RE: Cylinder should rotate freely

by bj , Saturday, January 05, 2013, 19:43 (4342 days ago) @ FOG

The cylinder rotates freely when everything is in its place.

It doesn't when:
• the base pin is withdrawn,
• the base pins gets slightly out of hand and rotates a bit,
• the flange of the base pin "jams" up against the barrel as described.

This indicates that there is a problem somewhere other than the base pin being loose in the frame. The cylinder should not try to rotate the base pin no matter how loose the base pin is. And rotation of the base pin should not tie up the cylinder. I've seen Rugers with loose enough springs/plungers that the base pin could back out slightly from recoil, but the gun will still operate and not lock up.

With the gun at half cock the cylinder should rotate freely. You can try this and rotate the cylinder as you rotate the base pin or move the base pin back and forth and find out when and why the cylinder is binding. If the hole in the front of the frame is REALLY big and allows the base pin to move sideways significantly then the cylinder could start to bind up on the barrel extension or top or bottom of the cylinder window, something like that. I haven't seen this happen from wear but maybe someone really messed with the frame. If your base pin pulls out about halfway from recoil then you will see a gun get harder to cock but I haven't seen one that locks up. If it is that bad then a base pin that is half a froghair bigger than the standard base pin won't fix it, and the 0.001" that the BeltMountain base pin is bigger is a very tiny amount. And if the base pin is rotating because it is dragging inside the cylinder, a bigger base pin will make it worse.