats were "regulated", leading became a non-problem with any bullet at any speed.

[FlatTop45LC]

I have some lead issues with mine but I also buy my bullets...

I do think the Flat Top Rugers are the best they have ever made.

[cbrick]

There's more of that Char-Gar lumber, I think he shows them off just to make me drool. :mrgreen:

My Blackhawk converted to Bisely 45 Colt has throats at .4523" every bit as uniform as any of my FA revolvers. The bore is as smooth as a babies hieny and I've yet to clean it or need to. Air cooled WW MP RCBS 45 270 SAA at 12 BHN sized .452 and the revolver is happy, Rick is happy, Bambi not so much.

Rick

[Char-Gar]

Though my BisHawk's throats came undersized, its barrel was and remains EXCELLENT, no choke point at the threads or anyplace else that I can discern. Once the throats were "regulated", leading became a non-problem with any bullet at any speed.

I own and have owned many revolvers and have yet to get anxious about a "thread choke". Yes, they do exist and if you bring the inside of a barrel to a high polish, they can be seen with the naked eye, if they are there. However none has ever caused accurate issues, at least as far as I can tell, holding the handgun in my two hand either standing or shooting off a bench.

Over the years, I have had two Smith and Wesson DA sixguns that leaded no matter what load I used. One I sold, the other I fixed as it was magically accuracy until the lead built up. I loaded 200 rounds of jacketed full snort loads and fired them as fast as I could load and shoot. With leather gloves on (the pistol was HOT), I dropped out the cylinder and gave several hundred fore and aft strokes with Shooter's Choice on a new brush. The handgun was then taken home, locked in a vise and the barrel polished until I thought my arms would fall off with tight patches and Semi-chrome metal polish.

When done, the inside of the barrel looked like a mirror, but never leaded again and clean up was super easy. The thread choke was clearly visible, but the magic accuracy remained so I didn't feel any need to mess with it. I still have that revolver and it is truly a wonderful sixgun.

[454PB]

I guess I'm lucky, I bought my Blackhawk .45 convertible about 30 years ago, throats are .4525", barrel is .452", and it shoots better than I can hold.

More recently I bought a Lipsey SBH Hunter in .45 Colt, and it's the same.

[Char-Gar]

I have two more Ruger SA centerfire sixguns and neither of them show the slightest tendency to lead. One is a 1963 Super Blackhawk (44 Magnum) and the others is a 1972 vintage OM Blackhawk in .357. I sent the latter back to Ruger for a new barrel and cylinder in 1995. They are both excellent handguns that have a permanent home around here.

In point of fact, I don't recall, and I have a good memory, any Ruger or Colt I have owned that were real leaders, all of those were Smith and Wesson. Of course you can make any revolver lead by force feeding it bad handloads.

[Char-Gar]

I guess I'm lucky, I bought my Blackhawk .45 convertible about 30 years ago, throats are .4525", barrel is .452", and it shoots better than I can hold.

More recently I bought a Lipsey SBH Hunter in .45 Colt, and it's the same.

I doubt you were all that lucky. Far more good handguns have been turned out than bad ones. There are folks who like to tinker with their handguns and convince others that it is 100% necessary. Some are making money by doing the tinkering and that should be noted.

There are some bad handguns and some Ruger 45 throats do need to be opened up, but not near as universal as some folks would make you think.

[Love Life]

Wonderful thread.

[9.3X62AL]

The aforementioned BisHawk is the only revolver I've had to take tools to in order to correct unfinished construction issues. I lean toward Charles' conclusion that most revolvers by mainstream makers leave the factory in pretty good order. That has been my experience, anyway.

[fecmech]

My Lipsey's Ruger .45 convertible has been trouble free right from the start. No leading and very minimal load development. Loaded the bullseye match load that I use in my wad gun, nice tight round clumps on the target at 25 & 50 yds, end of load development! I did have to start loading my SWC's even with the case mouth due to the Ruger chambers but that's it. I don't own any .45 Colt cases or dies so that cylinder is a virgin but it's throats all pin gauge at .452.

[dubber123]

I sure wish they did the one my brother bought right. It would have saved me a bunch of work. :?

[MtGun44]

Reamed and polished my convertible BH's throats to .453, and with .453 boolits it
is quite happy from ".45 Mag" to ".45 easy".

Bill

[MSD MIke]

My 45 convertible had small throats and I had to ream both cylinders. I still experienced leading with commercially cast bullets. Casting out of WW material and using a soft (50-50) lube almost completely cured the leading issue and going to a slower powder was the finishing touch in my gun.
My guns leading issues are what actually got me started in casting my own.
Oh ya to stay on track, my barrel is just fine. Nice and smooth.

