Much success!

It only took me...20 something or so years.

The ported barrel on the DW was a bit of an oddball design.  The barrel ports are radial and the gas vents into the hollow barrel shroud.  There are two top vents on the shroud to let gas escape.

All well and good until you get lazy and shoot a bit too much without getting the thing disassembled for a complete cleaning.  The lead, copper, grime and burnt powder build up and become a form of concrete.

Revolver still works, so whatevs...and time becomes decades.

EKW makes a barrel wrench that you can use to remove stuck nuts.  If you have a DW seriously consider getting one.  The wrench takes a 1/2" socket extension and when coupled with a piece of threaded steel rod and nuts you can get just about any barrel nut off.  

The shroud was also stuck on the frame, so a piece of nylon rod, a wooden mallet, some bad words, and the whole mess finally came apart.

Now I am going to put my spare NON ported barrel in there and get back to loading up some barn burners.

So - if you have a non-ported shroud, and a ported bbl, shooting .38" wadcutters - is it quiet?  Hmmm.

You would probably not want to do that- I don't have an unported shroud, but I suspect the shroud is not relieved around the area of the ports.  That would negate the point of the ports, or cause the most interesting bulges in your unported shroud.

A DW would probably be the best revolver for mounting a suppressor on, though.  You could easily make a threaded insert to replace the barrel nut, and you can minimize the barrel/cylinder gap within reason.

If you screw the barrel down onto the cylinder too far, though, the cylinder will heat up, stretch, and bind up the whole works.  I gained that knowledge from applied stupidity.

As the Sinister is a sinister, I will eventually have to buy him a Dan Wesson.  Just thinking out loud.  Especially as new Dan Wessons are FINALLY on the market.

The new DWs look nice.  Revolvers all give me sticker shock these days as I am stuck in the pricing days of the 80s and 90s.  

I know my money was "worth" more then, but for some reason I find it increasingly difficult to accept inflation as I age.

Now I know why my old man could talk about nickel candy bars for an hour if you let him.

A gunsmithing Wizard is a person who has an extended profane vocabulary and is able to apply a combination of controlled brute force and a stream of appropriate expletives in the proper order.

I am clearly no wizard.

I ran out of expletives so I had to switch to another language.  

It was as bad as the first time I tried to reassemble my Ruger MKII, so that says something.

My 7" ported 445 Supermag barrel/shroud got stuck REAL bad one time. Took me a hell of a lot of time and effort to get it off and cleaned up enough to reinstall. I've only ever shot 320 LSWCGC out of it but they are VERY HOT (33.5 gr H110) so it leaded the barrel nut over really badly. Now I break it down for cleaning after 50-100 rounds just so I never go through that hell again.

Thanks for the heads up about the removal tool, going to buy one of those this week.

What bad words worked with the mallet and nylon dowel to drive the shroud off the barrel?

I've got an older .357 that I got the nut off no trouble, but I can't get the shroud to move for the life of me.  Soaked it with kroil, heated with a propane torch, beaten a few oak and nylon dowels to splinters... I'm about to give up and call it a permanent 6" gun.

Yea, they can be a ripping bitch to get off!  I put the frame in the vise.  I put the barrel nut tool (barrel nut is off) on the end of the muzzle of the barrel, grabbed and pulled the shroud as hard as I could and gave the tool a whack with a nylon faced hammer.  That backed the shroud out a bit but it was still stuck.

I then used a nylon rod to continue to hit the barrel nut tool and the shroud came completely off.  The barrel nut tool is great as it provides the right force to the muzzle of the barrel.  Could be hard on the crown but I didn't see any visible damage.

OR

Get the barrel tool from EWK that takes the 1/2 socket.  The inside of the tool has a removable aluminum plug that acts as a guide.  Remove this (should spin out easily by hand).

Go to the hardware store and get some cheap threaded rod, nuts and washers.  Cut the threaded rod to length with a hacksaw.  You can put the barrel nut back in, snug it up, install the threaded rod through the center of the barrel nut removal tool and then use multiple nuts on each end of the threaded rod.

Tighten everything up to provide tension, and then you can basically work the barrel shroud off by unscrewing the entire barrel from the frame.

Here is a thread that will provide pics for you:
Stuck Barrel Shroud

Good luck,
Keep on swearin' until you find success!