A few years back I bought a Tula 1895 Nagant

[steve8261948]

A while after I discovered ammo was not in good supply so, I bought a .32ACP cylinder for it. Now this replacement cylinder has never quite worked right. Does fine for several operations then, it locks up between chambers, sometimes won't index to the next chamber also. I tried contacting thenagantman more than a few times without success. Would anyone here have experience with these cylinders and fitting them, please? Any help will be greatly appreciated.
TIA, Steve

 

[boom boom]

Fitting cylinders requires knowledge of the specified gap for revolvers between the forcing cone and cylinder. What makes it difficult is that nagant revolvers were designed to gas seal and the cylinder moves forward to seal when firing. Fitting cylinders is usually a gunsmith job but there are not that many that do much work on revolvers anymore and nagants are not common.

A few things to try.
First determine whether the cylinder is the problem. If the cylinder works when dry firing then the problem may be with the mechanism that advances the cylinder to seal when firing or the tolerances are too close and fouling locks up the cylinder. It is also possible that your cylinder face is not true at 90 degrees to the forcing cone at all points. Layout fluid marking should tell you this.

One last thing that might help. Use gunscrubber or similar products to flush out the mechanism. It is possible that stray bits of crud in the cylinder advancing mechanism is affecting it

 

[4v50 Gary]

Besides the forcing cone/cylinder gap, also look at fitting the star extractor.

 

[BBBBill]

Also look at the cylinder pawl (aka cylinder hand). It and the ratchet pads on the back of the cylinder may be worn and out of spec. Look here for more info - http://stevespages.com/pdf/nangant-1895.pdf

 

[Jim K]

I have never had that happen with my Nagant .32 cylinder, but it is a common condition with revolvers. The cause is a tight barrel-cylinder gap and heat. I have seen revolvers tied up by as few as 5 shots when the heat expands the cylinder lengthwise, binding against the end of the barrel. Correcting the situation is normally easy (simply use a special tool or even a flat file to take a bit off the end of the barrel) but is trickier with the Nagant, especially when two cylinders are involved. Since you don't want (or shouldn't want) to alter the original cylinder or barrel, you should work on the .32 cylinder. And that is where things get tricky, since you have to determine whether the cylinder itself is too long (try using a candle to smoke the cylinder looking for contact) or the hole is not deep enough (smoke the end of the barrel). Once you determine the problem, a file or an end reamer will take care of the problem.

Jim