# PPK/S re-crown



## nukehayes (Sep 22, 2006)

Hey guys, haven't been on here in quite a while. Haven't been shooting my PPK/S in a long time(6 months or so) Here in HI, the only public range has the closest targets (metallic sillhouette) at 50m. The largest one there is approximately a 4'x4' steel square gong. Even bench rested, I was unable to consistently hit this square with my PPK/S when all my other handguns it was easy day making that ring every shot. I got to looking at my gun because I knew that something was up. Sure enough the bottom 1/3 of the muzzle crown had a burr of raised metal equal to the height of the rifling. This would cause exaggerated drag on the bottom of the bullet as it exited the barrel, and then, given the rotation of the bullet, would cause it to move downrange in a circular fashion rotating around an imaginary axis out of the barrel itself. The miniscule variances in powder charge and bullet seating depth of the store bought WWB 95gr fmj was causing different velocities and therefore the inconsistent hits at 50m. I have never dropped this gun, always transported in a foam lined case, and was bought brand new. I can only assume that this gun came like this from the factory. I really did not want to send the gun back and the tinkerer in my said I can do it myself. I watched some youtube gunsmithing videos from MidwayUSA on how to properly recrown a muzzle and felt "edjumicated" enough to take on this endeavor. It wasn't in my budget to buy the proper tools sold on MidwayUSA to fix this, so I went on down to Lowes and found a countersink set that would serve my purpose, I also got a tree shaped ginding stone bit for a drill and a tap/die handle. Very carefully and slowly, I removed some metal, checking often and got it to where the burr was no longer visible from either the muzzle or chamber end. Finished with some Crocus cloth and took her to the range early saturday morning. Holy crap did those 'groups' tighten up, I was able to hold torso sized steel plates at 50m with a two handed hold. Hopefully this will help me later in life when I retire from the Navy and open up an amateur gunsmith shop out of my garage(don't worry, by then I will have gotten the proper tools for the job). Just thought I would share with yall, thanks for reading.


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