Re-crowning Colt Detective .38 Special

Darimian

New member
Dear all,

The crown of my Detective Special is slightly damaged:
  • 3 of the rifling lands are not evenly cut i.e. not evenly slanted compared to the 3 others
  • the crown itself is not evenly slanted, i.e. half of its circumference is somehow lightly burred, not as smooth as the other half

I was wondering what solution I could use to best fix it.

Should I use a 45° muzzle cutter to evenly and cleanly re-cut the whole muzzle including crown and damaged rifling lands at the same time, or rather try and lap the muzzle. Or both, cut + lap?

Should I use a steel or brass pilot when using the muzzle cutter?
What kind of lapping tool should I use - Would Brownells' Power custom brass muzzle crowning lap do? Or should I preferably use Brownells' 45° lapping cone (perhaps easier to use for the non-expert)?

Also, Using 90° or 11° muzzle cutters is excluded because of the barrel typical muzzle, only a 45° to 30° angle would do.

The revolver does not shoot too bad, in fact better than its muzzle looks - but I would feel better, and it could only improve accuracy anyway if I nevertheless fixed it.

Also, I should obviously have the gun re-blued after the re-crowning operation.

I would then take this opportunity to have the trigger and hammer colour case hardened - any comment on this one, since the trigger I think wouldn't pose any problem, but the hammer might as I believe hammers are already hardened, and colour case hardening it again would destroy it?

Thanks...
 
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