Or did I let myself down?
I picked up my purty new-to-me 7-1/2" Redhawk in 45 Colt and took it to the range this morning. It was a little face-off between my Super Redhawk and the newcomer Redhawk, both using 45 Colt.
The Redhawk was very clean seemed to be in great mechanical and cosmetic condition.
First up was a batch of lightweight Cowboy loads. 265 grain lead over 5.5 grains of Trail Boss. The SRH chuffed and put together a fair group of holes in the paper, all within 2" of one another. The Redhawk puffed a few rounds here and a few rounds there. It was kind of hard to see the grouping since they scattered badly and I had sighted in the scope on my 45 Colt Contender using the same target.
Fresh targets went up and I stepped up to real ammo.
This round of shooting was done using 270 grain Thunderheads over 18 grains of 2400. Here's what the SRH had to say:
The Redhawk answered with this:
That was a little annoying so I changed to 255 grain round nose lead over the same 18 grains of 2400.
The SRH did this:
The Redhawk followed with:
I had a couple more loads to run as well. All loads had about the same results. The SRH worked well for me and the RH ended up in it's Wonderland, as in I wonder where it will land.
The gun is tight. I broke out the machinist tools and took some measurements.
The cylinder bores on the RH are consistent at 0.4509 and the SRH is 0.4516.
The lead I was shooting today all came in around .452 so that shouldn't be too much of a problem.
The cylinder gap on the RH is .0045" minimum and .0085" at maximum. That gives me .004" in thrust.
Cylinder shake seems to be the same between both guns but I didn't set up a fixture to measure it.
Both barrels have similar crowns.
If there' s a mechanical issues I'm not sure what it is.
I dug up a little info on my gun. I looked at Ruger's site. They list the start dates for the serial numbers online. The first Redhawk produced in 2013 wore 503-65138. My gun is less than 100 numbers off the 2013 starting number.
Ruger has not made 7-1/2" guns in 45 Colt since 2007 by what I can tell. Here are the current offerings in the Redhawk line.
Catalog number, model number, caliber, and barrel length
KRH-44 5001 44 Rem Mag 7.50"
KRH-44R 5003 44 Rem Mag 7.50"
KRH-445 5004 44 Rem Mag 5.50"
KRH-444 5026 44 Rem Mag 4.20"
KRH-45-4 5027 45 Colt 4.20"
The box for mine says KRH-45 5023 45 Colt. I'm thinking it must be some sort of distributor exclusive. I was afraid it might be a parts gun or something like that.
I guess I'll load up more test rounds and let a friend fiddle with it.
I've got some .451 and .452 jacketed stuff from 185 through 300 to run next time around to see if it likes that better than my lead.
Perhaps I'll take the pistol rest with me next time to see if it was me or the gun.
Any other suggestions?
I picked up my purty new-to-me 7-1/2" Redhawk in 45 Colt and took it to the range this morning. It was a little face-off between my Super Redhawk and the newcomer Redhawk, both using 45 Colt.
The Redhawk was very clean seemed to be in great mechanical and cosmetic condition.
First up was a batch of lightweight Cowboy loads. 265 grain lead over 5.5 grains of Trail Boss. The SRH chuffed and put together a fair group of holes in the paper, all within 2" of one another. The Redhawk puffed a few rounds here and a few rounds there. It was kind of hard to see the grouping since they scattered badly and I had sighted in the scope on my 45 Colt Contender using the same target.
Fresh targets went up and I stepped up to real ammo.
This round of shooting was done using 270 grain Thunderheads over 18 grains of 2400. Here's what the SRH had to say:
The Redhawk answered with this:
That was a little annoying so I changed to 255 grain round nose lead over the same 18 grains of 2400.
The SRH did this:
The Redhawk followed with:
I had a couple more loads to run as well. All loads had about the same results. The SRH worked well for me and the RH ended up in it's Wonderland, as in I wonder where it will land.
The gun is tight. I broke out the machinist tools and took some measurements.
The cylinder bores on the RH are consistent at 0.4509 and the SRH is 0.4516.
The lead I was shooting today all came in around .452 so that shouldn't be too much of a problem.
The cylinder gap on the RH is .0045" minimum and .0085" at maximum. That gives me .004" in thrust.
Cylinder shake seems to be the same between both guns but I didn't set up a fixture to measure it.
Both barrels have similar crowns.
If there' s a mechanical issues I'm not sure what it is.
I dug up a little info on my gun. I looked at Ruger's site. They list the start dates for the serial numbers online. The first Redhawk produced in 2013 wore 503-65138. My gun is less than 100 numbers off the 2013 starting number.
Ruger has not made 7-1/2" guns in 45 Colt since 2007 by what I can tell. Here are the current offerings in the Redhawk line.
Catalog number, model number, caliber, and barrel length
KRH-44 5001 44 Rem Mag 7.50"
KRH-44R 5003 44 Rem Mag 7.50"
KRH-445 5004 44 Rem Mag 5.50"
KRH-444 5026 44 Rem Mag 4.20"
KRH-45-4 5027 45 Colt 4.20"
The box for mine says KRH-45 5023 45 Colt. I'm thinking it must be some sort of distributor exclusive. I was afraid it might be a parts gun or something like that.
I guess I'll load up more test rounds and let a friend fiddle with it.
I've got some .451 and .452 jacketed stuff from 185 through 300 to run next time around to see if it likes that better than my lead.
Perhaps I'll take the pistol rest with me next time to see if it was me or the gun.
Any other suggestions?