Possibly a dumb question, but here goes...

[Hedley]

I was eyeballing about 7 or 8 used bp pistols this morning at my local gun store(hve the hankering for one), and I noticed that all of the revolvers had scratches all around the cylinders. They didn't look uniform in any way. Is this common, and what's it from? I'm completely ignorant to black powder, but are these normal?

[James K]

Some cylinder scratches are caused by poor manufacturing because burrs or screws are allowed to stick through the upper or lower part of the frame and scratch the cylinder. But I assume you are taking about scoring caused by the cylinder stop contacting the cylinder.

Almost all SA revolvers should be timed so that the cylinder stop comes up into the leade (that triangle shaped cut just ahead of the cylinder stop notches) and not onto the sides of the cylinder. But few revolvers are properly timed.

Plus, the cylinder stop spring on most percussion and SA revolvers is much stiffer than it needs to be, and not merely marks the cylinder but gouges it. That, combined with unnecessarily sharp cylinder stops, can really score a cylinder. The extent ("length") of the marks varies with the timing of the revolver.

All that can be avoided if the gun is well tuned before use, but few owners want to spend the money on an inexpensive "toy" that cost less than the tuneup.

Note that a modern S&W revolver is an exception. They are designed for the cylinder stop to ride part way on the cylinder, and the cylinder stop spring is too light to cause more than the removal of bluing in that drag area.

Jim

[timothy75]

Most are timed fine, what happens is the owners cant resist the urge to fan the hammer like a hollywood cowboy. People also dont know not to let the hammer down fron half cock, or how to properly load and unload the gun. Thats where those scratches come from. The 15 or so SA replicas I own all came timed right and none have scratches on the cylinder. So if you buy a new one and handle it with care it wont ring the cylinder.

[mykeal]

Actually, based on your statement that the "scratches" did not appear to be uniform in any way, I'm going to guess that what you really saw, perhaps from a distance with less than optimum lighting, was engraving on the cylinder. BP revolvers often have engraved cylinders like the fancier versions of their original counterparts. This engraving is not deep, and if you could only see part of it from a distance, inside a case behind glass, that's a possibility.

A cylinder ring, caused by the bolt dragging on the cylinder as it rotates, is a uniform line around the cylinder, which is not what I think you described.