New member, lost need guidance

AV8RMH · May 23, 2022

Howdy Folks, new member here from Grenada MS. My name is Mark Holland and have been an ag pilot for 44 years mainly in helicopters, I have collected guns most of my life and want to get into reloading black powder. The only experience I have with black powder is in muzzle loaders and I have a ruger vaquero in 44-40 and a current made 1873 winchester in 44-40 that I want to shoot black powder with lead cast bullets in. My vaquero is one of the mismatched ones with .425 cylinders and a .429 barrel. I would like to start with getting the cylinders reamed and have read great things about DougGuy and his cylinder work. Could someone please give me his contact information if he still does that kind of work. Thank you all in advance for any information, AV8RMH

contender · May 23, 2022

Welcome to the Forum! (And from an old Huey crewchief too!)

Ok, DougGuy does a great job,, as does another member,, "2 dogs"

To get to Doug,, go to the top of the page,, & look for the "Members" spot. It has a "down arrow." Click there,, and you can look up him by name,, on the left side of the page. I just checked,, and he hasn't been on the site in a bit over a month.

You can send him a PM from there.

Also,, I'll see if I can give him a "heads up" to look here for your post. He's also on another Forum I check daily. I'm not sure about how to get you two together over there,, so I'll have him check in here.

Or,, you can also call 2 dogs,, (Fermin Garza) with the phone number I'll send you in a PM here.

hittman · May 23, 2022

Welcome to the forum.

DougGuy · May 23, 2022

Click on the big "D" over to the left and then choose "start conversation" that will send a PM if I am not mistaken!

Yep common with the Ruger 44-40s. Usually the neck in the chambers is .445" so you then subtract 2x your case wall thickness, let's say they are .007" so .445" - .014" = .431" This would be the max boolit diameter you could use, but I often take these cylinders to .4305" and suggest the shooter size to .430" and this works pretty good. If your alloy is soft, with soft lube, .430" would be the ticket plus you may get a little obturation upon firing which would bump the lead up until it is confined by the throat walls as it is fired and it will exit the front of the cylinder at throat diameter.

AV8RMH · May 23, 2022

Hi DougGuy, Hope I sent you a PM to the right place. If not please send information where I need to send cylinder to you , the cost to ream cylinder throats to .4305 and do I need chambers opened to .447. Thank you, mark

DougGuy · May 24, 2022

I do not have a .447" reamer, and I just go by the math that I laid out, you have a little wiggle room in the neck using .430" boolits with .445" necks.