Super Blackhawk letdown....

[BCRider]

First off it's nice to have THR back up and running. I was darn near going through withdrawal symptoms...

OK, now the bad news I found yesterday. I had my SBH out for some load development aimed at going for some really accurate loadings. But the groups I was getting were anything but impressive. Like easily double what I've done with other guns.

Back at home this morning on a whim I checked the chamber throat sizes only to find a real nasty situation. Three of the throats checked at 0.423 and the other three at 0.432. So three let the bullets simply slide through and the other three need it forced through with a hammer. Oddly enough the sizes were alternating around the cylinder.

Needless to say any chances of getting accurate and consistent groups were shot to hell.

Being in Canada it's no good telling me to ship it off to Ruger. I've got emails out to a couple of Canadian outfits that are listed on the Ruger website as being their agents up this way. I guess we'll see if the Ruger Reputation for servicing stuff like this with a smile and good results works up here as well.

Oh, and since I've also got a Super Redhawk AND a Redhawk in .44Mag I checked the throats. All 6 on both these others are 0.432 give or take a needle's worth on my dial calipers. So it seems like even if I run into servicing issues with the Canadian outfits that the present cylinder is salvagable with some reaming out to size the small throats.

Still, it really makes me wonder how it got out of the factory like that.

 

[WardenWolf]

Worn tools, most likely. As tooling wears it gets smaller. Including the drills used for drilling the chambers. As a result, so does the inside of the chamber.

 

[BCRider]

Well, it's only the throats. The chambers themselves are all good. And the three small holes are all exactly the same while the three big ones are also exactly the same. It's almost like somehow the tooling skipped a hole when finish reaming the throats. As I typed before, the small and big throats are alternating around the cylinder. Just weird.

 

[Salmoneye]

Never mind...Missed the 'Canada' part...

Easily fixable by a 'competent' smith if you can find one...

 

[skidder]

Sorry to here the bad news BC .
I've heard of this happening before, but it's usually with the Ruger SA 45s.

 

[BCRider]

Yeah, it's an easy fix by almost anyone that is skilled at metal working. Heck, once my shop renos are done and the metal area is back in operation I might simply do it myself. But the opening of my new shop to full use is likely 4 months out yet.

If the Canadian reps say anything but "All costs will be taken care of" I may just do that or have my local CAS shooting smith do the work if I get impatient.

At least I've got the Redhawk and Super Redhawk to keep me going in the meantime Just gotta load up the test load batches again and re-run the accuracy tests.

 

[murf]

check out brownells for a manson throat reamer. no shop needed.

murf

 

[98Redline]

You could see of Ruger would allow you to just ship the cylinder to them to have it reamed to the correct size.

I don't think a cylinder would have any issues in the shipment over the border.

 

[BCRider]

Good points all. I'm still waiting on the reply from either one of the so called service centers up this way. If they don't respond I'm going to dig a little deeper.

The Manson reamer looks like a good bet if I have to end up doing this myself. The funny thing is that at .431 it's actually the same or a hair under what I measured the "good" throats out to be. And the pilot that comes with it is actually too BIG to fit the existing small throats.

I'm going to call my local smith that does all our cowboy guns as well as general gun smithing. For the time it takes if he has the reamer it's likely that I can simply get him to do the work for the same or even less than the cost of the reamer at $80 plus shipping.

The darn thing is that buried in my garage waiting for the shop renos to be done so that I can unpack "my life" is a nice set of adjustable reamers. In the end I may simply wait until the shop is back in order and do the work myself. We'll see.

Or I may end up checking with Ruger. But I suspect they'll insist on using their Canadian contact. Nothing wrong with that other than they seem to be a trifle tardy in responding. I know that the ITAR list pretty much includes everything gun related other than small things like screws and springs. Barrels, frames and even stocks are on the prohibited list. I suspect something as central to a revolver as a cylinder would fit on that list. So mucho paper work would likely be required.

 

[murf]

if the throats are that far off, you may want to check the timing. also, make sure the forcing cone is cut correctly. i have a 44spl blackhawk, bought new, that had very little forcing cone. had to send it to my gunsmith to cut it correctly.

sometimes you get lemons, even from ruger.

murf

 

[BCRider]

Good points Murf.

The gun was bought used and I've actually shot it quite a bit. And while it hasn't blown up or anything else like that and the lockup is snug with just a hair of play it would be worth making up a bore size rod to check the lockup indexing for sure.