Model 1917

[jesseatamez]

Hello All,

Yesterday when at a friend's house, I was shown a model of 1917 45 ACP revolver. Now, here is the thing, the cylinder had no shoulder in it for the cartridges, indicating that it had been reamed. Ok well the only logical thing to ream a 45 ACP cylinder for is 45LC right? Problem is, as we all know, the cylinder is too short to accomodate the long colt round. On the rear face of the cylinder it appears as though someone has added to the cylinder!!! Is this possible? I know the gun has zero collector value, but I must confess to still being interested if these mutilations haven't ruined it as a shooter. The gun is in the 170,000 serial range, and has no star stamp to indicate a factory rework. Besides, the factory would have just replaced the cylinder anyway right? Anyway, after finally catchiny my first 5 screw I frame, I now have 5 screw N frame lust, so I am just seeking an opinion.

Thanks Much, J. Tamez

 

[Oldiron]

J. Check about half way down the thread page from this post and you will see a post 1917 rechambered to 45 colt and there is a lot of info there and a couple of the replys talk about building up the cylinder to match the rim thickness of a 45 colt ctg.
Larry

 

[Hondo44]

That's a not too uncommon "home shop" method of converting to 45 Colt. They work fine if dimensionally correct, however a reamed completely thru chamber is no longer a chamber but a "charge hole". The downside is that there's no longer a chamber throat so the bullet kind of floats it's way to the barrel throat and accuracy usually suffers to some degree. The other issue is that you can no longer shoot 45 ACP in it.

There's many threads about rechambering 1917s on this forum if you do a search. Here's a recent one with discussion on various ways to convert which also mentions the type you observed:

http://smith-wessonforum.com/s-w-ha.../206948-1917-smith-acp-rechamber-45-colt.html