A client brought in a pair of Ruby pistols to repair. They are proper POS indeed. Between my vow not to give up on any old guns from the great war and his determination to pay, I forged on. Almost done with the first one in .32 ACP. I noticed a few nicks on the crown, and proceeded to have it recut.
I used Brownell’s cutter with 0.300″ brass pilot. Problem was I couldn’t get the pilot into the muzzle. If I dropped the pilot from the chamber end, it went in and dropped free till the last 1/8″ or so. I didn’t have my pin gauges set with me, so I used drill bits to estimate the bore diameter at the muzzle. It seemed about 0.005″ undersized, or 0.295″. Then I noticed tool marks on the barrel near the muzzle. Looks like the muzzle was purposely rolled / hammered smaller to create some sort of constriction right before the bullet exits. See attached pictures.
Have you guys seen things like that? Thanks.
Pilot drops in from the chamber end
Tool marks
Pilot can’t go in from the muzzle end
It stops short near the muzzle
Can’t say what the marks are from, these pistols had a very iffy life. But you could ream the barrel the slight distance needed to bring it back to full diameter, though it might take some of the rifling out. Or you could not recrown and see how it shoots, or use a smaller pilot that fits. You could go bubba on it and use a brass round head bolt in a drill or Foredom and polish the crown with that and some rubbing or lapping compound. Jeff
Answer
Ruby .32……at this point do you still want to recrown/touch up the crown on it? Barrel could be choked, so you will need to figure out how you want to crown it. I am guessing you don’t have a lathe? Ken
Follow-up on question
No I don’t have a lathe, unfortunately. The barrel is choked? So the slight constriction was put there purposely? Thanks Ken. -TL
Answer
Possibly who knows…..Ruby .32 remember 😉 Ken
