Ruger 45 bullets, barrel, and cylinder.

[Wm.A.Barth]

I bought a new Ruger 45 long Colt, 7.5 inch barrel. When I slugged the barrel, the barrel is noticeably tighter about 1 inch or less from the cylinder. Why would the barrel get smaller like this? It measured .449 to .450. The cylinder measures .451+. I sized my homemade bullets to .451 and I can push them through the cylinder with my finger. If the barrel is smaller by the cylinder and gets bigger, would this cause gas to pass my bullet? I made a bunch of bullets from soft lead (pure lead) and I have been lead to believe now that these may be too soft to shoot using 8 gr. of unique gun powder. I now have a bunch of wheel weights. Should I melt all of my soft bullets and use wheel weight lead? Can I mix the soft lead and the wheel weights, and if so, what percentage? If I shoot these soft bullets, what will happen? I am new to all of this. Any help you can give me will be most appreciated

Wm.

[StarMetal]

I bought a new Ruger 45 long Colt, 7.5 inch barrel. When I slugged the barrel, the barrel is noticeably tighter about 1 inch or less from the cylinder. Why would the barrel get smaller like this? It measured .449 to .450. The cylinder measures .451+. I sized my homemade bullets to .451 and I can push them through the cylinder with my finger. If the barrel is smaller by the cylinder and gets bigger, would this cause gas to pass my bullet? I made a bunch of bullets from soft lead (pure lead) and I have been lead to believe now that these may be too soft to shoot using 8 gr. of unique gun powder. I now have a bunch of wheel weights. Should I melt all of my soft bullets and use wheel weight lead? Can I mix the soft lead and the wheel weights, and if so, what percentage? If I shoot these soft bullets, what will happen? I am new to all of this. Any help you can give me will be most appreciated

Wm.

Sounds like your barrel is tighter in the threaded section that goes through the frame. I spoke of this on another post about a Model 19 S&W. Sometimes the barrel threads are pretty tight and they constrict the barrel because metal gets moves. Slug it again one from the breach end right at those threads and another near the muzzle. If the breach is indeed tighter then the muzzle you may have to lap that constriction out.

Joe

[mtgrs737]

I read somewhere that sometimes a pistol barrel will get a reduced I.D. because of the inward pressure put on the barrel by the threaded portion of the frame it screws into. Is this the area you are experiancing the tightness? I would think that if the barrel is smaller at the rear or start of the barrel it would undersize the bullet for the rest of it's travel down the barrel. The only thing that might help is if the gas pressure behind the bullet would expand the bullet base enough to seal the bore once it passed the tight area. I would try the soft lead bullets to see if they leaded before re-casting them with a harder alloy. I use straight WW's for my 45's but I would think that a 50/50 mix of soft to WW's would be hard enough as long as the tight bore problem was not the main cause of any leading.

[MT Gianni]

It is also reduced by the letters stamped on it. All will cause a reduction in accuracy.