Revolver Key Holes

K

KEYBEAR

New member
My son has a Revolver given to him (father-in-law)
He shot it last Sunday and it has a problem .
It is a 44 Mag short barrel and Key Holes every bullet .

He was shooting 240 gr. lead Sized at 430 with 10 gr. of Unique .
It shoots jacketed bullets fine ,

The cylinder is fine a Jacketed Sized at 430 just falls through the throat but tight . The barrel has very good (looking) Rifling and a lead bullet at 430 pushing through the barrel has rifling marks but not real deep around 0.11 ?

Any thought
 
There is really only one cause of keyholing, the bullet is not being stabilized. Usually that means the bullet is not taking the riflling due to being too small, or too soft (stripping lead). Is it possible to recover a few of those bullets by shooting into a water tank or a snow bank (you don't say where you are, so if you are in, say, Miami, forget the snow bank)?

Jim
 
I am in Indiana so we do have snow .(lots)

I have a range in the back yard .
I shot some coated lead bullets into sand and the coating is not totally gone .
I am looking at the bearing part of the lead and it still has 40% of the coating . It does shoot jacketed fine but Keyholes every lead bullet .

I shoot SNS castings bullets and they shoot great in my 44 mags .
 
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If the recovered bullets don't have clear and deep rifling marks without signs of skidding, they are somehow not right.

Jim

P.S. Ordinarily we (MD) wouldn't come close to Indiana (at least the northern part) in snow, but this year, we caught it good. :(

Jim
 
This has been a great winter .
We have not had a lot of snow (got 8 inches today ).
Last week was warm Saturday was 64 and we shot a bunch .
I think we have had 4/5 days blow zero all winter .

As for the Revolver I do not think it is worth a lot of work to make it shoot lead .The cylinder would need opened up for bigger bullets .
I am thinking 432 just looking at what things look like .

I really think I need it to shoot Jacketed well and it does now .
My son is 45 years old and more of a hunter .
He is good with a handgun and takes a lot of game with one .

He and I have other guns that shoot lead well .
 
I bet James is thnking the same as me in that some photos of recoverd bullets would help. Your loading of Unique is a bit light as I would be loadimng them 11.6 -12.6. Is the Unique burning clean and are you using magnum primers?
 
Upping the load will do the trick. Sounds like the bullets are not being stabilized at the current speed. Try to add .5 at a time to see if you solve the problem.
 
Unique 10gr. burns as clean as it can ? I have used this powder and that load for a long time with zero problems till now ?

It is a Ruger would not ever be my choice but a free gun is always a good thing . I think we will save it as a packing gun and only shoot jacketed bullets in it .
 
Keybear,

I bought a Redhawk years ago that shot under an inch at 50 yards with American Eagle 240 grain ammunition. Surprised me and impressed a friend so much that he bought a copy. We could barely keep his copy on a paper plate at 25 yards. So, we sent it to Ruger with a note from me explaining that I got great accuracy from my copy but not his, just so they knew this wasn't a shooter problem. They returned it with a note saying they'd reamed the cylinders. It shot fine after that.

If you return the gun to Ruger it will cost you the $75 or so for shipping, but they will make it right without charge unless you've obviously damaged something. This has the advantage that if they do something like ream the chambers or change the barrel, they will be able to put a matching finish on whatever they've done.

As to the keyholing, either the bullets aren't spinning fast enough or they are being unbalanced going through the gun. I've twice run into handguns that were keyholing standard ammunition, one a Dan Wesson .357 kit gun, and the other a S&W model 41 .22 RF pistol. In both instances, the cause was the same. You could see, looking at the barrel or at a recovered bullet that the rifling was unevenly deep on opposite sides of the bore. The Dan Wesson kit gun had three barrels, and the 6" and 2" shot fine. It was the 4" that was out. The other two barrels had rifling 0.004" deep all around. The 4" had it 0.002" deep on one side and 0.006" on the other. So the rifling broach or button (don't know which process they used) traveled off-center up the bore. I never got to measure the m.41; I could just see it was off and needed to go back to the factory. But the Dan Wesson, since it shot fine with the other two barrels, isolated that rifling depth issue as the cause of the keyholes.

Again, if you send it to Ruger, they will find and fix the problem, whatever it is. The only drawback I am aware of to returning a gun to the factory, other than the obscene shipping cost, is that, for liability reasons, they will return the gun in factory spec in all other regards. For me that means, if you have a good trigger job, take those parts out, put in some other parts for the return because they will do that for you if you don't, but will keep the trigger job parts as unsafe to return to the customer. You will get a strictly factory trigger back.
 
hartcreek

Thank You I just loaded some a little hotter 11gr. Unique and Penn Bullets at 240gr and sized to 432 .

