Dan
These guns were designed to shoot Black Powder. They can shoot it all day long, as long as you understand the proper way to make up a Black Powder cartridge.
Take a look at these photos. The first shows the business end of the cylinder. Notice the nice prominent gas ring on the front of the cylinder. It stands about .170 above the front face of the cylinder. In the next photo the cylinder is lined up under the arbor it rotates around. Notice the helical grooves cut around the front of the arbor near where it is pressed into the barrel frame. Last, study the relationship of where the barrel cylinder gap is in relation to the front of the gas ring. They are not in the same plane, they are far from being in the same plane. By about .170.
What happens is when the gun fires, Black Powder fouling gets blasted out of the barrel cylinder gap. But since the gap and the front of the gas ring are not in the same plane, the gas ring deflects the fouling away from the arbor. Very little fouling gets past the gas ring. Those helical grooves on the arbor are the second line of defense. They are clearance cuts. Any fouling that manages to get past the gas ring winds up in the clearance grooves. Fouling in the clearance grooves will not cause the cylinder to bind. But the gas ring does its job so well that very little fouling gets past it anyway.
The other thing most shooters do not understand today is that special bullet lube is needed for Black Powder. Modern hard lubes do not work well with Black Powder. They combine with the fouling to form a hard crust that quickly fills the rifling, ruining accuracy. This crust also causes binding when it gets down inside the cylinder. I cast my own soft lead bullets for Black Powder. They are lubed with special Black Powder compatible bullet lube. It does not turn hard and crusty, it stays soft and gooey. My bullets have one huge lube groove that carries much more lube than conventional bullets. Any fouling blasted out of the barrel/cylinder gap and deposited on the cylinder will stay soft and moist because some bullet lube will be mixed in. It will help keep the cylinder rolling.
I can shoot this 44DA and my New Model #3 all afternoon with Black Powder loads and they keep right on ticking.
Unfortunately, when Uberti designed their modern replicas of the Schofield and the Russian, they altered the design of the gas ring. So did S&W when they reissued the Schofield in 2000. Those guns are not designed to shoot Black Powder, and they perform very badly with it, because the gas rings on them are too short. They usually bind up after just a couple of cylinders full of Black Powder rounds.
Regarding reaming a 44 Russian cylinder to 44 Special, although I have never done it myself, it should be a fairly simple job. The 44 Russian cartridge is the direct ancestor of the 44 Special. They are identical in all dimensions except the Special case is roughly 1/8" longer than the Russian case. Using the correct reamer, one would just lengthen the chamber the needed amount. 44 Russian cases were not available for a long time, but they are now, so I am perfectly content to load them up with Black Powder and shoot these guns in their original calibers.
|