Remington Pocket

I have a Pietta Remington pocket, the chambers is 0,315 but should be 0,326 to fit the barrel, what kind of reamer should I use?
I dont have a big workshop so I must be able to use it by hand.
Have anyone done this?

Why do you think you need to ream the chambers? Or should I ask why do you think they need to be .326??

Pietta makes the little Pocket with some huge groove sizes. Mine if I remember right is at .323 and my friend ,a gunsmith,suggested to ream the chambers. Then comes the finding of balls to fit the new cut chambers. I want to get a conversion cylinder at sometime.Then we are at square one with an oversize bore.
Somewhere I found the dimensions of an original and they were still a little large ,like .319 groove and .311 bore. Don't recall where I saw that.
How does it shoot at say 15ft ? Most don't shoot to bad and seem to do better with the .319 - .323 balls. The ones that come in the Cabela's starter kit are about worthless as they don't shave a ring when loading. Remember these were not any more than across the room last ditch defense tools.

If your sure you need to ream a simple chucking reamer of the correct dimension works fine if your careful about keeping it aligned with the bore of the existing chamber.
When mic'ing a chamber don't use a standard caliper as it won't give you a correct reading. There are radially ground calipers that will work but the best method for the average guy is to slug them and cross mic or use a set of plug gauges which are best because they are ground perfectly round.
You will often get slightly differing dimensions when slugging and cross mic'ing signifying an out of round chamber.
Very often when I use my plug gauge set I will find varied chamber diameters in the same cylinder. This is generally because they are gang reamed at the factory and the reamers used have wear tolerance before they are to small and retired.
The best method as Mr. Taylor shows in one of his pictures is to make a barrel spud that guides the reamer through the existing frame and cylinder lock up. Mike D.

Dixie Gunworks catalog says the little Remington Pocket Pistol barrel has .326 diameter grooves and .315 diameter chambers. They also say the bore is .310 diameter.

The chamber walls look thick enough to stand reaming out the front of them without making them too thin. Especially if the enlarged diameter is only going 3/8 of an inch or so deep.

While reaming the chambers should improve the guns accuracy, it probably isn't worth the time, cost and effort.

IMO, these little guns are too small to get a good grip on them, the distance between the front and rear sight notch is too short and they are too light to make good target shooting guns.

They are great for plinking and could do a pretty good job at self defense which is what the original guns were made for.

Also, if the chambers are reamed to the larger size there are no standard sized balls that will work in the gun.
From what I see, the next size up is a .350 which would be too large.
Even a #00 buckshot's .340 diameter would be too large IMO.

That said, should nikke ream out his cylinder? Only he can answer that question.

By the way: Welcome to the Forum Nikke.

It's the same as shooting a single action .22RF.
Bought a brass framed FIE for fifty dollars in a pawn shop and slowly, carefully beveled the chambers with a round file so it would accept swaged round noses. It loved them but they were pricey so I mostly stuck with hardened buck shot (that shot pretty good too). The barrel alignment was so outa whack I made a brass dovetailed rear sight for the back of the barrel. Always wished the .31's were available with a longer sight radius. Small bore pistols are mostly limited in accuracy only by their short length.

There are also .330 balls for shotguns and they shouldn't move with just 12 grains or so of powder.

I have a Palmetto NMP whose chambers are .001 over groove diameter and is a hoot to shoot. Very accurate with .320 round ball.

I have slugged the barrel and .326 is the perfekt fit, it now shots 6-7 inches at 20 yards, whith .323 round balls.
Should I be happy whith that?

Not bad at twenty yards for the little Remington Pocket. Most won't do that good with a modern pocket pistol.

nikke said:

it now shots 6-7 inches at 20 yards, whith .323 round balls.
Should I be happy whith that?

Click to expand...

Ummm, I think that you are the best judge of that.

Yes, considering your chambers are .315!

Be interesting to shoot the bullets onto something soft and see what they end up at. It could be the soft lead is expanding slightly when it hits the forcing cone to fit the grooves of the barrel.

Think about what happens to the bullet when firing. First an explosive charge goes off behind then it slams into a barrel whose lands are smaller then it's diameter. That shock plus the friction must work to slow it but it also has momentum plus expanding gases behind it pushing it down that barrel. The combination should serve to expand it slightly (I think) to fill the grooves. The difference between .315 and even .325 is only .01, or one hundredth of an inch. Not much for lead to expand.

I've slugged a pietta's bore with a .320 and the grooves didn't touch. I don't think they make enough power to swage the ball.

It doesn't take much to upset a soft lead ball. I believe it is something around +/- 400 fps. If you have a force behind the swaged .315 ball pushing it into the forcing cone and into the barrel that has lands in the neighborhood of .311. That lead can only go out from center or back.With the expanding gasses pushing against it from behind . It pretty much can only go out toward the bottom of the grooves. Will it fill the grooves? I would guess if your barrel isn't covered in lead it just might be doing just that.

That's why it would be interesting to measure fired ball. Not that I think there isn't something to be gained by having the optimal chamber to bore size but to see what is actually happening. There is a lot going on when that trigger is pulled

Well, who can shoot one into a snow drift? Not me, I'm in Florida.

I just asked a guy on another forum to measure the ball he shot into a piece of 2x4 block of wood. I mention that he may have to add a thousandth or so to the size, as entering the wood and traveling 13/16 may have swaged and scraped it down a bit. Should give us a close enough example to check to see if it filled the grooves. Wish he would have used a stronger charge than just 12 gr. of 3f Goex.

I asked for, and received, a copy of the ballistics testing done with various cap n ball guns/projectiles, and noticed how the .31 cal ball with a 12 grn 3F charge (Colt) was under 800 fps and the recovered ball was .31 cal. I can only guess that the likely powder used was a standard BP or Pyrodex as this was from the 90's IIRC.

One should be extremely careful of using a low-power charge of only 12 grains to shoot at plywood. I watched someone get hit in the chest by a .36 that bounced off of a target because it wouldn't go into the plywood :shocked2: . Soft pine is much better, but more powder is called for unless you switch to a cardboard target backer. :v

I've heard of that and have had a ball go back past me off a rock in a gravel pit bank.