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Just had my Taurus long barrelled revolver converted to nitro muzzle loading by Alan Westlake.

Before shooting it, I'm looking for some pointers.

Anybody else out there had a 44 mag Taurus converted to nitro muzzle loading ?

Ian

Never heard of that being done to a LBR, so, you had a cartridge-loading, long-barrel revolver converted it into a muzzle-loading revolver?

May I ask why? I'm not being skarky, or anything, just genuine interest on my part

Come on Sea Wolf, you know the rules,

OK, I'll help you out.

Ah... I'm being a muppet again, aren't I.

The LBR has been cut and shifted into a "normal" sized revolver.

Sorry, SW. Ignore me. I'll go back to my cupboard

I have yet to see it in the flesh but I am front of queue for a shot or or two but given our handgun laws, it does look like a thing of beauty in the picture!

I thought Allan had stopped doing the conversion to the Taurus?

Interesting, it never occurred to me that the LBR could be cut down for the conversion!

Fellow club member has the 357 M/L conversion on the short Taurus, shoots nice but doesn't have the poke of the LBR on magnum rounds, IIRC he also has/had a nitro Cattleman, again nice but not enough to convince me to follow that road at this time.

My Ruger Old Army gets to stay for a while yet.

Dannyway of life ... Yes, Alan has stopped doing them. Mine was the very last one.

Trex ... I have two Ruger Old Armies and they're not going anywhere. The LBR was not getting much use, so rather than sell it I had this conversion done. Yet to fire it, but the chambers are now .450, and as the barrel is the same and made to take .430 .44 specials or magnums, that makes a 20 thou difference to make up in compression down the barrel with a soft lead bullet. Alan assures me that all will be well, but I can't help being just a little apprehensive. Having said that, my old Remington muzzle loader was a .44 and used .451 bullets.

Hence my search for someone else who has had a .44 Taurus converted. Any faults or pitfalls I should know about ?

Oh I do like that!!!!!

And one of the key points in this is that you can't start with an off-the-shelf .38 / .357 / .45 / whatever revolver because that would be a S5 weapon and once in S5 a gun can never be returned to S1. Therefore you either convert an LBR to a muzzle loader and then shorten the barrel (the sequence is important) or you build a nitro ML revolver from scratch. Of course, you could always start with a BP frame and fit a nitro cylinder and barrel ...

Iain