I am gonna do it.

[5of7]

I am gonna shorten the 7-1/2" barrel on my 480 SRH to 5-1/2".

I hesitate to try to unscrew the barrel myself, lacking the proper tooling to do so without scarfing up the barrel and warping the frame. Without removing the barrel so that I could put it into a lathe for crowning, I think I will just let a pro do it for me.

Who is a good guy to send it to and how much does he charge? 8)

 

[georgem]

Take two pieces of hard wood ~ 2"x2"x2", clamp in a vise, mic your barrel near the frame, drill a hole slightly smaller than your barrel, centered where the wood meets. Remove ejector hardware, cylinder and pin. Coat barrel and semi-holes with rosin. Clamp barrel tightly near frame in a vise. Strike frame/barrel juncture in an area hidden by the ejector rod housing with a hard punch to make a "witness" mark for reassembly. Insert hard wood "thingy" (I use a 1"x2"x15" piece of wood or a hatchet handle) in cylinder/frame opening, and unscrew the barrel, they are right handed threads. Cut and crown barrel. Desolder and clean front sight. Reassemble in reverse. Resolder the front sight with Brownells 44 low temperature solder. I speak from experience.

George M.

 

[mike7mm08]

Heard numerous times that removing SRH barrels is a major biotch with good possibility of frame thread damage. I would leave it to a professional.

 

[georgem]

I kinda read "SRH" as "SBH". I will defer to mike's experience

 

[M'BOGO]

Don't know exactly where you're at, but if on the south east side of the drop it at Mag-Na-Port, they do a lot of work on SRH's. They are reasonable, and their reputation is deserved.

 

[Arokcrwlr]

I had mine done by Jim Stroh. Before he accepted the job he said the same thing about the SRH barrel being hard to get out with the possibility of thread damage.

IIRC, Mr. Stroh's price to cut/crown the barrel was somewhere around $80.

 

[Rumrunner]

Magnaport does this conversion and have a picture on their site.

 

[seasterl]

When crowning the end of the barrel, how does the smith do it so that the rifling is not messed up and affect accuracy? I always wondered about that.

 

[5of7]

Don't know exactly where you're at, but if on the south east side of the drop it at Mag-Na-Port, they do a lot of work on SRH's. They are reasonable, and their reputation is deserved.

Excellent idea, I will do that. I like the idea of them being local....more or less since I live about 25 miles So. of K-zoo.

 

[Tommy Kelly]

My son has done several for me on regular blackhawks and he doesn't remove the barrels. He uses a crowning tool from Brownells and does the crown by hand. He was soldering on the sights but now has gone to the screw type sights and likes them better. The crowning tool has a guide that goes into the rifling and protects it and keeps the crown true. At 5 1/2" you will have plenty of room in front of the frame to replace the sight. I am having a super redhawk 480 cut down to alaskan size as we speak and it has to be milled out in the frame to put the front sight back I sent it to Scott Boger at Performance Gunworks to have it done. It should be here any day now. I cant wait to see it. Scott's price was very reasonable I thought. I haven't seen his work but will post pictures when it comes in.

 

[M'BOGO]

Don't know exactly where you're at, but if on the south east side of the drop it at Mag-Na-Port, they do a lot of work on SRH's. They are reasonable, and their reputation is deserved.

Holey sentance fragment!

Don't know exactly where you're at, but if on the south east side of the state,drop it at Mag-Na-Port.

Was what was meant.

They are about ten minutes from me, with traffic, so never a shipping charge to go there.

 

[Bob R]

I think a 5.5" would be perfect. I have both the 7.5 and 9.5 Inch models myself. A shorter barrel should make holster carry much easier. If I had one shortened it would probably be my 7.5.
Not messing up the Target Grey finish would be something to think about also. Not an issue on the SS 44 Mag.

Keep up posted on how this project is progressing. Also on how they address not messing up the finish.

Bob

 

[MaxP]

Jack Huntington removes .454 and .480 Ruger SRH barrels. Ruger used a special glue on the threads and they are very difficult to remove. He built two custom SRHs for me, the last one in .500 Linebaugh with a 5-inch barrel. It's a good length as far as balance goes with the SRH. Lee Martin has the .500 now and loves it. I would personally let a pro do it unless you feel really confident.