Hard Chrome Cylinder?

[TheBrick]

I have been dealing with the stop notches peening on the SS cylinders on a 625 which cause skipping chambers.

I was wondering if anyone has experience with having the cylinder hard chromed as a way with dealing with this problem.

Worthwhile or not?

Anyone have any other ideas to harden the stop notch area is welcome also.

[Toolguy]

Any kind of plating won't help. The plating is very thin and the material underneath will still be soft and deform. The best you can do is to gently hammer the material back where it came from. This will work harden it some but not much. Usually after 5 or 6 times of this it's time for a new cylinder. You should only have to do it once or twice a year though if you shoot a lot.

[Waltermitty]

If I had not been able to get the Ti cylinders my next step was to buy a blue steel cylinder and have that chromed. As tool guy says, the plating is very thin and while it will help with maintenance and possibly drag to a degree, it cannot overcome the underlying problem with the toughness of the stainless steel.

Again, I never tried it, but my expectation was that the regular steel cylinder would be tougher metalurgically, and a polished hard chrome would look good and be easy to care for.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Waltermitty

[bountyhunter]

I agree the carbon steel should hold up better from peening, not much you can do about the stainless characteristics.

There are wider cylinder stops available to accomodate the widening of the cylinder notch. That is just a problem the larger frame guns have, it is made much worse when people "snap cock" the hammer or snap the trigger. The mass of the cylinder slamming into the stop is the root cause.

It's pretty easy to fix cylinder skipping by smoothing down the edges and replacing the cylinder stop/spring if necessary.

[Carmoney]

Everything contained in the previous posts is true!

Years ago, as an experiment, I tried hard-chroming the original cylinder on one of my 625s. Waltermitty predicted that it would not stop the peening. He was absolutely correct. It eventually peened to the point that it needed a new cylinder.

I own multiple 25-2s with blued carbon steel cylinders, including two guns that have been shot a whole lot, and all of their original cylinders are still perfectly fine.

[TheBrick]

Thanks for the replies.I'm glad I asked instead of wasting my money.

I replaced one cylinder on my 4 inch 625 and the second one has skipped once already.

The second cylinder on my 5 inch 625 is holding up and I hope it will make it to the Nationals. I actually already fitted a replacement cylinder as a back up just in case.

Sounds like the best bet is to hunt down a carbon steel cylinder.

Thanks again.