.45 ACP Barrel And .45 Colt Cylinder. Are They Compatible?

Wyatt Burp

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I have this beater Colt N.S. in .45 Colt. Would a 1917 .45 ACP barrel (.452?) jive with a .45 Colt cylinder dimensionwise? If the chamber mouths measure as high as .454 would there be any safety issue sending a bullet down that tighter bore? I would use lead bullets I have on hand, hardness unknown.
I take for granted accuracy might suffer but wonder if there's any other potential problem if I put that barrel on that gun. Thanks.
 
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This might be the wrong place to be asking about Colt New Service revolvers.
 
As merely a semi-informed opinion, I would have doubts about the potential accuracy of an old .45 Colt cylinder with a .45 ACP barrel. The reason being the older .45 Colt cylinders tended to have .456" or so chamber throats. The .45 ACP barrels tended to be more in the range of .452". IMO the reason my S&W 25-2 in .45 ACP works, in spite of a .456" chamber throat, is because the .45 ACP case is so small the large pistol primer blasts the bullet through the throat and across the barrel cylinder gap into the forcing cone before the power pressure has risen enough to cause trouble with blow-by. If the barrel is good, and the chambers have good alignment, you can get good accuracy, like my 25-2.

In .45 Colt, the case is large enough that the pressure of the primer is attenuated by the volume and powder charge. The bullet is moving from the primer discharge, but the powder burn catches up with it before it exits the cylinder. Blow-by of the hot gas around the base and sides of the bullet are often detrimental to accuracy. One way around this is to use a large, soft, preferably hollow base bullet that will open to throat diameter, then be swaged to bore diameter by the barrel forcing cone. That is typical of several factory .45 Colt loads. I just wouldn't try to hot rod it with flat base, hard cast bullets.

Or I could be totally wrong and it works great.
 
I had a Colt New Service in .45 Colt that had the barrel cut back to 2 1/4 ". I had the original cut barrel replaced with a 1917 barrel and it worked just fine.

Bill
 
I have an M1909 .45 Colt New Service with an M1917 .45 ACP barrel installed. Accuracy is good, but not exceptional.
 
Thanks for all the help, everyone. From what I got here, accuracy might not be great, but there's no safety issues in terms of bullet diameters and pressures.
Now I have a new question. If the 1917 barrel was made with jacketed ball ammo in mind, is the rifling adequate, or deep enough for lead bullets to work good in it? Just wondering.
 
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