After years of fighting lead buildup in the forcing cones and bores of my various .44 mag IHMSA revolvers, a transition was made to fast rifle powders. Scores haven't suffered, actually up some, and now no worries about "reseasoning" barrels after cleaning. Which can take longer than one would think!

All three .44s fielded this year threw 240gr Speer swaged lead semi-wadcutters with the 29-3s getting an additional wax/LLA coating to bump up the effective diameter for the big throats. The 629-6 only needs for the bullets to be tumble lubed with LLA or Ben's Liquid Lube (a modified LLA). (Same bullet prep that was done with the old pistol powder loads used previously.)
Something near on 3000 rounds launched this year in total.

So, at least ten matches with 29-3 #1 in Field Pistol, plus lots more practice sessions and we have the following with no cleaning since February. Almost all with a case full of Reloder7:






Some waxy buildup on the crown.


Lots of carbon and wax on the recoil shield, but no functional impact!


And a bit nasty on the underside of the topstrap.

Don't believe I will be cleaning the bore on this revolver. It's quite "happy" as is! The rest will get scrubbed, mostly to keep my hands cleaner whilst loading, etc.

In comparision, here's last year's state at the end of the season 2015 using mostly WW231:










The 629-6 isn't much different, even though it had near on three times as many rounds through it. More on that revolver later.