questions on 500 S&W revolvers

[ohnomrbillk]

Who is shooting a 500 S&W? I was curious on how they were holding up.

The reason I ask is that I had a 629 that survived about 20k mild loads before it got loose. My next was another 629, that after 5k rounds on the buffalo bore heavy 44 level, was getting pretty loose. I've been a great deal harder on some Rugers, and haven't had one loosen up on me yet.

If I buy a John Ross 500, what kind of round count could I expect to get out of it?
Thanks for the input,
Bill

[joej]

I’ve got a couple 500’s – a 4” Smith and the 5” Ross. Mine are still tight after more than a 1,000 rounds through each and I fully expect these revolvers to last at least 50,000 rounds. I say this, as when I was e-mailing back & forth with Ross, I believe he advised me he had over 20,000 rounds through his and the forcing cone looked new. These puppies aren’t just a walk in the park at 50,000psi, so I would think most throttle back and it would be similar to a Model 27 shooting 38 wadcutters, as far as abusing that revolver. The accuracy is fairly good as well, but I never shot them scoped yet – that will change this spring. I found the cylinder throats on the 4” model to be 0.4995” but the Ross measured 0.4985”. As a comparison my BFR 500JRH have 0.5005+” throats and the 500 Maximum throats are 0.5125”. I sent the Ross cylinder to Jim Stroh to be reamed to 0.501” – I don’t know if that will improve anything but I’ll find out soon enough. The JRH using 0.501” cast bullets and the Maximum using 0.512” bullets shoot extremely well.

[bigbores]

Well, my 2 x-frames seem to be holding up so far, but Ive only got 2k rounds through my 2 3/4"er and 5k or so through the 8 3/8"er.
My BFR is looser than when I first bought it and its got 10k rounds through it.
Ross seems to shoot them more and push them harder then most everyone else, whats he saying about them?

[Lee Martin]

I have an early 8 3/4" 500 S&W. It's held up fine to mid-level HS6 loads and a fair amount of heavy 440s over H110. Mine has seen less than 1,500 rounds, but I believe John Ross put 20,000 thru one in a year and a half without incident.

I do recommend staying clear of Lil Gun powder. As with other revolvers, it's hard on forcing cones. I say that because when it came out, a lot of 500 Mag reloading data promoted Lil Gun (folks cited higher velocities and less felt recoil). Both my X-Frame and 500 BFR seem happy with HS6 & H110/W296.....H4227 proved accurate too.

-Lee
www.singleactions.com

[joej]

I think that might be good advice relative to Lil’Gun with the 500’s.
Here’s a quote from Bob Baker that he made on the Graybeard forum on August 20, 2009.

“We have seen numerous barrels damaged by using Lil Gun. According to customers, some had as few as 30 rounds using Lil Gun through them, some had several hundred. Before we figured out what was happening one customer had sent his gun in for a new barrel. Then 600 rounds later it came back for another new barrel.

A couple years ago we did a test with a M83, .357 Mag. using Hornady 180 gr. bullets. We loaded 50 rds. of three different loads. One was a heavy H-110 load and the other two both used Lil Gun in different quantities.

We fired the H-110 loads first, then cut off the threaded end of the barrel. Rethreaded the barrel and shot one of the Lil Gun loads then rethreaded the barrel and shot the last Lil Gun load.

We found even the light load of Lil Gun caused the gun to get extremely hot. The heavy Lil Gun load had the gun so hot the only place we could touch the gun was on the grips and they were very hot.

Under magnification the surface appeared to have heated to a point of flowing using the Lil Gun loads and the heavy load was worse than the light load. This is probably due to Lil Gun having about 10% more nitro glycerin in it than H-110.”


After reading Baker’s comments I started to pay a little more attention to barrel heat after which I found the barrels of my 500’s were a little warmer to the touch after 5 shots than the other powders that I’ve used which are: N110, N120, H110, IMR4227. On the 500 Maximum, the barrel was actually hot after 5 rounds fired in about 2 minutes. The barrel on the Max is normally on the warm side when fired that fast with full on loads. I’ve called Hodgdon and was informed Lil’Gun’s flame temperature is the same as H110 and won’t cause accelerated forcing cone erosion or barrel damage. I did find an article that described a Lil’Gun recall on one powder lot (lot# 103080221) which had a much faster burning rate than “normal”. I have a different lot number. I don’t think burn rate and flame temperature are the same, so it may have no bearing on the discussion. Lil’Gun shoots pretty well and it would be a shame if it turns out it’s the powder and not the barrel metal that’s causing the problem. I’ve read several posts where 500 Smith owners have not experienced any problems whatsoever using Lil’Gun after a couple thousand rounds fired, so it seems to me at the moment the jury is still out, as the problem seems to rest mainly with FA barrels. I'll still use Lil'Gun every now & then for velocity/accuracy comparisons over a chronograph working up loads. I won't shoot the powder on a regular basis until numerous frequent users of Lil'Gun report no harm after 5K or more rounds down the same barrel. Any Lil'Gun users out there?