Mike

[MtGun44]

Many have found that hard alloy and hard lube and small diam are a pretty
poor combo.

Fat, medium alloy and soft lube like 50-50 and most guns are good to go from
mild to wild.

Bill

[cbrick]

Many have found that hard alloy and hard lube and small diam are a pretty
poor combo.

Fat, medium alloy and soft lube like 50-50 and most guns are good to go from
mild to wild. Bill

Ah yes, medium alloy.

Freedom Arms several years did a study of cast in their revolvers and posted the results on their web site, It said: "To soft of an alloy at too high of velocity will lead to premature forcing cone wear".

Ok, that makes perfect sense to me except . . . What is too soft and what is too high of velocity for the too soft of an alloy? It didn't say sooo . . .

Rick

[Char-Gar]

Many have found that hard alloy and hard lube and small diam are a pretty
poor combo.

Fat, medium alloy and soft lube like 50-50 and most guns are good to go from
mild to wild.

Bill

Very very true! Should be engraved in stone somewhere.

I have watched the evolution or devolution of cast bullets over the years and wonder why folks have to learn the same lessons over and over again. When the Feds changed the law to allow interstate sales of ammo and components, garage casting businessmen sprang up like mushrooms. They bought casting machines that threw bevel base bullets because they dropped easy from the molds. The used a very hard alloy, too hard for most uses, because they could sell their bullets as "hard cast". After all everybody knew Elmer Keith has blessed the use of "hard cast" bullets, but Elmer's bullet were butter soft compared to this new generation of hard cast bullets. Throw in a useless hard wax lube designed not to come off as the bullets rolled around in the boxes during transport and you see why many people have troubles.

Now along come the water droppers and bad results continue to roll on.

I will concede there may be a use for this super hard bullets for some full snort magnum loads, but everything has to be perfect match for the charge hole throats, the barrel forcing one and the barrel proper for it all to come together. 99% of the handgun shooters will be well served by following your counsel.

[Char-Gar]

Ah yes, medium alloy.

Freedom Arms several years did a study of cast in their revolvers and posted the results on their web site, It said: "To soft of an alloy at too high of velocity will lead to premature forcing cone wear".

Ok, that makes perfect sense to me except . . . What is too soft and what is too high of velocity for the too soft of an alloy? It didn't say sooo . . .

Rick

Medium alloy = Air cooled wheel weight of 9 to 10 Bhn. hardness, or another alloy of similar hardness.

Soft alloy = Anything softer than medium alloy.

Hard alloy = Alloys that yield Bhn 11 to 15 (NO. 2)

Too hard alloys = Anything harder than hard alloy.

Soft bullet lubricant = Lube that works well in a lubesize machine without a heater.

You are correct that soft, medium and hard means different things to different people and those terms need to be quantified. The above is what I mean, when I use those terms.

[DougGuy]

GREAT thread Char-Gar! I will say this off the git go, your revolvers have beaten the odds and you have by karma, fate, luck of the draw or just plain good fortune, been the recipient of a spate of excellent ones! Not just GOOD ones, but better than average.. Chalk that up and grin a little more today...

The New Model Rugers, both Flattops and Vaqueros that I have had pass through my shop this year have been by far the most consistent and nicest production I have seen out of Newport. I have really enjoyed looking down the bores and not seeing anything but smooth shiny rifling, no hazy rings at the frame, no raised ridges pushed in by the rollmark, and I have consigned my old self to owning one in the soon enough future.

The throats, although quite consistent in size, have been running in the .4505" and .451" range, with the odd cylinder here and there that has a couple of oval throats. For factory ammo sized to .451" this is about perfect. For cast boolits sized to .452" I have yet to see one that will drop a .452" through the throats. Not saying they don't exist, and of course in my business of reaming throats, nobody sends them because they are correct, they send them because they are tight and we take good care of that in short order. Even the New Model forcing cones look pretty good for the most part, but I usually can get them a little better with an 11° cutter and a bit of a polish.

The "short and easy" way of accurizing these modern revolvers is simple. Address the cylinder throats, make them round and even in size, address the forcing cone, recut it to 11° and lightly polish, then either remove one leg of the trigger return spring and let it hang, or simply swap in a Wolff 30oz spring, this makes it much easier to hold the sights motionless during lock time. For the money and time invested, these 3 things are the best bang for the buck you can do to a new Ruger to get it to shoot cast boolits accurately.

The rest of the combination comes from one's skill and knowledge at the loading bench, hands on the grips, eyes on the sights and finger on the trigger.

