bisleyfan41 said:You can't ream a 44 cylinder to 45 acp. The 44 case is larger in diameter than the 45 acp projectile. And with the 44 obviously being longer than the 45 acp, that portion of the chamber forward of where the acp would end to where the 44 ended would be oversize. Hamilton Bowen enlightened me on this.
BPGuy said:bisleyfan41 said:You can't ream a 44 cylinder to 45 acp. The 44 case is larger in diameter than the 45 acp projectile. And with the 44 obviously being longer than the 45 acp, that portion of the chamber forward of where the acp would end to where the 44 ended would be oversize. Hamilton Bowen enlightened me on this.
Ok, I must be missing something here. Ruger sells a Redhawk with one cylinder that works for both .45 LC and .45 ACP.
The cylinder is big enough to accept .45 LC ammo, which is bigger than .44 mag (diameter); yet, one can quite successfully chamber and fire .45 ACP in the same cylinder (with moon-clips, of course). The portion of the chamber forward of where the ACP ammo ends would therefore be even more "oversize" than a .44 cal chambered cylinder, would it not? Yet it works just fine with either .45 LC or .45 ACP ammution.
Why wouldn't the .44 cal chambered cylinders work just as well, properly re-chambered of course? As I said, I must be missing something.
Ok, I must be missing something here. Ruger sells a Redhawk with one cylinder that works for both .45 LC and .45 ACP.
bisleyfan41 said:The OD of a 44 mag case is ~.458" which is larger than the diameter of a .452" ACP bullet. Since the 44 case is longer than the ACP case, there would be a section of the rebored chamber (from where the ACP chamber ends to where the 44 chamber end was) that would be oversize for a .452" bullet. Not by much, .458 vs. .452. But enough that Bowen for sure won't use a 44 cylinder for a 45 ACP rechamber and probably other smiths as well. This would not apply to the throat as it could be properly sized; just the chamber area immediately before the throat. In the end, don't take my word for it; call up one of the smiths that do these conversions and they'll explain it to you.
s4s4u said:True, but that 45 ACP bullet has a lot of freebore to negotiate prior to reaching the throat.
Again, the freebore wouldn't be any different in a .44 mag cylinder than it is in the .45 LC cylinder.
Every "bad" thing would seem to be even worse in the .45 LC cylinder, yet the ACP works just fine there.