Reaming cylinders......

[Paladin UK]

Ho Pards,
Ol PUK wants a bit of help here,
I`m thinkin of reaming out the cylinders on my .....

.36 1862 Uberti Police

.36 1861 Colt Navy sig (Uberti)

..... ta make em a bit more accurate

Any suggestions as to size of reamer/s to buy would be much appreciated

Paladin (What needs info ) UK

[Coffinmaker]

First, slug the bore of the barrel.  The cylinder should be .0005 larger than the bore of the barrel.  If the barrel measures out to .375, then the cylinder should be .3755 and the forcing cone of the barrel will swage the bullet down to the grove diameter of the barrel for a nice snug fit.

Coffinmaker

[Fox Creek Kid]

No maker I know of holds tolerances to a ten thousandth. The thing you don't want is for the chambers to be smaller than the groove diameter. Beware, many Italian guns all over the map. I have an Uberti Navy that has a 0.389 groove diam.  The chambers were reamed to 0.389 & I buy 0.390 balls from Track of the Wolf. It's a pain. IMO if you have to go larger in size than commercially available balls then you'll regret it, unless you cast soft lead.

[John Taylor]

Most of the imports that I have looked at have oversize bores. A few months back I had an 1858 Rem. clone in the shop, customer wanted the cylinder reamed to the same size as his new R&D cylinder. I checked the bore on the old cylinder and found it was .450". The new R&D was .452". When I checked the bore of the barrel I found a groove diameter of .456". This does not make for happy shooting. After discussing it with the customer it was decided that the barrel needed to be replaced. A call to T.J.'s got a chunk of hammer forged barrel blank with a .452 groove diameter, only problem was it was left hand twist. Customer didn't mind so it was machined octagon and threaded to the action.  I test fired it a couple times and sent it off to the customer. He sent back a target with six holes that could be covered with a half dollar.