Well, Guess I have time to finish up my day at the range.
I was bound and determined to shoot my Goonerized Walker, come hell or high water. I figured I owed it to Mike (45 Dragoon) for the miraculous work he did on it. With the clock ticking and only about 15 minutes left until the range closed, I decided to try the Howell conversion cylinder first. It took me about 10 seconds to realize I hadn't brought my plastic mallet...D'oh!
Fortunately there were some fairly big wood chips under the shooting benches, and laying the big Walker on the loading table with a smart whack to the skinny side of the wedge had it loose as a goose in short order, so I loaded up the Howell with my .45 Colt BP loads, put it back together and stepped up to the firing line. I took careful aim at one of the 25 yard gongs and let fly. I heard the gong clang and saw it swinging, but wait...that wasn't the gong I was aiming at...
Repeating the process gave me the same result. I was hitting maybe a foot to the right, and the 35gr BP loads felt pretty anemic in a Walker.
Realizing there was like 5 minutes left and no time to check this on paper, I ditched the Howell and loaded up the Walker cylinder with 50 grains of 3F. This gave pretty much the same effect, but felt a little more robust! My son and his fiance took a few shots as well, and the Grin Factor was pretty large. I managed to squeeze in another cylinder full before the RO called it. At least I could tell Mike I shot it, and truthfully, the gun felt and functioned flawlessly, with the exception of the loading lever dropping on every single shot. Can't blame that on the Goon! It's a basic Walker design function!
It wasn't until I was packing it away that it occurred to me that since this Walker has a rear sight drifted in on the barrel lug, a few taps with a brass drift would probably fix the right-shooting issue up pretty quick. Next trip out, I intend to shoot from a rest to paper and get it sighted in.