A BIG +1 on the softer alloy! People don't realize there is a direct relation between hardness, rifling twist, and velocity! I got leading with hardcast boolits no matter what I did. The alloy that you can scratch with a thumbnail, is about PERFECT for the size of lands and grooves and the 1:16 twist of the Ruger rifling in .44 and .45 caliber revolvers, even up to 1200f/s it works well with no really noticeable leading. I too don't clean my bores any more, they are black with lube from previous shots and there is a lube star at the muzzle.

Since I have been on this forum I have learned about things like 50/50 and 2% and 20:1, 40:1, and Felix lube, and other soft lubes. A BIG thank you to all the members here that have helped me along the way to where I am now, you have made an appreciable difference in my choices of alloy, boolit style, and the size of my GROUPS!

[FlatTop45LC]

Wow a lot of good info here!

Time for me to do two things - get into casting and in the mean time get some 12bhn boolits!

[MSD MIke]

What I don't get is that now that I have reamed my throats to the proper .452 dimension and my barrel slugs at .451 why properly sized hard commercially cast bullets still lead. I cant see why it isn't sealed just as well as with a soft bullet. Maybe its lube related. One day when I get bored I'm going to melt out that hard blue lube on my commercial bullets and re-lube with some 50/50 and see what happens. But for an absolute fact, with correctly sized throats and properly sized bullets every commercial bullet I have tried leads the barrel and my WW bullets dropped from cheap Lee molds and using 50/50 lube work great.
For the record my loads for 45 Colt are running between 800 to 1000 FPS depending on the load.
Sorry, is this still a barrel thread:)

Thanks
Mike

[C. Latch]

You have some beautiful revolvers and I am glad that they have such great barrels.

[Char-Gar]

What I don't get is that now that I have reamed my throats to the proper .452 dimension and my barrel slugs at .451 why properly sized hard commercially cast bullets still lead. I cant see why it isn't sealed just as well as with a soft bullet. Maybe its lube related. One day when I get bored I'm going to melt out that hard blue lube on my commercial bullets and re-lube with some 50/50 and see what happens. But for an absolute fact, with correctly sized throats and properly sized bullets every commercial bullet I have tried leads the barrel and my WW bullets dropped from cheap Lee molds and using 50/50 lube work great.
For the record my loads for 45 Colt are running between 800 to 1000 FPS depending on the load.
Sorry, is this still a barrel thread:)

Thanks
Mike

I won't attempt to explain the "why" of what you have experienced, although I "think" I know. I am not any kind of science or engineering type of guy, just an old guy who has shot allot over the past 50 plus years. During that time, I have learned what works and what does not work.

One thing I have learned, that is not barrel or leading related, is anytime somebody puts up a "why" things work post, such as, water runs down hill because of gravity, folks will line up to dispute that assertion. While we have a couple of gin-u-wine experts on this board, we have many more folks that think they are experts because they stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Bottom line is just keep shooting those good old home cast bullets bullets and try to not let the why of it bother you too much.

[Char-Gar]

[QUOTE=DougGuy;3052550]GREAT thread Char-Gar! I will say this off the git go, your revolvers have beaten the odds and you have by karma, fate, luck of the draw or just plain good fortune, been the recipient of a spate of excellent ones! Not just GOOD ones, but better than average.. Chalk that up and grin a little more today..."

While my karma with Ruger barrels has held steady, it has not been so with Ruger 45 cal. cylinders. Before reamers were available to do so at home, I had Hamilton Bowen open up a couple to .453. I also had Gary Reeder open up the cylinder in the Stainless Blackhawk shown above in No. 1

The old SBH in 44 Mag has .432 throats and a .431 barrel groove, so it gets .432 bullets and does very well. The recylindered OM Blackhawk came back to me with .358 throats so that was good to go.

Ruger barrels have always been good except two that had heat scale in them from the front sight application. Those were sent back to Ruger and came back with nice slick barrels with no heat scale.

I had a really nice New Model Vaquero with a smooth barrel, .452 throats and well regulated sights, but I gave that one to my Son-in-Law. I missed it, so when I got advance notice that Lipsey's had contracted with Ruger for a run of Flattop 45s, I got on the phone with a friend that works at Lipsey's and have him stick one of the first one's away for me. It proved to be the finest Ruger I have ever owned out of the box. Perhaps that was good karma or just knowing some folks in the business, but I am very pleased with it. I said, it would be burred with me, but I have decided on the cremation route, so somebody will get it from my widow some day.

[hpdrifter]

Well, I know you said 45 barrels and others have chimed in about the general overall good quality of most Ruger Blackhawks, but I just purchased a Hunter 44 Magnum that I am a bit "not real happy" with. It seems t shoot ok, so I can live with it, but the quality and fitting leaves alittle to be desired.

