Colt Cylinder Throats Dimensions current production?

[Virginia Gentleman]

I have read a few reviews of the current Colt SAA 3rd generation with the removable base pin bushing that found that the throat chambers on the cylinders are still oversized .456-.458" unlike the imports, Ruger and USFA.  Is this the case and if so why doesn't Colt fix this well known problem the makes accuracy with .451-.452" sized bullets?

[Drydock]

Be careful there.  All the imports have the large throats as well, while Rugers are known for having undersize throats! (Around .448-.449)  While Colt maintained the larger throats due to existing Cylinder tooling in the 1950s (Which the importers all copied) while using .45 acp barrel dimensions, in later years it is thought that the larger throats help maintain a larger margin of safety should someone slip in a high pressure handload.

So Colt has no real reason to change.  I'd rather have the larger throats than the undersize Ruger ones.  My Vaquero leaded horribly because of this until I had it reamed out.

The Colt SAA I bought this spring had .454 throats BTW.

[Virginia Gentleman]

Current Ubertis and Piettas all have properly sized .452-454" throats as does USFA. The imports may have had the same problem in the past, but not today.  The Ruger is another matter as they have had .451" bores with .450" cylinder throats which has become so common place that Brownells even sells a kit to correct this.  I believe Ruger has corrected this for current production of thier single actions.  S&W in their early model 25-5s in .45 Colt also had the oversized throats which did nothing for accuracy so they too have reduced them.  Not to sound like a wise guy, but the reason you give for the oversized throats as an added measure of safety for a high pressure round sounds a bit far fetched to me.  An oversized throat is not where the problem will occur if a high pressure load finds itself going off in a Colt SAA and it sure won't be of any help if the gun lets go from the pressure.  The oversized throats were a carry over from the blackpowder days and the .45 Colt's larger bullet size of .454" vs .451-.452 today.  I think this is a reason most Colt's with standard sized .45 Colt bullets I have seen are performing so poorly on the range. Yours sounds like it is sized correctly, perhaps from a worn tool that took off less metal.  Colt should correct this problem if it is still a standard practice.

[Doc Sunrise]

Mike Venturino has an article in the new G&A Handguns 2007 Annual magazine titled "Today's Single Action Army" that speaks about this problem directly for those interested.

[Virginia Gentleman]

Mike has pointed this out in the past and I find it incredible that Colt won't fix the problem like Ruger, S&W etc.