Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Ruger Blackhawk 357 9mm conversion

I have been considering buying one of these guns, earlier I was thinking of buying a 9mm, but then I saw this and thought that I could have the 9mm and also the 357 to do a little hunting with but a have a question, most importantly how accurate is it with the 9mm? I'm looking at the 6 1/2in barrel. Thanks!

I haven't shot one, still debating finding a 9mm cylinder and fitting it to my 357 om blackhawk.

That said I'd expect 9mm accuracy with handloads using .357" or .358" bullets to be good, but with .355" bullets likely marginal.

My brother loaded up a bunch of plated lead (Ranier?) 9mm bullets in 357 brass and we shot them from our SP101s, a few years back.

We weren't having any trouble shooting pop cans at 25 yards.

I had the 6.5" barrel and the 9mm was easily pop can accurate out to 25yds with factory jacketed 115 FMJ.

I really liked the gun but one of the janitors at our school had a house fire so I gave mine to him.

I had a house fire !

He's a good ol'dude that works hard and doesn't have much. He lost all his guns but 1 rifle in the fire so he needed it more than I did.



I don't know you.


Sorry about your house fire.

Same here. Friend gave me a bunch of Speer swaged 125 gr. 9mm bullets one time, 500 of them. I didn't have a 9mm so loaded them in .38 Spl cases with a standard .38 load, 4.5 Unique IIRC, and shot them from my Smith and Ruger .357's.

Got the same soda can accuracy at least to 25 yards and more. I think with a decently stiff charge of pistol powder a cast .354 bullet can certainly obdurate enough to show pretty good accuracy in a .357 barrel. At least those swaged ones worked fine, not sure how a hard cast would preform but would probably be fine if you drove it with sufficient pressure.

I don't have any experience with jacketed ammo in this application.




Added: Now that I think about it those 9mm Speer bullets may have been as large as .356, but anyway they worked fine. Cast is more pliable than jacketed and I think would give you your best results here. You'd just have to find the powder charge that obdurated the bullets enough and then not push them too much harder than that.

Ya know, I lost 2 fund in the fire. Insurance gave me 105% of the cost of them brand new. Sorry about your friends house fire.

I have one of the Lipseys Flattop conversions and its a great shooter! You can get them in 4 5/8 and 5 1/2"