Bearcat Cylinders Too Tight Chambers, Too Loose Throats

Have gotten a few Bearcat cylinders in for throating, and also some complaints about not wanting to chamber certain brands of 22LR ammo.

I am finding these cylinders are not chambered at all, they are straight through bored in the vicinity of .2257" to .2262" or roughly thereabouts, with no taper, no hint of a chamber whatsoever.

This leaves me with the question of do I ream this cylinder so it will accept factory ammo? The Manson finishing reamer won't go very far into the back of the chamber, so this tells me it is going to remove quite a bit of metal, which will cure the finicky ammo issue, BUT.. This then leaves the cylinder with oversize throats, and accuracy is likely to suffer severely because of it.

Will Ruger address these cylinders and replace them with a cylinder that isn't shotgun bored straight through? I hate to waste a customer's money reaming a cylinder that is only going to shoot but so good with .226" throats.

Doug,

As you say, .22 cylinders except magnums actually have "charge holes" since 22s are the last of the heeled bullet cartridges (also they were the first).

All I've ever done is polished the charge holes to chamber all ammo brands, left the throats alone as far as throating. I've done Smiths and Rugers. Seems to be all they need to make them work well.

? Tight chambers I understand, but throats?


Is are you attempting an ammo brand-specific target gun from a production Bearcat? I'd say cylindrical is pretty much what i've seen any Bearcat cylinder (or any production 22LR cylinder from Ruger) is perfectly within tolerance - translation: no replacement need. There should be no measurable throat - even though some may expect to "see" a 0.001" taper...?

Side note - measuring to an accurate ten-thousandth of an inch is pretty much folly unless you employ humidity and temperature controls, etc. I have seen digital mics that display to the tenth (as a logarithm to "half" the third decimal value) but accuracy costs money and true-calibration is beyond most gunsmiths' checkbook anyway. But if it makes one feel more accurate....

Yup , straight through charge holes are the norm. Buy the ammo brand that works best in that particular gun and stick with it.

I have a few Bearcats and have only found one make ammo that will not chamber. That was Thunderbolt. Thankfully I do not have anymore of it. Never had a problem with anything else in either the new or the old models.