Last night I looked at my revolver to see if I should clean it or not and noticed flakey buildup for the first half inch of barrel in front of the cylnder.  I was shooting my Rossi 68 the other day with some UMC leadround nose bullets.  Is this lead deposits?  
I also notice that the cylnder rotates a little when the gun is in "lockup".  I made sure the gun was unloaded and looked down the barrel with the clynder closed and I could see about an 1/8 of an inch of the front of the cylnder when I jiggled it.  Is this bad?




Sorry for the bad spelling.  I'm in a hurry.

The flakey deposits are lead.  It will take some elbow grease and a good solvent to get those out.  There are also some products specificallyy made to remove lead.  One looks like a copper or brass piece of window screen you use to scape it out.

I have leading problems with my revolvers, but its because I'm shooting a non-gaschecked bullet at 1350 fps.  If you are shooting target loads (under 900 fps and more likely 750-850 fps) you should not get any significant leading.

Now on to your big problem:  A little wiggle is normal on production revolvers.  If you are actually seeing 1/8" you have serious problems.  Do not shoot the gun until it is corrected.  With that kind of misallignment it has the potential to be a lead spitter and will be a danger to those standing next to you as well as down range.  Accuracy will only be by chance.  This would also contribute to your leading problem.  By a "little wiggle" I mean a few thousandths of movement on the circumference of the cylinder.

Kent

Suspect your correct about the barrel deposits being lead, clean that thang!

As to cylinder rotating in "lock-up"........., see 1 & 2 below:

1. Are you saying that when the hammer is cocked back and revolver is locked up in a "ready to fire" state, needing only a touch on the trigger to set it off, that the cylinder rotates abit??????

2. Or are you talking about cylinder closed, hammer in a resting state, the cylinder rotates abit??????

FWIW, 1 is NOT normal, 2 is normal.

Mike

I thought that the stuff was probably lead.  The gun was fairly clean before I started shooting and I was hitting the target pretty good, but after 20 or so rounds the bullets woulndn't hit a man sized target at 15 yds.

As to mr_wilson my problem is #1.  I recoken that when I was shooting that what I thought was smoke coming from my gun was lead dust from the bullet hitting the side of the barrel or something.

There are some cleaning brushes called "tornado" style which do a great job on lead. Unlike the standard bristle brushes, the tornado style will put some surface bearing on the lead & scrape it out.

Outers Foul-out also does a great job.