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I don't do much revolver work but once in a while something comes along where the guy wants something I'm pretty sure he won't get unless I do it. Not patting myself on the back there, there are lots and lots of guys that can do what I'm describing below, it's Machine Shop 101, but sometimes it's hard to find a person who will do it to a gun. One local guy in particular has had me do several revolvers; he competes with them in pretty much everything. Actually he's a very competent gunsmith himself (I don't touch his revolver actions because he definitely has the edge on me there), but is not able to do some of the machining I do. So I'm on one of his projects now, a Performance Center 8-shot .357 (they have the above engraved on the barrel-- kinda dumb but kinda cute I guess). Somewhere (ICORE match maybe) he won a 6" BarSto barrel blank (that's a first for me) and he told me, put it on my gun with some big, wild, compensator. Well, I decided to cut off and bore through the existing barrel, which is quited massive, so that the gun would retain some vestige of its original look, plus it would save me from some cutting, such as for the ejector rod, and installing a new ball lock (these new ball locks are an off-the-shelf item in McMaster Carr BTW). I got to hacking on this barrel and it's practically unhackable. It's 52 Rockwell! I have no idea why it would have been heat treated like this but it's there. I decided the sleeving-with-BarSto thing was not an option, I had to either not use it at all or shorten it and thread it for the comp, which I decided would be the way to go. I cut it off by using a carbide end mill. Because of the irregular shape of the barrel relative to the bore, making such an interrupted cut, I could not even turn it very well until I put it in the mill again and roughed out the "neck" that would be threaded for the comp.
As a side note this gun has a 5/8 hole under the bore going back and stopping just short of the ejector rod cut. This is for a weight system, steel (or tungsten, not sure) and Delrin disks that are held in by a 1/4-20, there being a tapped hole in the bottom of the 5/8 bore. This gun came with one weight siezed/stuck in the bottom. It also had a big o'l burr in the frame at the hammer cut, a burr that I believe eventually would have fallen off and-- right into the action. The last revo I worked on for the guy was also fresh from the factory (not sure if it came from the PC or not), and the 10-32 hole for attaching the little factory comp had a tap broken off in the bottom of it, and the screw had been hand-belt-sanded shorter.
Anyhoo-- I have the barrel done and threaded and am currently working on an aluminum comp for it. I've done several of these now, and the aluminum seems to hold up OK even to .357 mag., but I don't have any real info yet where I can say "stood up to 5,000 rounds of magnums with no noticable erosion". I don't think that's going to happen, they will erode faster than steel with hot loads, but-- so what, really. If it gets extreme I can always go in and insert the comp blast face with steel. Thought about doing it to this one right off the bat but-- nah. Anyway these guys are mostly using midrange loads for steel, pins (set 1' from the back of the table), and ICORE. The ones I've done before were pretty outlandish in size, this one's a little more reasonable. The aluminum makes the gun a little faster to swing, and anyway it's plenty heavy enough being an N-frame plus that bulky barrel that was on it, which I will lighten some as one of my last steps, ah, depending on my supply of carbide ball end mills!
I'll post a few pics when I get it done. I gather this site does not have a self-pic-hosting feature? I'm having some trouble getting my pics at ImageStation to stay up in a post.
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That's some nice machine work! Definitely somethin' to be proud of 
