Click here to download the catalog as a PDF file. To view this site you need Adobe Flash Player and your browser must allow javaScripts. Go here to get the latest Flash Player. GUNSMITHING • HAMILTON S. BOWEN • SOME ESSENTIAL REVOLVER TOOLS Wheelguns need love, too. A s recently as 10 or 15 years ago, suppliers to the gunsmithing trade had precious little to offer in the way of tools and parts for dedicated revolver work. Even the catalog of America’s premier gunsmithing supply house, Brownells, would have implied the only handgun available for sale in the United States of America was the M1911. Happily for revolver junkies, that has changed. Custom builders and hobbyists alike will find useful tools, accessories and parts for both single and double-action revolvers from a variety of sources. In this column, we’ll touch on several which are basic to any serious wheelgun effort. They are simple to use and, while not necessarily cheap, costs are often amortized in less than the price of overnight, round-trip airfare to your favorite pistolschmidt, compliments of piratical common carriers waging war on innocent handgun owners. Perhaps the most basic tuning tool for revolvers is the forcing cone reamer. Forcing cones permit smooth passage of the bullet from the cylinder throat into the rifling with minimal distortion of the bullet. Think of the cone as a funnel. Many early revolvers didn’t have forcing cones and usually didn’t shoot for squat. Finally, after about 100 years of revolver evolution, manufacturers settled, with a few exceptions, on the ubiquitous 11-degree forcing cone. Many vintage revolvers will benefit from a forcing cone while those of more recent manufacture may need to have the existing cones trued up or rehabilitated. Pistolsmiths who fit custom barrels or new production must cut or recut forcing cones, too. Trouble is, tools to cut these cones into the breech end of the barrel haven’t ever been all that well executed until now. Manson Precision Reamers has introduced a forcing cone tool which has an integral spud for an interchangeable bushing which allows you to closely fit the pilot busing to the bore of your particular gun. Thanks to the precise fit, the tools cut smoothly and chatter-free and will true up poorly cut eccentric forcing cones which hurt accuracy. Bushings are available in .0005" increments through the usual range of production bore diameters. The T-handle driving wrench with spring-loaded delrin centering bushing makes this operation a snap. Also available are cutters to bevel the mouth of the cone and face the barrel’s breech end when fitting or opening a short barrel-to-cylinder gap. While many of us in the trade tend to cut forcing cones by eyeball, there is an optimal range of depth and diameter. A good way to check the allowable tolerance for mouth diameters is with a clever little plug gauge (available from both Brownells and Midway USA) with a step on the taper which shows immediately if the mouth diameter is in the generally accepted range. Throat Facts If there was ever an example of the glacial slowness with which revolver industry moves, it must surely be the matter of chamber throat diameter. Serious students of revolver accuracy have known for years oversized cylinder throats (relative to barrel and bullet diameter) are the kiss of death to revolver accuracy. After listening to shooters howling for decades about the problem, both Ruger and S&W responded by tightening up throat diameters. Alas, in many cases, they are now too tight. Not to worry if you shoot a Colt .45 SAA — cylinder throat diameters in these guns are still hideously oversize and reflect state-of-the-art understanding of the problem circa 1873. When bullets are forced through undersized throats, the bullets are swaged down to throat diameter. If they enter the barrel smaller than groove diameter, they rattle around in the bore, which does no wonders for accuracy. Worse, with cast bullets, poor bullet-to-bore fit allows high-pressure, high-temperature propellant gas to blow by the bullet, melting the lead next to the bore, turning it into solder which is applied to the bore. Subsequent shots add to these deposits and, in due course, guns which once shoot groups will start to shoot patterns. The cure is to open up the throats to the TheMansonPrecisionReamersforcingconeandchamferingreamersandspotfacingcutterare essentialtorevolverbarrelwork.TheBrownellspluggaugeishandyforcheckingforcingconedepth. 22 WWW.GUNSMAGAZINE.COM • DECEMBER 2009