Rechambering?

A

Aguila Blanca

Staff
Some years ago there was a gentleman who advertised on the Internet a service to rechamber single action revolver cylinders. He has apparently retired. I have a cylinder I need to get reamed out from .44 Magnum to .45 Colt. Does anyone know of a service that can handle that -- affordably?
 
Check with Mark Hartshorne/Pinnacle High Performance Guns I'm sure he could handle it for you. He's done work on several revolvers for me, including rechambering a S&W 360J.
 
Just out of curiosity, what is the motivation to do this?
It would have to be expensive to accomplish, changing cylinder and barrel to another caliber.
Just wondering.
 
g.willikers asketh:

Just out of curiosity, what is the motivation to do this?
It would have to be expensive to accomplish, changing cylinder and barrel to another caliber.
Just wondering.
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While I fully understand, and appreciate, your question, sometimes just "want to" is sufficient reason for a custom rebuild. As to rechambering from a .44 Magnum to a .45 Colt, one may have a plentitude of .45 Colt components on hand, maybe already have the barrel. Swapping out a barrel on a Single Action revolver is not too great a task for a good 'smith, nor is reboring a cylinder. So, for example, one could have a Super Blackhawk in .45 Colt.

And, project guns are just FUN!

And, for project guns, nobody counts the cost, only the money.

Bob Wright
 
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Bob's right, sometimes projects are just for fun with no practical reason to do it. Now, when I had my 360J done I was an LEO looking for a lightweight 9mm snubby for a BUG but no one made them, all the ones available were around 22oz. When mine was done I had the 13oz 9mm snub that I wanted. That was all business.

Right now I'm having one done that's just for fun because I had the base gun and got a good deal on the conversion parts. I sent Mark Hartshorne a beater S&W M28 .357mag, along with a titanium .41mag cylinder I got from Numrich's for $85 and a nice 4" M58 barrel I found on ebay for $80. He'll be sending me back a 3" RB .41mag M28, think 3" M13 on steroids! When it's done I'll have $600-$700 or so into the conversion, not including the gun itself, but, what the hell, I'll be the only kid on my block that has one. It should make and outstanding car and hiking gun.
 
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Drifting a little without straying completely off-topic, this leads me to wonder if a Colt SAA in 357 could be safely bored out to 41 Magnum? Would there be enough metal left to the cylinder walls to accommodate full power magnum loads?
 
I don't know what the OP's motivation is, but one possibility is to get a line bored cylinder with exact throat diameters for best accuracy in a .45 LC smokeless gun.

Pathfinder, I think there is such a thing as a .41 Magnum SAA but it is a marginal revolver. The cylinder steel will hold but the action might get shaky.
 
But I already have the cylinder -- all I want is to find someone who can bore/ream it out for me.

If the cost of doing that is going to approach the price of a new cylinder, I'll just buy a couple of drill bits at Home Depot and do it myself. It won't be "right," but it'll work.
 
Pathfinder45:

Drifting a little without straying completely off-topic, this leads me to wonder if a Colt SAA in 357 could be safely bored out to 41 Magnum? Would there be enough metal left to the cylinder walls to accommodate full power magnum load?s
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Some years back Elmer Keith opined that would be not only feasible but practical.

Bob Wright
 
"...a couple of drill bits at Home Depot..." Isn't what you need. And it won't work. You need chamber reamers, not drills.
However, machining time runs over $100 per hour plus set up time. Plus the cost of any special tooling that you get to pay for but not keep. And cylinders are hard things so you'll have to extra pay for that too.
Anyway, reaming the cylinders won't matter if you don't change the barrel too. A .452" bullet won't fit into a .429" hole.
Oh and "I wanna." is reason enough.
 
"I wanna." is reason enough.
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I don't dispute this in any way, I've done it myself more times than I care to admit, but at some point the loud banging of reality at the door, weighing the merits of cost vs whim, becomes a knock hard to ignore. In this case, I would have to assess the cost of the project vs the cost of a nice, used revolver chambered in .45 Colt and decide which makes more sense-not forgetting the caveat of good sense being trumped by "I wanna". ;)
 
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