I traded thru a local gunshop here and they had to order it in. Something I'll never do again. Any revolver I buy from now on will be personally inspected before the purchase.

First off, I looked at two other 44 BHkHunters and they were beautiful. Nice tight cylinder to barrel fit; could hardly see light thru them. They were $700.

I traded for the equivilant of $600. Wished I'd spent the $700.

My BHH has about .008 cylinder to barrel gap and the frame(hammer and trigger) pins look like something from an old RG pistol. They stick out at least .060 and are unevenly ground, something I may rectify when the new wears off.

The barrel does look great tho.

[RobS]

Some are lucky, fortunate or whatever and others not; there are enough threads on this forum alone that will state both claims.

[MtGun44]

Thank you, Char-Gar, for adding the precision that I left off of my
post.

People fail to look at what "hard cast" meant to Elmer, even though he said
16:1 Pb:Sn a million times. Some guy name Rick :bigsmyl2: has a great
article on LASC's site about "Cast Bullet Alloys & Alloy Maintenance"
and it points out that 16:1 is 11 BHN, which today is pretty much
the definitive "medium" these days, using Char-Gar's excellent reference
for these much misunderstood and imprecisely used terms. We have
been fortunate that this is right where air-cooled wheel weight alloy
normally winds up.

I have repeatedly amazed myself by pushing 8 BHN (pretty soft in anybody's
book) to full .357 Magnum velocities in a couple of different 6" pistols
with very good accuracy and zero leading, using NRA 50-50 or LBT soft blue
as my most common lubes. One is a Ruger Sec Six and the other is a
S&W 586 7-shooter. Not my normal practice, but this is where some
batches of range lead wind up, so it was useful to see if it would work
'as is' or needed some alloying. Surprise!

Rugers are good pistols in my experience, and when dimensioned
right for boolits, and fed the proper mix of hardness, lube and
diameter - can do some very nice work. I, too, have an old SBH
with .432 throats, but a GB custom Lee mold of a good Keith copy that
was intended (and does) to throw .433 diameter has solved that
one's "issues" - basically being a mediocre grouper with my
.429 cast and doing much better with Jbullets. Now it is fine
with proper diameter cast.

Of course, I was pretty ignorant of the whole 'throat fit' issue back
in those days, and just didn't see why this nice looking SBH wouldn't
shoot "normal" cast boolits as well as jbullets. I have learned a lot
here over the last 8-9 years. Thanks to all who have patiently
schooled me.

Bill

[cbrick]

My idea of hard/soft is pretty close to Char-Gar's except I normally look at medium as up to about 12-13 just so I can include my air cooled WW :mrgreen: which runs 12.

Rick

[Char-Gar]

Before the "hard cast" and water dropping craze became standard, folks cast handgun bullets from binary (lead and tin) alloys with very good results. Rotometals still sells these alloys and give us some good Brinell hardness numbers associated with them. Starting from the hard to soft they run;

1 - 16 Bhn 11
1- 20 Bhn 10
1 - 30 Bhn 9
1 - 40 Bhn 8.5

Elmer settled on 1 - 16 (Bhn 11) for the 44 Magnum and indeed they were cast from a hard alloy by 1950's standards.

Ray Thompson after a series of tests decided that a minimum of 1- 20 (Bhn 10) was what was needed for his gas check bullet in the 44 Magnum.

It was common to cast bullets for non-magnum rounds out of alloys softer than Bhn 10, sometimes considerably softer.

Alloy hardness is determined by load pressures. The bullet needs to withstand the force used to propel it out of the cylinder, into the barrel and out the muzzle. Keith and Thompson found that Bhn 10 to 11 to be plenty for the 44 Magnum cartridge.

The "hard cast" alloy of commercial casters is about 15 Brn, which is the same as old Lyman No. 2 but the hardness is reached with more antimony and less tin than No. 2.

Wheel weight are not uniform, but run about 10 plus or minus one point. Water drop those and the hardness goes over 20 Bhn which is up there in Linotype level.

For the fellow shooting handgun loads in the 35K to 45K psi level, he needs these super hard bullets. But for the rest of us, the cause far more problems than they solve. Time and time again guys show up here with leading issues caused by super hard bullets. It seems counter intuitive to them that softer bullets will lead less than harder bullets. But bullets that are not an exact fit for the cylinder and barrel and are too hard to upset to fill the throats, will have their bases and sides attacked by hot gas which leaves it's traces in the barrel, usually in the first inch or so.

