Bulged barrel on revolver, what are the consequences?

[corbinace]

So, if the barrel is visibly bulged just in front of the frame of a Super Blackhawk, what are the downsides?

Is the steel stretched beyond its elastic properties and subject to brittleness and failure?

Will the bore be so large that it will gas cut the projectile and effect accuracy and leading?

Or maybe the projectile will slightly upset in this large area and cause pressure and accuracy issues?

I have an opportunity to get a revolver like this and am wondering about shooting it until the right replacement barrel becomes available.

Unfortunately, I like projects and have little will power, save me from myself, please.:wink:

[Outpost75]

I would set the barrel back, refit, cut a new forcing cone, and redrill and tap for the ejector rod retainer.

[adcoch1]

The barrel will be unusable if it's swelled out. The frame could be stretched as well. IF reusing the frame, it would require a LOT of measuring and checking to make sure its still true before even attempting to replace the barrel. What brand revolver and caliber?

[corbinace]

The barrel will be unusable if it's swelled out. The frame could be stretched as well. IF reusing the frame, it would require a LOT of measuring and checking to make sure its still true before even attempting to replace the barrel. What brand revolver and caliber?

A Ruger Super Blackhawk. I had not considered the effects on the frame given the stout nature of the Ruger. The lockup is a bit loose, so maybe a consideration.

[corbinace]

I would set the barrel back, refit, cut a new forcing cone, and redrill and tap for the ejector rod retainer.

That would be a good idea as it is 7.5" now and a 5.5" would be more to my liking at this moment in time. Unfortunately,the lathe work is beyond my tooling.

[44man]

Ruger can fix the best. Cheapest too. Bulge from a stuck boolit might mean just a barrel replacement.

[Der Gebirgsjager]

One more angle--Ruger doesn't much like outside gunsmiths working on their products, and therefore offers pretty reasonable prices on their work.
If you send it in to Ruger you will get a brand new barrel and they will fix anything else that they decide is a defect. If you have the work done by anyone other than Ruger you may void any future warranty work.

[adcoch1]

Good advice to call ruger. Send them some pics and ask what they think. Btw, i cut down a 7.5" to 5" and reinstalled the front site on a SBH. It's awesome...

[dverna]

Der makes a good point. Ruger seems to have a good reputation for helping customers

Don Verna

[Texas by God]

Call Ruger. They'll probably fix it free.

[corbinace]

Thanks for the tips gentlemen.

[silverback13]

Call ruger before you buy there is a reason they are selling in that condition

[Plate plinker]

How much for the gun?

[mcdaniel.mac]

So, if the barrel is visibly bulged just in front of the frame of a Super Blackhawk, what are the downsides?

Is the steel stretched beyond its elastic properties and subject to brittleness and failure?

Will the bore be so large that it will gas cut the projectile and effect accuracy and leading?

Or maybe the projectile will slightly upset in this large area and cause pressure and accuracy issues?

I have an opportunity to get a revolver like this and am wondering about shooting it until the right replacement barrel becomes available.

Unfortunately, I like projects and have little will power, save me from myself, please.:wink:
What, no super-snubby-Super-Blackhawk?

[Earlwb]

What, no super-snubby-Super-Blackhawk?

Wouldn't that be like the Ruger Alaskan SBH revolver with the 2.5 inch barrel? it would be pretty neat though. They give off a spectacular fireball when fired.

[Geezer in NH]

Send it to Ruger, a customer of mine stuck 7 rounds in a SBH 44
, Ruger condemned the gun due to messed up frame due to that.

No fix known for that. They offered a discount for a new gun to the customer but my price I sold new ones for beat their offer .

[Ballistics in Scotland]

It is very nearly impossible to bulge a revolver barrel purely due to over-exuberant reloading, and I think the cylinder would be blown, and possibly the topstrap damaged, if someone did that. I don't know if Ruger cylinders are serial numbered to the gun?

