Reeder Custom Guns - Blackhawk 41 GNR issue

I'm looking for suggestions. I picked up a Blackhawk 41mag with the 41GNR cylinder you worked in 2002. It appeared to be unfired or maybe just a few rounds. I'm having issues with the cases not fully seating in the cylinder. It's very hard to rotate the 41GNR cylinder and you have to help it when cocking the gun. The case heads are dragging on the breach face and it looks to me that where the shoulder meets the neck it is getting a line from the chamber. I'm full length sizing with a Hornady die and shell holder. Thank you in advance for any help.

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full length sizing doesn't get it. Run the sizer die down hard against the shell holder. Then back the die off and run it down about a quarter turn more so that when the die touches the shell holder it cams over about an inch. This way you full length size the case. The 44 Magnum cases rims vary a lot so to ensure the round is sized all the way you have to let the die cam over on the shell holder.

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send the cylinder to me and I will check it out. We have built literally hundreds of 41 GNR revolvers and extra cylinders and never had any problem that wasn't solved by doing what I mentioned above.

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I have had to sand down the top of a few shell holder’s a few thousand
To get the sizing right

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the variance in the thickness of different 44 Magnum rims we have to experiment to see what works best.

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for me so I shimmed the case and shell holder and that was what worked. Maybe taking .010 off the face of the shell holder is the answer.

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had a lever gun in 44 Magnum for those times when a rifle was needed. I was hunting on the Ft. Campbell base with a couple of military friends and I kept finding myself mixing up the brass for the 44 mag with brass for the 41 GNR. So I thought I would be smart and make it easier to tell them apart. I bought 500 rounds of nickel brass for the 41 GNR. I loaded up all 500 and took a hundred of them to a small range just outside Nashville. I loaded up the 41 GNR in my S&W model 57 and found it rubbed against the face plate a bit but not too bad. Then the next round was worse and from then on it was downhill. I ended up pulling all 500 rounds of the nickel brass as the rims of the nickel brass were about 10 thou. thicker than the rims in the standard 44 mag brass.
Since then I have checked the 44 mag brass before I used it as 41 GNR. Some brands of 44 Mag brass were as much as 20 thou thicker rims than normal, especially foreign brass like Norma.
So if any of you are loading 41 GNR, check the rims before you start. I have found 15 to 20 thou. variances in the rim thickness even in the same lots of brass, so it pays to check them first. Thank the Lord we only have to go thru the checking of the brass the first time we load them.

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your 30-30 based cartridges. Winchester seems to have the thickest rims.

Sean

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know Sean Harper, Sean is the ballistics man behind all the GNR cartridges. Sean did all the ballistics on the cartridges mentioned in both my books on handgun hunting plus all the ballistics in all 3 of my reloading manuals. So if Sean says the brass you use in your 8.9 Kropotchnick won't handle hot loads, believe him.

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years and I personally have never had any problem with that system. I have shown dozens of gun owners in our shop here how to do the cam over and once shown they have never had any other problems.

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Blackhawk 41 GNR issue

On most of the necked down cartridges for a revolver just

That should solve the problem but if it doesn't then

Some shell holders are thicker than others

Blake is right. Between the extra high shell holders and

Yep, the cam over wasn't sufficient

I had to do the same.

Many years ago I was hunting a lot with the 41 GNR and still

I noticed the same thing on 30-30 brass when loading for

You guys that are new and maybe don't

That is surprising. The cam over has worked for