When Colt proofs their barrels, does anyone know the procedure involved?
Do they mount the barrels in a receiver, or in some kind of test fixture?
Do they feed the rounds from a magazine? And how many rounds are fired?
Thanks for any insights!
Last time I was there (1983), they dropped the new barrel into a special, very robust breech mechanism built into the floor, installed the new bolt into the other half of the breech, locked the two together, then hit the firing pin sticking out the top with a ballpeen hammer.
Then broke the new bolt and barrel out of this mechanism, and handed these to another operator a few feet away at the MPI machine station to do the crack inspection.
We (KAC) use a similar affair, but fire horizontally into an encased bullet trap.
When I visited Ruger in 1983, I was amaized to see them loading blue pills into all six chambers in revolver cylinders, and then shooting all six prior to MPI. This was very impressive to me after seeing special, heavily built fixtures being used for proof firing at other companies, when Ruger was firing six proof loads (bule pills) in fully assembled revolvers. Enugh said for the strength of their investment cast parts.
I subsequently bought several Ruger revolvers since then.
Also got to meet and have lunch with Mr. Billl Ruger, and that helped make me a Ruger fan as well.
Cool, thanks for the info!!
The reason I ask is I have several “new” Colt barrels that have what look like copper streaks on the feed ramps. I assumed this was from the proof-firing, but now it seems that may not be the case.
They are probably from Colt function firing the gun after it is completely assembled.
Yep, investment cast parts will never be strong enough to be used in guns. :rolleyes:
People don’t realize there are many different methods of casting and even a wider range in expertise and resultant quality of parts.
One shop’s cast parts can be much stronger than another shop’s cast parts.
Really, how dumb could Ruger engineers be to design a rifle chambered for 458 Lott with cast receiver…