Hitting a lodged bullet is a far more likely source for the damage. Firing bullets when one or more is lodged in the barrel must become enormously rarer as the numbers go up, and seven, unless someone has a perverted sense of scientific inquiry, is a big step rarer than six. There is a good chance that there is nothing wrong with this revolver but the bulge, and perhaps the rear end of the ejector rod. Frame damage is a possibility, but I am very nearly sure a cheap set of feeler gauges would show it up as an increased or uneven cylinder gap. I would not buy this gun sight unseen unless it was from a reputable gunsmith who put his reputation behind there being nothing wrong but the bulge.

Certainly there is a lot to be said for having Ruger do this work. It would probably be cheaper than a private gunsmith, and very likely you would have to send it somewhere anyway, to get the right private gunsmith. As to doing it yourself, the internet is full of alarmed warnings against even thinking about it, but a lot of them seem related to the self-esteem of the people giving them. (I don't mean on this thread. I mean those other sites.) It requires great care, some investment and a lot of shortcuts resisted. But it can be done.

By far the easiest route to disaster is warping or cracking the frame in removing the barrel. There are conflicting reports on how tightly Ruger do them up, but they have been making these guns a long time, so both might be true. If you want to unscrew it, it is essential to make some sort of fixture for your vice - a large vice - to closely fit the front of the frame. It becomes a lot easier if you are prepared to destroy the barrel with some kind of improvised holding device, possibly welded on. But in this event I would rather cut it off right at the front of the receiver and drill or file out the remains of the threads. Original Ruger barrels are probably hard to get.

Brownells sell dies for the barrel threads, and I think that is the way to go if someone with modest skills and facilities wants to reuse the existing barrel. You might find them cheaper elsewhere if they are a standard thread, as I seem to remember the Redhawk is. But those for the single-actions are well under half the price of the Redhawk, just as J-frame S&W compared with the larger S&W, which probably tells us something. I have seen .668x24 quoted (whether accurately or not I don't know) for the non-Super Blackhawk.

These dies aren't useful only for extending the existing thread. You can use them as a guide to true up the shoulder of the barrel, and the rear surface which makes the cylinder gap. I'd start that process with a hacksaw blade from which I have removed the sideways wiggle of the teeth on a belt sander, and complete it with files and fine silicon carbide grit to show the texture where contact is made. Loctite most emphatically is not good enough to turn a bad thread into a good one in this application. But it could help make consistent contact all round that shoulder. If you are using the original barrel rather than a blank, this is where you have to get the front sight upright.

You don't need to fully tighten and then loosen the barrel every time you file the shoulder and rear of the barrel a little more. If the thread is really 24tpi, it is your own micrometer, turning about on revolution for .042in. or just under nine degrees per thousandth of an inch. Test before any cutting or filing just how close the original barrel gets to factory position by light wrench pressure. Then do your work on the basis of the same pressure stopping the reworked barrel just a little short of that, since rougher texture will probably mean final, eye-watering pressure turns it a few degrees more.

A lot is said about the necessity and prohibitive cost of special forcing cone tooling and gauges, for the amateur doing a single job for himself. That is very true, for the tooling necessary to cut the forcing cone with the barrel in place. But before fitting it, you can do a pretty useful job with a .44 rifle piloted throat reamer, which is a lot cheaper from Clymer or Manson. Measure the land diameter of the barrel before buying, in case Ruger have made them non-standard, requiring a detachable pilot. When you examine the cone you have cut, you won't take much practical harm if it looks the same all round, with a little over half its length being interrupted by rifling, and a little under half its length not.

[paul h]

Send it to Ruger, a customer of mine stuck 7 rounds in a SBH 44
, Ruger condemned the gun due to messed up frame due to that.

No fix known for that. They offered a discount for a new gun to the customer but my price I sold new ones for beat their offer .

He should have had to pay the higher price to Ruger as the stupid tax for lodging seven bullets in a barrel.

[Wolfer]

It's been awhile back but Hamilton Bowen had a good supply of take off Blackhawk barrels.