Blackhawk Cylinder Work

[Ed_Shot]

Finally got to the range this week. Got my BH 357 & 9MM cylinders back from Doug_Guy this past Monday. Fantastic one week turn around. Doug is a pleasure to do business with, I bugged him more than once with PM's and it never took him more than 20 minutes to reply. On my 9MM cylinder he found 5 throats at .3585 and 1 at .358 and on the 357 cylinder he found all throats at .358. Now all throats are .3585 ~.3587. Now I can press a boolit sized .358 thru all throats. The pistol was shooting pretty good before and now it's fantastic. Definitely money well spent.

Thanks Doug.

[pietro]

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Ya gotta luv it, when a plan comes together !

Thanks for posting your experience - it's appreciated, since there's plenty of gunsmiths out there, whose name oughta be "bubba".


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[44man]

Who do we have here? The best. and I am proud to know them.
Now to get Doug to weld scopes on! :bigsmyl2::bigsmyl2:

[Tar Heel]

Doug_Guy does top notch work. He has worked two of my revolvers and I am very pleased with his work. It's money well spent and very affordable.

[Bookworm]

DougGuy has worked 2 cylinders for me - so far. One revolver was completely cured of leading, while the other needs some other attention.

When the budget can stand it I'll get up a box full o'stuff to send him from other firearms.

Good work, fast turn-around, reasonable price. Can't beat that.

[DougGuy]

On my 9MM cylinder he found 5 throats at .3585 and 1 at .358 and on the 357 cylinder he found all throats at .358. Now all throats are .3585 ~.3587. Now I can press a boolit sized .358 thru all throats. The pistol was shooting pretty good before and now it's fantastic. Definitely money well spent.

Thanks Doug.

I should mention that because a pin gage or a boolit will go through a throat, you can't really see if the throat is oval, belled, or wasp waisted, but the Sunnen hone starts taking out hundredths of a thousandth at first, and with a cylinder already within one half of one thousandth of where it needed to be finished, you have to take VERY thin passes and keep checking as you go.

In this case, both cylinders were sized good enough to shoot .357" boolits until the cows come home, but a .358" would not slide in and the standing call for this boolit diameter is a throat of .3585" minimum to .3588" maximum size.


The throats in the 9mm cylinder were .3585" for 5 and .358" for one but they weren't very round. I put it on the Sunnen hone and barely had to lay into the 5 but I could see how the hone was taking off the bluing that they were ovaled in several of the throats. I took them as far as I wanted to and tried not to exceed .359" which they all looked good and were very even, a .3585" pin goes in smoother and faster than it did to start, but a .359" pin won't go at all so this one came out exactly as the doctor ordered.

The 357 cylinder would take a .358" pin on all 6, but not a .3585" so it is now the same amount of light drag on the .3585" pin as the 9mm cylinder throats are, and it won't take a .359" in any of the throats.

Two cylinders, all throats within .0002" of each other, right at .3588" coming your way sir, thank you for the business..

The improvement here was not so much the diameter, but by the time a .3585" pin gage would go smoothly and evenly through all of the throats, the bluing was gone evenly all the way around. It took roughly half a thousandth of metal removal to make ovaled throats as close to perfectly round as possible without going oversize.

You can take what appears at first to be a perfectly good cylinder, and squeeze a noticeable improvement out of it by rounding the throats, and evening them up in size as close as can be done by mechanical means. I try to get them within .0002" of each other before they are sent out. The result I am after, is if the gun is fired from a ransom rest, there would be no detectable variations in point of impact from throat to throat. If it will perform to this level of accuracy in a mechanical rest which does not vary from shot to shot, then I have wrung all the improvements out of it that can be improved upon.

[contender1]

I too can sing the praises of Dougguy's work. He took on a S&W 646 in 40 S&W that needed chamfering for speed reloads. EXCELLENT work,, despite the titanium cylinder. I would NOT hesitate to send him any cylinder, or other stuff to work on!

[Virginia John]

Doug has done a number of barrels and cylinders for me and his work hasalways been superb and he is a great guy to deal with.

[Texas by God]

I would like to send in my cylinder from my old model .357 Blackhawk for checkout and / or correction. It has the factory conversion- therefore a mediocre trigger but I'be never shot a less accurate Blackhawk- and I've owned a bunch. Even my S&W .40 Shield with its ten pound trigger out groups this Ruger. Doug Guy; should I send a PM?

[DougGuy]

Doug Guy; should I send a PM?

That usually gets the ball rolling..