Do Revolvers Often Have One Camber That Shoots Different?

[DMW1116]

I only have one revolver, a 1980 Ruger Blackhawk in 357 Magnum. It’s currently one of my favorite handguns in my collection and can sometimes match my Victory 22 for accuracy. Cleaning it I thought about how each chamber is probably just a little different. Is that the case and if so, how common is it to have a chamber shoot different?

 

[Pat Riot]

Sometimes one may encounter a revolver with a chamber throat out of spec from the others. That could affect accuracy from that particular chamber in relation to the others.

 

[Starter52]

Old time bullseye target shooters believed this.

They would identify their "best" chamber, mark it, and use it for slowfire.

 

[mcb]

I have heard of revolvers where one or two chambers will have a different point of impact than the rest of the cylinder. This can be for a variety of issues usually related to the machining of the cylinder, tight throats, poor chamber alignment with the rest of the cylinder etc. Though possible, it seems relatively rare at least for one chamber to be especially bad, but it does happen.

 

[.308 Norma]

According to what I've heard and read, Freedom Arms bores their cylinders straight through the barrel receivers, which leads to "incredible accuracy" (according to Freedom Arms) because the cylinder holes are in "perfect alignment with the barrel."
It's good to know that about my Freedom Arms Model 1997. But the truth is, I'm probably not a good enough shot with a handgun to notice the difference in accuracy between my Freedom Arms revolver and one of my Ruger revolvers.

 

[DMW1116]

I started thinking about it after watching a YouTube video about getting the most from cast bullets and chamber size vs bore size. Seems awfully easy to have 7 different measurements or more depending on capacity.

 

[Seedy Character]

Maybe, possibly, probably

The real question is: are you good enough to tell a difference? I am not.

I have had 1 chamber that was tighter than the others and had to polish it out.

 

[J-Bar]

Easy enough to check. And fun too!

Mark one chamber with a dot of sharpie as your starting shot, chamber number one. Put out 6 targets (assuming your revolver is a 6-shooter) and shoot a bunch of rounds; all shots from first chamber go on first target, all shots from second chamber go on second target, etc. I would use a rest to eliminate the nut behind the gun. Do you see a significant difference in group sizes?

 

[DMW1116]

No I doubt I’m good enough to tell a difference. Still it sounds like fun to test. I’ve not noticed a difference during load development. I usually test sets of 4 rounds because primer drought.

 

[captain awesome]

I can tell you for certain I have had 2 that did this. The first was a Smith and Wesson model 29-5. 4 of the chambers always made a nice small group right at point of aim. The other two, significant outliers from the center group, one at 2 O'clock from center, the other at 8 O'clock. Every single time. The other was an American Western Arms - Peace Keeper (Colt single action army clone.) One of them always went wild. No particular pattern but I kept that chamber marked.

 

[roval]

i have 5 revolvers a smith and wesson 29-4, 19-5, 586-8, a ruger SRH and a gp100.
all except one has uniform chamber throats. the "newest" manufacture of the lot, the 586 has one chamber tighter than the rest. i can't tell with my shooting if it throws off one from the rest as my abilities do that well enough on their own.

 

[AzShooter1]

Many years ago, when I was a top revolver shooter I found my gun to have two chambers tighter than the rest. I used a tool to bore them and make the chambers all consistent.

I could tell the difference in my shooting, especially at 25 yards off hand on a Bianchi Target. At 50 it really showed. The X ring is only 4 inches, the 10 ring is 8 and keeping them all in the 10 ring was my goal. I even did it a few times.

It helps a lot if you have a gun you've benched and can see which ones are giving you a problem.

Now, at 70 I don't shoot well enough to know if it's my gun or me. I'm just happy to hit the steel plates for Steel Challenge matches.

 

[Onty]

I had Ruger Bisley 357 Magnum that will make 3 distinct groups. The were about 1-1.5" each, but overall group was 2.5-3". It was one of my first revolvers, but on the end. I didn't like it. Too much steel and weight for a caliber, so I sold it soon, never tried to check chambers and work on loads. I am not familiar how Ruger manufactures cylinder, but could be that boring head have 3 drills, and cylinder was drilled/reamed in 2 steps, resulting in noted pattern.

 

[Tallball]

I had a High Standard Sentinel that I bought used for not much. It was one of the nicer steel-framed ones and it had a good trigger.

But there were always flyers. My friend helped me narrow it down to two chambers. I don't know what was different about them, but they were way less accurate than the other four chambers. I sold it with full disclosure. Hopefully it was properly bored out or whatever and is a good shooter now.

 

[DMW1116]

It would be interesting to see if the same chamber would group. That’s the point of the round robin test proposed above I suppose.

 

[jmr40]

This is pretty common actually. And not just with revolvers. That is why rifles and pistols with only 1 chamber will often shoot differently compared to a supposedly identical firearm. And with very different velocities even from the same length barrels with the same ammo.

 

[earplug]

Some match shooters would number the charge holes to identify the most accurate.

 

[Onty]

I am not dedicated target shooter, just recreational, so when testing revolver I always shoot through all six holes. In that respect, I would rather have revolver making 2" with all holes, than 1" using 5 holes, and 3" shooting through 6 holes.

 

[Styx]

Explain the logic behind how the cylinder diameter would affect accuracy? I am not understanding the logic behind this.

 

[DMW1116]

Not the cylinder diameter but the diameter or location of the individual chamber openings in the cylinder, specifically in relation to the bore diameter. I’ve heard of cylinders with different chamber diameter and some were smaller than the bore diameter. This or basically any other reason why one chamber out of 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 might shoot differently from the rest. Some 22 revolvers have 10 I think.

 

[MutinousDoug]

Some years ago I had a Ruger Old Army that I could measure the differences in the cylinder diameters with a caliper (knowing I wasn't getting an accurate reading of the diameter, but the differences indicated a variance).
I had a friend with a machine shop and a 21/64" reamer (.4531") and asked him to clean up what cylinders that reamer could reach. His efforts didn't touch 3 chambers, only just kissed 2 others and cleaned up the last hole noticeably.
Subsequently I imagined that the ROA shot better.