Stainless revolver turning black...how much is normal?

I shoot a 686 and my shooting buddy shoots a GP100. Both in 4.2". We went to the range this morning with 5x boxes of Wolf .38 158gr SWC, 3x boxes of winclean .38 125gr JSP and 4x boxes of PMC .357 158gr FMJ.

We both shot about 30 - 40 rounds each of the Wolf .38 and both revolvers were filthy. This is the first time I shot the Wolf .38s and I gotta say....it is filthy ammo. Same as the OPs pics. Easy to see on my stainless and easy to find on his blued GP....one swipe of the finger is all it took. Both of our left hand thumbs and index fingers were black with powder!

We wiped down and shot all of the winclean and PMC ammo and the guns were nowhere near as black as the wolf. Matter of fact, they were not black at all.

I've shot hundreds each of Wolf 9mm, .40, .45 and .44 and have never seen a smoke show like these .38s.

Having said all this, we were both consistently punching tighter groups with the Wolf .38s than the other two brands.
 
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So it would seem that this is the normal sooting pattern for a Ruger GP100 then. Something about the top of the frame seems to duct some of the cylinder gap blast back and out over the rear of the top strap of the frame and around the rear of the cylinder. It's just that MOST ammo isn't sooty enough to leave a large amount of mess like this Wolf ammo.

The "ring" you have in the cylinder chambers is actually the transition from the chamber that holds the brass casing to the mouth which seals against the bullet as it comes out of the case. Since the gun is sized for .357, which is a tad longer a case, the bullets from the .38's have to jump a small gap before they seal against this mouth. If you shoot a lot of .38's, and especially dirty ones like this Wolf, you will get a bit of a crud ring buildup in this "jump space" gap. You may find that after some amount it's a little hard to get .357's to drop into the cylinder. When that happens you're wise to not shoot the .357's until you can clean away that crud ring. What happens is that if you wedge the Magnums in anyway the crud prevents the case opening up correctly and the chamber pressure will spike up a little higher than normal. But since it's already high you run the risk of some over pressure damage. So it's best to only shoot the Magnums if they simply can drop into place.

The crud ring is easily cleaned out with a .40cal bronze brush on a short cleaning rod extension and an electric drill to spin them a little. Use a little of your favourite powder cleaning solvent and it whisks right out with the powered brush. I commonly do this with about a 20 to 30 second spin per chamber while moving the brush back and forth a little.
 
BCRider said:
So it would seem that this is the normal sooting pattern for a Ruger GP100 then. Something about the top of the frame seems to duct some of the cylinder gap blast back and out over the rear of the top strap of the frame and around the rear of the cylinder. It's just that MOST ammo isn't sooty enough to leave a large amount of mess like this Wolf ammo.

My Smith 686 was just about as black as the GP100 in the original pics. Couldn't accurately guage the amount of powder on the blued GP100 sufficed to say it was heavy when wiped with a finger.
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If you are buying Wolf, stick with 357Mag, which is not as dirty as Wolf 38spl.

Accurate ammo, but filthy.

Bonus- provides a soldier with smokescreen in combat situations, yet extremely accurate.
What's not to like... :D
 
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