Full Moon Clips in S&W 625-2

DMY

New member
I apologize in advance and also thank all of you in advance for indulging my repeated long-winded questions concerning my S&W 625-2. I like the gun and am looking forward to getting it back from my gunsmith after polishing the action. Here's my situation and question.

It came with and functions perfectly with the factory half-moon clips. I recently bought 20 full moon clips manufactured by Wilson and sold through MidwayUSA. They look great. However, when I load .45 ACPs into the full moon clip, the back end of the case (I would call it the rim, but ACPs are rimless), sits higher above the cylinder than when loaded into half-moon clips. The full-moon clipped bullets do not allow the cylinder to close, or if I can close it, the back of the cartridges rub against the back of the gun causing a lot of friction when the cylinder rotates. I do not have this problem using the exact same bullets with the half-moon clips nor with .45 auto rim cases without any clip. I am using old Sampson ammo cases with an "IMI" stamp or Frontier ammo with a "G.F.L." stamp on the cases.

The easy solution is to try or buy full moon clips manufactured by Ranch or someone else. However I have 20 of the Wilson's. I thought I would use a ceramic stone to remove a little off the Wilson clips to see if I can get the case and "rim" to sit a little lower in the cylinder. I saw a passing reference elsewhere that sometimes, you need to do a little filing on the full moon clips to make them work in some guns. My gun is still relatively new (less than 2,000 rounds) and is has a pretty tight fit in front of and behind the cylinder. Obviously, I don't want to modify the gun to fit these relatively inexpensive clips.

My questions are: Has anyone previously filed their full moon clips to make them fit a revolver? If so, do you remove the metal (in small increments) from the end of the outer two legs or do you remove metal from the circular portion inside the legs or both?

My logic tells me to remove it from the ends of the two legs, but I don't want to remove so much that it causes the rounds to fall out. I know there has to be some play for the loaded full-moon clips to work properly. Since these are my first set of full moon clips, I don't know how much wiggle is too much wiggle. Obviously, the answer is: add enough wiggle until it works. I thought I would seek the well-experienced advice from many of you who frequent this fine forum. Thanks.
 
Call Wilson or Midway. Give em the exact model of your gun and ask whats going on with the full moon clips. They will be able to help you out.

Ive spent a little time behind the trigger of a 625 running full moons and its a great way to reload. Much faster then a speedloader even
 
Can you try some Winchester or Remington cases and see if the problem goes away?

I suspect the grove in the cases (where the rim of the cartridge case is) is to thick for the clips you bought from Wilson.

Try some other brands of ammo first.

Deaf
 
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