I was shooting my DW 44 today off the bags when suddenly the filler material from the bags started flying. Aparently I had the pistol to far forward & the blast cut a hole in the bag. This made me take notice of the cylinder/forcing cone gap & then endshake.

My pistol has about .003 of endshake. When setting the barrel cylinder gap with the feeler do you use the static position of the cylinder or push it back to the rearmost position?

I had been using the static position of the cylinder for years & never considered otherwise until today. Just curious what other folks do.

Thanks,
Bob

I'm sure you'll get lots of ideas, but this is what I do. I set my barrel back as close to the cylinder as possible in the static position, making sure the cylinder isn't binding on it. After I shoot it enough to heat up th barrel, I retighten the nut. That pretty much tightens things up and I don't remove my barrel very often.

On my DW 357SM I usually tightened the barrel down on the feeler gage and then backed it off until it would slip with a little friction. Then rotated the cylinder and adjusted for tight spots.
Bret

There have been DW barrels that liked being tightened and would not loosen. The nut they use isnt the strongest. A bit of anti-seize may save a stripped barrel nut.

Thanks guys.

My thoughts were thus. At the moment of firing the case obturates & grabs the cylinder walls. Recoil pushes the cylinder back before the bullet has left the cylinder resulting in a double the desired barrel/cylinder gap.

Or am I reading to much into this? It is possible I suppose that the bullet is gone before the cylinder starts its reward movement but then pressure is still lost from the increasing gap.

Bob

This thread is a bit old but I wanted to interject some long-time DW experience. My Monson M-45 dates from the mid-1980s when I was very active in IHMSA BB competition. I almost did not get one because so many of the other shooters I spotted for had problems with theirs - had to rotate the cylinder by hand, misfires, miss-indexing, etc. Fortunately I went ahead and purchased the M-45 and started shooting. Low and behold, I had no problems at all! Why? I followed the directions:

- The first step is to screw in the new barrel tube.
- Using the feeler gauge, adjust the barrel cylinder gap by snugging the barrel up against gauge.
- The barrel is snugged up against the gauge as it is held in place against the cylinder. The barrel is tightened until it is resting on the gauge, but still lose enough to allow easy removal. - The gauge is then withdrawn, as the gap is then properly set.

Note there is no preload on the cylinder, it is NOT pushed back against the frame. With the gap set this way you will not have any of the problems that plagued some of my fellow DW shooters.

Oh wait, what about the velocity loss through the barrel/cylinder gap? Not enough to worry about, a club member chronoed his M-44 and found that with the barrel snugged up tight against the cylinder with no end shake, the velocity was only 15 fps higher than with the gap set as mentioned above. More targets are missed due to monkeying around with a balky revolver than from a loss of a piddly 15 fps. Don't be fooled.


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I almost did not get one because so many of the other shooters I spotted for had problems with theirs - had to rotate the cylinder by hand, ... With the gap set this way you will not have any of the problems that plagued some of my fellow DW shooters.

My Monson DW 44 has this problem. I've tried resetting the B/C gap correctly, and it still binds and I have to rotate the cylinder manually. It appears to be a problem of the hand during carry up, but I don't know anyone I trust to take the revolver apart, and don't know where to get parts anyway. Does anyone have a suggestion?

Thanks, Tom

Old thread but new to me since I just bought a DW 357SM. A well known OH shooter who has shot big Dans for years told me of a trick to install barrels and set cylinder gap. Clean the threads at both ends of oil and do not use any Loctite. Put barrel shroud in freezer over night. Next day install barrel and snug up against feeler gauge so gauge can slide with slight resistance. Install cold barrel shroud and tighten barrel nut. Once the barrel shroud has reached room temperature it will have expanded and locked barrel nut in place. Barrel will not rotate when shooting. After using this method to install barrel you must place whole gun in freezer for about two days. Remove gun from freezer and either pout boiling water down through barrel or take a propane torch and play flame down barrel for about 10 seconds to heat up barrel. Nut can then be removed since shroud is still cold but barrel has expanded from heat. My SM gap was closing after I had set it and the freezer trick corrected that problem.