Also loaded some with AA9 18.5gr. And 240 SNS bullets sized to 430 .

I do know the bigger bullets will not help as the chambers leads are 430 .
It will be a day or two before I can shoot any thing as the snow is deep .

I have sent three Rugers back for work and know about trigger work ??
 
Just for kicks, if you can do it, measure the chamber mouth at the front of the cylinder. If a bullet exits the case, then is squeezed down below bore diameter of the barrel, you will get keyholing because the bullet is too small for the barrel, no matter its diameter when it was loaded.

Jim
 
James K

I did check the throats and 5 are 430 and one a bit smaller .
Yes any bullet (lead) that you shoot out of a Revolver bigger than the throats inter the barrel the size of the throat .

That is the reason I need to think about working on this firearm . It I open the throats what will that do to shooting Jacketed a 430 bullet for a 44 Cal .
Looking at what I have I would need to open the throats to 432 (maybe)

I really think I/we have other guns to shoot lead . I shot a lot of lead last year I bought over 8000 cast bullets .
 
Any leading when shooting the cast bullets? I have the same thought as a few others. The throat may be too tight, making the cast bullet undersized for the barrel. Jacketed bullets can be smaller than groove diameter and still maintain accuracy. Cast bullets almost always have to be slightly bigger than the groove diameter.

I would slug the barrel and compare the reading to the throat diameters. If the throats are smaller than the groove diameter, you may need to ream the throat for shooting cast bullets.

-TL
 
My Ruger super red hawk does not shoot specials well at all. It fouls the bore. Add more power to bump the slugs into the barrel and life is good, no leading and great accuracy with home cast. I only shoot magnums out of my SRH and only specials out of my Bulldog or Smith 624.

David
 
I have shot very little Jacketed and less 44 Special and it does shoot them well . The Throats are .430 and so is the barrel .

As for more powder (speed) Using Unique I load 10,2gr. Max is 11.7gr.
Bullets are running over 1000 FPS .Should be OK .

I did load some with AA9 yesterday and will shoot them soon .
 
Jacketed bullets are tough enough to do some self-centering in the forcing cone, so a slightly oversize throat doesn't seem to bother them.

My 1" RH, actually only does under an 1" for 5 out of 6 shots with one chamber always low and right. The barrel's groove diameter is right at about 0.429". As it came from the factory (the way the group below was shot), all throats would pass a 0.430 pin gauge, five would pass a 0.431 pin gauge, and one would pass a 0.432 pin gauge. That last chamber throat was three thousandths over groove diameter and was responsible for the flier in the group below, shooting 0.429 jacketed bullets. But clearly, up to two thousandths over groove, there was no issue. And, even including the flier, for a 50 yard group (off bags with scope sight), it isn't bad. On Target says the 5 shot cluster is at 0.685" diameter, C.T.C., while that last one opens the group to 01.495".

Redhawk%2050%20yd%20Target%20reassembled_zpssmf07lw2.jpg


Anyway, in your shoes I would not hesitate to open the cylinder throats to 0.4310" (Dave Manson's standard throater for 44 cal, as sold by Brownells). Then you are set for lead bullets whether you ever shoot them or not, though you will want to get them sized to 0.4305-0.4310" for best effect. Hornady makes all their jacketed 44 cal bullets 0.430", so if there is any element of imbalance affecting your group size, shoot those.

Now, does that mean this is all you have to do? Alas, no. My RH also happened to be one of three at the shop at the time I got it, so I was able to pick the one timed to best center the chambers in the bore and that had the most even looking barrel/cylinder gap. In addition, after that group was shot, I hand lapped it to remove a bore constriction at the frame for shooting lead. I did not firelap it because wanted to be sure the bore kept the dimensions that produced those 5 good grouping shots. So I lapped the rest of the bore only using 1200 grit SC lapping compound followed by some Flitz, just to smooth the rough spots a little.
 
"There is really only one cause of keyholing, the bullet is not being stabilized."

I, years ago bought a new benchrest barrel for my rifle and the bullets keyholed After going home I ran a tight patch in marking the cleaning rod and seeing it make one full turn marked it again to check the twist. It was way slower than I had ordered and they had to replace it.
I doubt this would be the case though from a factory pistol.
 
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