Interchangible rounds

[chipperi]

I have shot 38's out of my 357 for years I know there are some others, But I was flipping through a gun magazine last night and saw the Taurus Judge which can fire 45colt or the .410 shotgun round. Is this something custom done to the cylinder or can any 45 colt shoot the 410 round? Can it be done the other way around shooting a 45 from a 410? a rifled slug barrel would make for a unique .45 rifle.

Question 2...Why. shooting the soft lead of a slug into your forcing cone cant be good.

 

[Jim March]

The .410 is a lot longer than the 45. So when you set up a gun this way, you have to live with a bit less accuracy in 45 due to the "freebore effect" - the bullet flies a ways down the unrifled, oversize (for the bullet) cylinder bore.

You get a teensy bit of this in, say, 38Spl out of a 357 gun. But that's just a couple millimeters. In the 410-length cylinder, the difference between that and the 45LC is much greater...I don't have measurements in front of me but it's almost an inch worth.

Even 357Mag in a 357Max cylinder isn't that bad. You have to put 44Russian in a .444 or 445Supermag to get that level of freebore effect.

This is also why you'll see problems in a 45LC rifle: the chamber won't be set up for 410 and if it was, accuracy would suck (rifle owners care more about accuracy than owners of an up-close-and-personal revolver like the Judge). Plus the 410-length shell would be useless in any repeating rifle made in 45LC. Mags won't hold it and leverguns in 45LC are length-specific in the feeding system.

 

[IA_farmboy]

Interchangible rounds
I have shot 38's out of my 357 for years I know there are some others, But I was flipping through a gun magazine last night and saw the Taurus Judge which can fire 45colt or the .410 shotgun round. Is this something custom done to the cylinder or can any 45 colt shoot the 410 round? Can it be done the other way around shooting a 45 from a 410? a rifled slug barrel would make for a unique .45 rifle.

Question 2...Why. shooting the soft lead of a slug into your forcing cone cant be good.

The Taurus Judge has a 2.5 or 3 inch cylinder to accommodate a .410 bore shot shell. Other than that the Judge is much like any other .45 colt revolver.

Most other revolvers can not chamber a .410 shell. One could probably hand feed a .45 colt into many .410 shotguns but that is certainly not recommended unless the weapon is specified by the manufacturer as suitable for .45 colt. I believe the .45 colt will produce much higher pressure on the barrel which could damage a shotgun (and the shooter), that is especially true if the shotgun has any kind of choke.

I've seen a number of single shot weapons designed to fire both .410 bore shot and .45 colts. I think there are even a few double barrel weapons out there that can fire both.

I don't know what kind of damage a slug would do to the forcing cone. I don't think it would be any worse than a .45 colt. Perhaps it would just leave a thicker layer of lead is all.