Hello from new member in Norway

[Marshal Will]

Welcome to the forum, Brassica. That's a very nice pistol. Congrats on landing that one. Looking forward to seeing more of you around here.

[Brassica]

Hej Brass, and welcome (from a bloody Swede)

Hei Len, nice hearing from a neighbour .

[Brassica]

.020 cylinder gap can give you issues. Recommended gap for the Colt reproductions is .002-.005. Initially you can probably live with it with the negative results being lots of flash-over and potential chain fire issues if you don't have a tight seal or insufficient lube over the balls. Long term, I'd be concerned with the cylinder having a 'slide hammer' effect on the frame and possibly battering the wedge.

I suspected something like that. Any idea what I could do to improve it?

[ShotgunDave]

I think the only cures for the large cylinder gap would be, removing material from the end of the arbor, and a like amount from the barrel lug. And then re-fitting the wedge. But I doubt you'd want to perform such modifications to a valuable original gun.

You could also have metal added to the forcing cone by having it TIG welded. But again, major mods to your original gun.

Other than that, I don't know how else to close that gap. Hopefully 45Dragoon will weigh in and give us his opinion. He's the true expert.

[Len]

I would add some material to the the end of the barrel (TIG welding with a copper rod in the forcing cone, to make sure not to get any bumps inside), then with a guiding rod in the barrel, grind the welding down, so the addition is about .4  millimeter.

[Len]

A temporary, non-altering approach would be to turn out a sleeve to fit over the outside of the forcing cone and glued to it. Material thickness .3 to .4 mm