[Bezoar]

IVe seen a few different things presented here over the years regarding brass framed colts.
The first was that frame stretching is ismply the cylinder arbor pulling itself out of the recoil shield.
ive seen the "fix" as being simply, having a gunsmith silver solder the cylinder arbor into the recoil shield.

The latest is heavy loads forcing the cylinder back hard enough to leave marks on the recoil shield. The remedies have been listed as:
Low power loads
A steel washer behind the cylinder.

Anyone have comments or better methods of doing those things? Im not sure myself on the steel washer trick.

[mykeal]

"Low power loads" is an overstatement. I interpret that to mean 8-15 grains. 20 grains, which is a moderate load, will cause very little if any damage and the gun will last many, many rounds. It's also almost always a more accurate load than the 30 grains usually considered a 'heavy' load.

The steel washer is of no use in preventing damage; it just changes where the damage occurs and takes up some of the end play that results from previous damage.

Soldering the base pin into the recoil shield is a temporary 'fix' that just works until the shield is damaged again. Brass is still brass, and as long as it is required to react to heavy loads it's going to deform regardless of solder and washers being used as intermediaries between the steel and the brass.

Just shoot the most accurate load for the gun instead of banging away with full chamber loads. It's easy.