Cylinder Throats & S+W 44

[siamese4570]

Went to the gun show last weekend with money. Came home with a S&W 44 Mountain Gun (and no money). Got to foolin' with it and discovered that the cylinder throats are .429. Assuming that the bore dia is .430, this is not good for boolits. My Ruger has a .430 bore and throats of .433 (or .4325) and it works well with .432 sized boolits. Called S&W Repair and they said that they could open it up for $125. Sounded a little pricey. I was hoping that they would do it for free in the name of customer satisfaction. Anybody got any suggestions? Really chaps my hide to spend another $125 on a really expensive gun!

Siamese 4570

[jt1]

These folks can help:

http://www.cylindersmith.com/

John

[targetshootr]

You can take out the cylinder w/ crane and send it to the guy above or any other gunsmith with a throat reamer.

[lathesmith]

Have you slugged the barrel yet? I have a Model 29 that has .429 throats, but this is just a little larger than the bore, so it works fine. Hopefully, you used pin gauges, or a slug and a micrometer, and NOT a caliper to measure your cylinder.
If the throats indeed need opened, cylindersmith is your place.
lathesmith

[leftiye]

Don't assume, find out fer shore before you spend the scheckels! If it is (the barrel) .429" all you need to do is polish out the chamber mouths a thou..

[Shuz]

I have several Smith 629's that have .428 throats. I size my boolits .431 and as long as I use 18g of 2400 or 17g of WC820 with nominal 250g boolits like 429421, I get absolutely no leading. Now if I use faster powders like Green Dot or Unique, I get some minor leading, but it's easily shot out with 5 gas checked boolits and the above loads. I quit wringing my hanky over revolver boolit dimensions long ago, as long as they're big enuf to be sized to .431. Accuracy? Less than 1" at 25 yards and that's good enuf for me.

[Frank]

Shuz says
I have several Smith 629's that have .428 throats. I size my boolits .431 and as long as I use 18g of 2400 or 17g of WC820 with nominal 250g boolits like 429421, I get absolutely no leading. Now if I use faster powders like Green Dot or Unique, I get some minor leading, but it's easily shot out with 5 gas checked boolits and the above loads. I quit wringing my hanky over revolver boolit dimensions long ago, as long as they're big enuf to be sized to .431. Accuracy? Less than 1" at 25 yards and that's good enuf for me.

So your bullets are sized .003" right out of the throat? Any pressure problems?

[44man]

Went to the gun show last weekend with money. Came home with a S&W 44 Mountain Gun (and no money). Got to foolin' with it and discovered that the cylinder throats are .429. Assuming that the bore dia is .430, this is not good for boolits. My Ruger has a .430 bore and throats of .433 (or .4325) and it works well with .432 sized boolits. Called S&W Repair and they said that they could open it up for $125. Sounded a little pricey. I was hoping that they would do it for free in the name of customer satisfaction. Anybody got any suggestions? Really chaps my hide to spend another $125 on a really expensive gun!

Siamese 4570
Never assume the bore size. You must slug it too. S&W can also have tight bores.

[Shuz]

Shuz says

So your bullets are sized .003" right out of the throat? Any pressure problems?

Frank--I've never had any pressure problems. My cases extract easily, and I have many batches of brass that have been reloaded 20 plus times before I get the occassional neck split which I attribute to working the neck by belling and crimping. Also remember my loads are not very heavy altho they yield 1100 to 1150 fps and that's ideal as far as I'm concerned. I have at least 4 Smiths that have .429 minus throats,1 that has .431 throats and several Rugers that have .431 throats. Therefore, I make my life real simple by sizing everything the same to .431.
Hope this helps!--Shuz

[Frank]

My Ruger probably has a .452" bore, the throats are .451 and I can't push thru a jacketed .451 bullet thru, I need a hammer. .452 cast bullets likewise need a hammer to go thru. I think for accuracy I want to open up the throats so I can push thru my.452 cast bullet with a pencil. Or do I leave it alone, that it's best to let it go thru tight, be sized alittle, then hit the .452 groove bore. What's the best move for accuracy? I read a thread here on 4-15-09 where everybody was shooting oversized bullets in a tight throat. But then I read also that it should 'push thru with a pencil'. [smilie=s:

[MT Gianni]

How does it shoot? If there are no problems, don't fix them first.

[44man]

How does it shoot? If there are no problems, don't fix them first.
No revolver will shoot for beans with throats smaller then groove to groove. Throats can be pretty large in comparison but never smaller.

[MtGun44]

As recommended - you must slug the bore, and 44 man is right on. If the bore is .429 and throats
are too, shoot it and see what it does. Make sure you are pin gaging the throats, otherwise
you may be mismeasuring. It matters not what the throats are, but what the throats are in
comparison to the groove diam of bbl. Well, other than you may play heck finding a mold the
right size if the throats are totally weird, which yours are not.

Don't go fixing something that might not be broken. That said, my Ruger BH conv had .449 and
.450 throats in the two cyls (IIRC) and the groove diam was .452. Opened it up to .453 and all
is well, before there were about 2 fliers per 5 shot group no matter how hard I tried. I now size to
.453 for both calibers and all is right with the world since most .45ACP designs cast at .453 or so,
and most .45LC designs cast at .455 or so.

Bill

[GSSP]

Ok, first post. Here goes.

I like MtGun44's post the best. What matters is the throat dimensions in relationship to the bore dimension. You've got to slug your S&W with pure lead balls. (You can't have mine, their pure gold; 3 awesome teen girls and 1 great 11 yr old boy!)

You can do the entire thing at home and save a ton of money. I can explain it to you if you want. I follow Veral Smith's technique/LBT bullets.

The end result should hopefully be cylinder throats same or .001" larger than bore.

Alan