Hi
Tim56
You are facing the same problem I had, I had the 8" but wanted a 51/2" to go with it but couldnt find one.
Rang numerous shops with no luck, Kranks quoted about £230 for a new one if I remember right but didnt have one in stock and didnt know how long one would take,usual story in my dealings with them, but I didnt really want to spend that much and another £270+ on a conversion.
Then on a trip to a gun fair at Bisley I saw another 8" version for £90 so the deal was done only for the gun to be put away and not touched for some months.
One day the desire for a shorter version got to much but I didnt want to pay the money so that left the option of cutting it myself.
I do have a small clarke 300 lathe in the garage so it was time it earned its keep, so I chucked the muzzle end and used the revolving tailstock in the forcing cone end. Then using a parting tool cut 99.9% of the way through the barrel until it basically got to thin to support itself and came away. I then tidied the end a bit with some wet n dry just to remove any burrs sort of crowning it but nothing fancy.
Had it not been for the lathe i would have used a pipe cutter to score the surface a act as a guideline for a hacksaw cut and finished it off with a file, pretty much as a gunsmith in some back of beyond western town would have done back in the 1860s.
Next up was to shorten the loading lever, drill it out for the spring plunger thingy and dovetail the bottom of the barrel to take the thing the plunger fits into using my dremel and a dovetail file.
The front sight was a piece of brass filed to shape with a couple of lugs on the bottom which fit into a couple of small shallow drilled holes in the barrel and glued on using jb weld.
Sorry Iam not a metal working type engineer so my description , terminology and techniques arent the best.
Really the hardest part was getting up the oompf to do it and the knowledge that if it went wrong the cost of the gun wasnt the end of the world, now a ruger would get me a bit more jittery cost wise but having seen how relatively easy it actually turned out to be and it shoots ok then i would give it a go again.
I repeat again iam no gunsmith or engineer just your average type person with some spare time a desire for a shorter revolver. Everything I have learnt is self taught by trial and error and a willingness to improvise.
My advise would be to find the cheapest second hand ruger you could find along with a good hacksaw blade and give it a go.