My old mule deer hunting buddy passed away and I acquired his Dan Wesson 44, serial no 21xx.  I put it away for a while.  After doing some reading I renewed my interest.  Spent money and replaced the Pachmayr grips with walnut and started thinking about reloading some .44 ammunition. I have lots of cast .44 bullets, but fewer jacketed and wanted to save the latter for my Ruger .44 carbine. I noticed the 6\" barrel had the Power Port shroud.   A look down the barrel revealed the eight small holes in the rifling groves.  To shoot cast bullets and after looking around, I bought a 6\" barrel and shroud from CZ.   I had no barrel nut tool so purchased one of those too. Based on some ammunition I received with the revolver, I was fairly sure it was mostly shot with cast bullets.  I was also pretty sure the barrel had never been off the gun, so we are talking more than 35 years.   While waiting for delivery, out came the Kroil, on the barrel nut and in the ports.  Wife complained of the smell.   The nut was removed fairly easily. Shroud was immobile.  More Kroil and days pass with no movement.   I had the idea to do a board search and in a few of the old entries, the authors mentioned using a rubber hammer to loosen the shroud after shooting with cast bullets.  I added a couple of layers of truck inner tube to a small phenolic hammer I had and tapped and pulled away.   After 15 minutes of this IT MOVED.  I was very pleased as I really did not want to deal with a gunsmith on this. Thank you past and present board members for the suggestion.  I am pretty sure I would not have come up with it on my own.

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