A mate and I sitting together at an auction last year spotted a matched pair of Uberti Cattlemen pistols in 44-40 on a table. We both shoot the calibre in rifles and reload for those, Rossi Puma 92s. Long story short, we bought one each at a good price. The handles had been badly customized but the pistols clearly had had little use. Estate auction. His he can reload for and chamber exactly as he does for his rifle, just a different charge, same bullet. With mine the same round will not seat fully in the chamber but binds down by the case mouth. Cylinder won't turn past halfway where the "boltface" if that makes sense, begins, a sharp little outset that continues up to the firing pin area. The rim jams there.
We both had Lee dies. Brand new Starline brass seats properly. Anything crimped with a Lee FCD will not chamber in mine but will in his. The three little ridges the Lee collets produce are enough to prevent full seating. Out with the FCD! I was loading in my Lee 5 hole turret. He was loading in his Dillon 550B. So I bought a new set of Hornady Cowboy dies and set them up in in my 550B. After crushing a couple of cases on the crimp stage I finally got to where 8 out of 10 rounds will chamber- just!
I've carefully trimmed to length and while I was using a little drill mounted Lee gauge and cutter, I moved to taking the trouble of setting up on my Lyman Universal. Made no difference. Also tried seating bullets a tad deeper..again no difference. I'm using a copper washed 200 grn RN from frontier, pretty much identical to a Berrys. Unlike the cast available to me they are very uniform factory sized.
My thought is the cylinder chambers needs polishing and or reaming. Comments, suggestions sought. Biggest difficulty will be finding someone competent to do the job properly.
Cheers.
John - New Zealand
