Ruger Bearcat Cylinder Holes?

[.308 Norma]

Is anyone else shooting one of the newer Ruger Bearcats? My wife has a stainless Bearcat that’s only a couple of years old, and it seems like the cylinder holes are pretty tight. The Winchester “Power-Point” ammo she first tried to use to assassinate ground squirrels over at a rancher friend’s place the other day wouldn’t even fit half the time.
She ended up switching to Remington “Yellow Jacket” ammo, which in truth worked just as well for what we were doing - killing ground squirrels. But I’ve always liked Winchester “Power-Point” ammo in my 22 revolvers, and it was kind of disappointing to find out it won’t fit in my wife’s Ruger Bearcat.
Winchester “Power-Point” ammo fits in both of my old Smith revolvers, and I even ran a few rounds of it through my new Glock 44 the other day. It didn’t feed as smoothly as regular Winchester RN “Super Speed” ammo does in my Glock, but it did feed, and I even used it for killing a couple of close-range (about 10 yards) ground squirrels.
BTW - Neither my wife nor I are good enough with handguns to put a dent in our rancher friend's (over)population of ground squirrels this year. We used scoped 22 rifles on the ground squirrels that weren't within spitting distance.

 

[CajunBass]

What I have found to help with tight chambered Smith and Wesson 22's is to take a piece of "lead wipe away cloth" and cut small patches out of it and use those patches to scrub the chambers. Cut them just big enough to make a tight fit. They'll get filthy so you'll need a few. After that clean the chambers as usual, then repeat as needed.

Rather it will help in your case I don't know, but it won't hurt anything.

Now that I think of it, I have used it on my wife's single-six, and it helped there too.

 

[.308 Norma]

What I have found to help with tight chambered Smith and Wesson 22's is to take a piece of "lead wipe away cloth" and cut small patches out of it and use those patches to scrub the chambers. Cut them just big enough to make a tight fit. They'll get filthy so you'll need a few. After that clean the chambers as usual, then repeat as needed

Thanks CajunBass! I'll try that.

 

[Old Stumpy]

I own a New Bearcat and the chambers ARE tight. The powder fouling does cause chambering cartidges to become difficult.

 

[Kookla]

I have a newer adjustable sight bearcat. The chambers do seen tight. I find that the recesses for the rims get dirty quick.

 

[Riomouse911]

Some rounds are on the high side of spec, add those to low side of spec chambers and they’ll be tight... or not fit at all.
I had some older Xpert .22 loads that my Ruger semi-autos refused to feed. Even loading in the Model 17 was tough.

Stay safe.

 

[sparkyv]

My Dad lapped the tight chambers on my S&W M63 with 1500 grit sand paper. They'd get a little dirty with a few rounds, and the next cases were hard to extract, and fresh rounds had to be pushed in to bottom them out. The lapping did the trick.

 

[murf]

you can also put lapping compound on an oiled patch, put the patch on a worn out 20 cal brush, chuck the brush in a drill and smooth out those chambers.

luck,

murf

 

[chicharrones]

you can also put lapping compound on an oiled patch, put the patch on a worn out 20 cal brush, chuck the brush in a drill and smooth out those chambers.

luck,

murf

I had to do that to my Bearcat and Single Six. Both made in the last 10 years, if I remember correctly.

 

[Catman42]

ruger has a problem with too tight a chambers in many of their revolvers. i had to spend 135 dollars to have a new bisley reamed right. it shot horrible before the reaming and perfect after. it also would not load some ammo. they use worn out bit and reamers to save money. heard they may job cylinders out and their is little quality control on them. if you polish out the cylinders to the right size you will get a lot better accuracy. your bullets get slightly undersized when they come out of the cylinder and enter the barrel. makes for poor accuracy. ruger isnt the only one who is bad for this. a very short time ago i got a new smith 617 22 long rifle. two thing were wrong with it. the machine marks were so heavy behing the cylinder it would hardly rotate for the back of the cartridges catching on them. easy fix. small round file and a polishing wheel took out those machine marks and now it rotates very well. then the front of the cylinders were way way too tight. undersizing the bullet and giving poor accuracy. i took two days to polish them out. i compared the new smith to my old target smith from the 70/s and the 70/s cylinder was done right. ruger and smith are about the money and many of their guns are only 95 percent finished. luckly i know how to fix the last 5 percent. you can polish the cylinders out your self but if you do not feel comfortable with that you will have to have a gun smith do it. your revolver will be a lot more accure after it is done. dont look for ammo that fit, fix the cylinder. again ruger is really bad for this problem. i guess smith is going the bad route also. my uberti cattleman had a perfect cylinder right out of the box. shoot tight groups also. never had a uberti with a bad cylinder and i have several of them. the italians are doing it right.