Jonathan Slim Chance

Is it the same chamber each time, or is it always only the first round each time? If it's the chamber, I would suspect the slot where the cylinder stop locks in has gotten peened from "agressive" cycling (I had that happen to a .44 Vaquero years ago). If it's always the first round, regardless of chamber indexing, then I would suspect the cylinder stop is in question. But, I'm not a gunsmith, so take that with a grain of salt.

I weighed out 9 - 00 buck pellets and then referred to my reloading guide on powder charge for appropriate weight shot charge. Stacked the 9 pellets in a regular shot cup and crimped it closed. I did get better crimps if I used an overshot card, and it didn't seem to negatively affect the patterns. I chose to do this back in the depths of COVID, as there were no buckshot loads to be had back then. Since then I've laid in a sufficient stock of factory loads for intended uses.

I rode with a bicycle group that raced the train from Durango to Silverton back in 1981. I was in the part of the group that abandoned the chase early on but one of our riders did beat the train to Silverton, but only by a narrow gap. If I remember correctly, we had to cross two mountain passes on the way, Molas and Coal Bank. We slept on the boardwalk outside the train station that night, then rode on to Montrose the next morning.

The woman that babysat for me when I was little (mid 60's, early 70's) was married to an older man, who in his closet had a rifle that had belonged to his uncle. His uncle had carried it when he fought for the Union during the Civil War. From the images I can remember when he showed it to me, I think it was a Spencer because I remember the loading tube in the buttstock, and he had a little canvas bag with cartridges that to me looked huge. Sometimes we forget that history isn't that long ago.

When I first started shooting my early S&W Lemon Squeezer, I used a Hybrid die set consisting of .32 Long die to resize, 32 ACP dies to flare and crimp. I made a powder scoop out of a .22 Short case, cutting it down until I got the powder charge I was looking for. I was lucky that I was able to buy a batch of brass from Starline, so I had plenty of cases to build my stock with.