Rossi Rifleman

Reference this old thread: http://www.rossi-rifleman.com/viewtopic ... 5&start=10, I am well into boolit casting and I am now willing to putz with this rifle again.

The problem I encountered was/is the distance between the bullet guides are too narrow to pass a loaded round with the cast bullets I will need. Today, using some minus pin gauges the largest gauge pin that will pass between the guides was a .452" (.4518").

So there's the need, any folks out there with an R92 in 44mag who have pin gauges to measure the distance between the guides. Reaching down in there with calipers give a good estimate but difficult to be accurate. Just trying to determine if my guides are abnormally close together or not. And if they are, what should they be?

fyi: The guides I'm talking about are on either side of and above the ramp.

I have access to pin gauges at work. I’ll bring a handful home tomorrow and let you know what I find. I can’t promise that our set is complete in that range.

It looks like I may have solved the narrow guide opening without specific measurements or overt modifications. Today I did a complete disassembly and carefully examined the guide faces. For lack of a better description the guides appear to have been stamped out pieces with some slight ridges along the edges. I took a very fine file to them and knocked the ridges mostly off. The guides are either painted or blued and I was able file across their faces and not disturb the flat central black finish, which means I didn't remove any material except the ridges. Reassembled, I now have .4569" between the guides and my normal loaded rounds functioned perfectly. I even loaded a few dummy rounds with .434" bullets (my barrel slugs at .433") and they functioned as well.

For years I have been fearful of touching those guides and have never been able to try my own cast bullets. I gotta say I'm feeling pretty stoked right now.

Nice! I measured .458 with a minus pin.

I really appreciate the effort and the measurement. Is the .458" the pin or actual diameter of the pin? My Chinesium minus pins are a wee bit different from pin to pin so I usually mic them.

I may have to open my guides a little bit more later on. I'm shooting old Federal brass with too many firings to estimate (1985 vintage and still going). As is the three dummy rounds I loaded measure .4575", .4586", .4598". Fortunately the nose of bullet and brass ride the ramp up just ahead of the end of the guides. Will just have to wait n see after I load more than a few.

I didn’t mic these pins and I don’t know their country of origin. I can tell you that my .458 pin was a bit sticky in one spot, so a real Quality Engineer may have called it .457.