Smith 929 accuracy loads

[AzShooter]

Go to .358 bullets and shoot a modest load of 2.8 - 3.0 grains of N320 and you will amaze yourself.  You forcing cone needs to be cut by a professional unless you are familiar with the right tool.  I had to buy two cutters from Brownells.  The first one wouldn't cut and just wasn't sharp enough to work.  The second one did a most excellent  job.  My groups were well under 2 inches at 25 yards and around 3- 4 at 50.  This is testing with an old Weaver scope on a good sand bag rest.  

 

My OAL was 1.16.

 

 

[FWSixgunner]

6 hours ago, AzShooter said:

  You forcing cone needs to be cut by a professional unless you are familiar with the right tool. 

 

Why is that?  The Brownells kit I rented with the piloted cutters is pretty much idiot proof.  The only thing you could do wrong is remove too little or too much metal.

6 hours ago, AzShooter said:

 

 

[Toolguy]

Yes, shoot it and see where you're at now. If it's shooting well, leave it. If it is spitting lead or leading up, or having some other problem, you may want to go some more. It's OK to go a little bit deeper than the plug gage, but not much. You will want to redo the muzzle crown and shoot for groups before doing any more on the forcing cone. The target is always the final judge on barrel fitness. Some barrels that look fine don't shoot well and some that have problems visually shoot fine.

[dogdoc1]

The plug gauges are for specific degrees(5 degree for example ). I find often the plug gauges are swallowed by the factory cuts.(factory cuts are often very deep.) I don’t think you can recut an existing cone all the way to rifling so that all the old cone is gone without being deeper than the  brownells plug gauges. The only way I could cut with the plug gage was to set a barrel back. I do not think most worry about the plug gauges when they recut a new cone. You just want to make sure the old cone is cut away so you do not have a compound angle. There is a good write up on Ruger forum.net in the library section by a  gunsmith on it and also a recent post in the gunsmithing section relating to this. Worth checking it out.