a little over 3 weeks from our lion hunt and Murphy's Law

strikes again. I have 2 back up guns (just in case) and the way things have been cropping up lately I may need them. One is a non scoped 510 GNR loaded up balls to the wall with 350 grain soft points. My other back up is the stand by if something happens to my 378 GNR scoped encore. That gun is a 429 GNR in a scoped 8" revolver. It has been super accurate with no problems in this last few weeks up until today. Today I decided to run a couple more rounds thru it just in case. Second round in the cylinder was a dud with the bullet stuck in the barrel. That wouldn't have been good with a lion 10 feet away with having me for lunch on his mind.

I had had this problem before in my original 429 GNR Alaskan Hunter but thought I had solved it. The 429 GNR is based on a 454 case necked to 44. It is like a 44 Magnum Magnum. But the 454 case with the small primer causes problems if the gun has an action job with a lighter hammer fall. I had my 429 GNR Alaskan Hunter at the HHC several times thru the years and never had a problem.

Like on my Alaskan Hunter I had done a semi action job on this new gun smoothing everything out including lightning up the hammer fall a bit but not too much, I thought. Apparently I lightened up the hammer fall a bit too much and the hammer fall wasn't enough to set off those damned small primers.

To make the South African requirements for this hunt I had completely built a new gun considerably different from any of my other revolvers.




In the conversion we built a new 8" ported barrel (as 8" is the requirement for a hunting revolver), new cylinder with tight tolerances, exchanged my normal Bisley Gunfighter Grip for one of my Magnum gripframes with new red and black laminated grips. Refinished the gun with a satin Vapor Honed stainless finish with fire blue small parts, giving it sorta a red, white and blue look. We drilled and tapped the frame and added a Leupold base and rings with a 4X Leupold scope. To make it comply with my customs form I gave it a new name. It is now a Bad Medicine. But it is listed on my customs form as 454 Casull. That is because the South African registry has the 454 listed but not my 429. When we get back I plan on changing the gun's caliber shown on the gun back to 429 GNR. The gun is unusual as I don't have a gun with these features so I may leave it as is except for the caliber markings which will be shown as 429 GNR.

But in all this new conversion I didn't change the internals except for those necessary for a 5 shot conversion and the hammer spring that I lightened so that was my screw up. That lighter hammer fall wasn't 100% reliable.

To rectify this I took all the springs out and replaced them with new springs and one of the new heavy factory hammer springs. This should give the hammer fall that heavy factory slam which should set off even any of those small primers. I haven't loaded my hunting ammo for this gun for the hunt yet as that is this weekend's work. For that I will make sure and use the newest box of small pistol magnum primers I have. I am hoping this will solve any unexpected problems but I will run another 25 or so rounds thru it in the next 2 weeks and hope old Murphy is off bothering someone else.