It is quite frustrating trying to convince new shooters to go softer to cure their problems as most will not believe you. I have quit trying, thinking they will figure it out on their own or else give up shooting cast bullets, which is fine with me. It just isn't my mission in life to try and straighten out folks thinking when they don't want their thinking changed.

[cbrick]

Most of the commercial bullets I've stuck in the LBT BHN tester run about 18 with a few as high as 22, much too hard for the vast majority of cast shooting.

Actually I've been kind of amazed recently at just how consistent CWW alloy is, with all of the XrF testing done about a year ago with WW from different parts of the country it's a pretty safe bet to say 2% Sb and 0.5% Sn and right at 10-11 BHN. I add 2% Sn to all of my WW alloy which gives minor hardening and they run consistently 12 BHN.

I've also about given up trying to get people to get that "Hard cast" nonsense out of their heads. I got to have several hundred of my posts trying and I don't think I made a dent in the hard cast frenzy. Only in my high end 357 long range revolver loads do I shoot anything harder than air cooled WW +2% Sn (oven HT to 18). Every rifle, every handgun I own does fine with air cooled WW at 12 BHN up to 2000+ fps. Handgun HP's even in my 30 Carbine Ruger BH do very well with PB bullets of stick-on WW +2% Sn at 8 BHN.

I guess it had to happen some time, right here on CastBoolits . . . Thread drift. :veryconfu Ok, back on track. Like Char-Gar I have yet to open up the throats, need to fire lap or re-cut the forcing cone on any Ruger revolver I've ever had. Like Char-Gar I don't think needing to is as common as many people believe. No doubt there's some out there that will benefit, maybe I too have just been lucky.

Rick

[robertbank]

Interesting thread. My Lipsey convertible has been excellent and a great shooter. I am going to have the forcing cone cut to 11 degrees to facilitate lead bullets and I did have the cylinders reamed to 452. The gun is made for jacketed bullets and I regard the work done and to be done to accommodate what I use the gun for. Range plinker and self defense (Bush Carry).

My GP-100 is a whole different kettle of fish. The cylinders out of the box were extremely tight. Three would not let a .356 bullet pass through them and the other three stopped a .357 bullet. An easy fix and they are all now .358. Leading at the forcing cone and resulting sixteenth inch of the rifling is annoying and occurs after 100 rounds fired using air cooled WW bullets sized .358. I am hoping just cutting the forcing cones to 11 degrees and cleaning up the rifling where it starts should solve the leading. In every other respect the gun has been excellent for IDPA and I prefer the gun over my 686 4 inch. The GP-100 trigger is excellent and gets better with usage. I added hammer shims and likely will have my `smith install the trigger shims when he has it in the shop. The shims and forcing cone items are more to make the gun better for what I use it for. The cylinder throats and the initial rifling issues is more on Ruger. That said sending the gun to Ruger is not an option up here so finishing the gun is on me.

I find some of the comments interesting as they relate to gun quality. S&W sent a batch of 686 revolvers up here two years ago that would not have passed a blind man`s inspection. Tool marks evident, with obvious peened cylinder latch notches on the cylinders. They looked like Smith decided to unload their rejects on their Cdn Distributer. There was a lot of noise on the gun forums up here in 2013. Nothing since and I have not read any complaints since regarding the guns.

In my view either we as consumers have to wrap our heads around the fact good quality costs money and we are prepared to pay for it or we will be victims of our own decisions and see less and less quality for slowly rising costs. A quality made 1911 goes for over $1,500, a tuned CZ for just over $1,000 and most would say a $600 revolver is about where they should be. Why then do we expect the same quality in the revolver. Now if we are asked to pay $1k and get shoddy workmanship, that is another story.

Take Care

Bob
ps Charles those guns are absolute eye candy. Thanks for sharing

[Char-Gar]

Well, I know you said 45 barrels and others have chimed in about the general overall good quality of most Ruger Blackhawks, but I just purchased a Hunter 44 Magnum that I am a bit "not real happy" with. It seems t shoot ok, so I can live with it, but the quality and fitting leaves alittle to be desired.

I traded thru a local gunshop here and they had to order it in. Something I'll never do again. Any revolver I buy from now on will be personally inspected before the purchase.

First off, I looked at two other 44 BHkHunters and they were beautiful. Nice tight cylinder to barrel fit; could hardly see light thru them. They were $700.

I traded for the equivilant of $600. Wished I'd spent the $700.

My BHH has about .008 cylinder to barrel gap and the frame(hammer and trigger) pins look like something from an old RG pistol. They stick out at least .060 and are unevenly ground, something I may rectify when the new wears off.

The barrel does look great tho.

All of us have paid money to learn lessons about buying guns. Welcome to the club!