I am new to this sport, and as such, I recognize that this "problem" may be of my own doing. This group seems to be quite knowledgeable so I am hoping for some insight.

I have a Governor that I have put about 500 rounds through. It has been a mix of PDX 410 and Winchester Long Colt - mostly the long colts. After each time at the range I cleaned the gun with Hoppes 9 and Winchester Gun Wipes. During a routine cleaning I noticed that the cylinder and barrel seemed to be taking a beating. None of my other pistols/rifles with the same number of rounds looked anything like this.







So, I sent the gun back to Smith and Wesson. They fired the gun, inspected it, and gave it a complete clean bill of health. There was a hand written apology on one of the checklist forms stating that the wear was normal and nothing they could do. The gun was returned to me in the same condition I sent it to them.

Went out to the range over the weekend and put 50 rounds of Winchester Long Colt through it. After cleaning it the barrel and cylinder now look like this:





Am I doing something wrong when cleaning? Is the ammo that I am using not correct for the gun? Is there a quality issue here? I look forward to some insight.

Looks full of lead to me . . .

__________________
Wisdom comes thru fear . . .

Those .410 shells will lead your barrel, there really not for plinking, are you using jacketed 45 LC ?

I agree, it's lead. Get yourself a Lewis lead remover or take an old 45 cal brush and wrap a strand or 2 of a COPPER (not just copper coated steel), scrub pad like a chore boy around it and scrub away. I've noticed that some of my newer s&w's don't like lead bullets and react the same way.

__________________
Jim

Appearance of shooting lots of soft lead bullets which will degrade accuracy until it is cleaned properly. Nothing wrong with the gun.

Excellent. Thanks much for the answers. I will go through the lead removing suggestions here and post some "after" pictures. Glad it is me and not the gun that is the problem.

What type of bullet is the Winchester ammo loaded with?

__________________
Tennessee

I have been using the Winchester 250 grain lead flat nose "Cowboy Action" long colt 45 ammo. Based on what the consensus seems to be around lead fouling I will be using a jacketed bullet in the future (after I scrub out the sins in the barrel now).

Thanks again for all of the insight. The gun is fine, my cleaning and inexperience was at fault.

There was a lot of lead in the barrel, so first I put about 50 jacketed rounds through the gun - sort of "shoot it clean". It looked like this before cleaning:



Then I used Hoppes 9 and a bronze bore brush and got these results:



The entire barrel now shines like new and the cylinder chambers look new as well.

Thanks again for the help

Looks good. I just bought a Governor myself about a month ago. Great gun. Really fun to shoot out on my country property.

I use plated, rather than jacketed, bullets in my Governor for the most part. When using lead, keep the velocity towards the middle range, this will reduce or eliminate leading. Try swaged bullets as well, or bullets with a higher Brinell hardness rating. Iften soft lead at high velocity will cause leading.