Okay, just took ownership of a 29-3 with a 4 inch barrel. Lockup isn't the tighest I've ever seen on a revolver but it's what most would say is typical for S&W revolvers. Fired about 60 rounds through the gun over the weekend and brought it home to clean it, looking at the cylinder face I see what appears to be the typical bright scrape trails as left by lead bullets when it "spits lead" out the barrel/cylinder gap. Thing is this, I was shooting only jacketed bullets and I'm not accustomed to seeing this sort of thing from jacketed bullets.
Being a magnum and not being used to the higher power 44Mag I'm not sure if this is typical even when shooting jacketed bullets, such high pressures could mean that even a little tiny bit of mis-alingnment would send jacket material shooting out to the sides even if it's a minute little piece. Is this typical from other people's revolvers? Is the jacket material still soft enough to not really worry about this.
Something else I noticed while looking at the cylinder face was that the scrapes all seem to be aligned from the outsides of the chambers in such a manner that when locked into position with the barrel these particles would be traveling upwards towards the topstrap, they don't show signs of traveling outwards in equal directions from the barrel or to the left or right. This kinda makes sense that if it's gonna shave material then it's gonna show signs of consistently doing it in one direction.
Sorry if it's not pefectly in focus, might play with the digital camera a bit more to see if I can clear it up but you get the point right? If I didn't know for certain that I was shooting jacketed bullets I would have figured it was just some tracks left by spit lead.
I'm left wondering if the forcing cone might be a little of concentricity and might be scraping the jacket material of the bullets at the upward area of the barrel by the topstrap.
Here's another pic that I'll just link, the light is reflecting on the cylinder a bit more so it appears a fair bit brighter.
http://home.bak.rr.com/varmintcong/cylinder2.jpg
Being a magnum and not being used to the higher power 44Mag I'm not sure if this is typical even when shooting jacketed bullets, such high pressures could mean that even a little tiny bit of mis-alingnment would send jacket material shooting out to the sides even if it's a minute little piece. Is this typical from other people's revolvers? Is the jacket material still soft enough to not really worry about this.
Something else I noticed while looking at the cylinder face was that the scrapes all seem to be aligned from the outsides of the chambers in such a manner that when locked into position with the barrel these particles would be traveling upwards towards the topstrap, they don't show signs of traveling outwards in equal directions from the barrel or to the left or right. This kinda makes sense that if it's gonna shave material then it's gonna show signs of consistently doing it in one direction.
Sorry if it's not pefectly in focus, might play with the digital camera a bit more to see if I can clear it up but you get the point right? If I didn't know for certain that I was shooting jacketed bullets I would have figured it was just some tracks left by spit lead.
I'm left wondering if the forcing cone might be a little of concentricity and might be scraping the jacket material of the bullets at the upward area of the barrel by the topstrap.
Here's another pic that I'll just link, the light is reflecting on the cylinder a bit more so it appears a fair bit brighter.
http://home.bak.rr.com/varmintcong/cylinder2.jpg
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