Carmoney

I would like to shoot the Free State match again this year, but right now I have a jury trial scheduled for the week after the match. So it looks unlikely. I also want to shoot a Midwest ICORE Regional if somebody organizes one that is reasonably close. Watching for this.

I want to know how the range test went! (In other words, I want to know if it was reliable with a sub-6# DA pull.)

Interesting thread. I enjoy seeing the DIY effort to solve the problem!

Speed Beez has never bothered to purchase the rights to the products it copies.

Good job cutting that hammer! Do you have a sanding drum for your Dremel? You will need a sanding drum and some cratex tips to polish it up and make it look really nice.

You mean, a big ol' vise and a hammer handle?

I've installed a bunch of crane ball locks over the years. I did them only because customers wanted them. I don't bother with them on my own guns. They don't really do all that much.

I can't tell you how many times people have posted questions like this.....they get the exact answer to their exact question.....but they completely ignore it. Why do we bother? (It's one of the reasons I tend to disappear from this forum for months at a time.)

Blast from the past! That's my action job on that heater.

Second Tuesday of next week.

If you're replacing just the factory sight blade, you will need the little installation kit with a few windage screw (and tiny spring and detent), because the old screw is designed to break when you remove it. It's easier, but much more expensive, to replace the entire rear sight assembly. The Weigand product would be much better if it were made from steel instead of aluminum. I had one on a competition gun for a couple years, and the anodizing quickly wore through and there is no good way to recolor it. A steel blade can be blackened with a little G96 cold blue. The Weigand blade also fits loosely, and there is something unsettling about having a sloppy blade that wiggles around when you touch it--although I must admit I don't think it really affects anything from a shooting perspective. The Bowen product is very expensive and almost impossible to find in stock. The LPA product is pretty popular, and seems to work well. It's uglier than sin, though. The Millett target rear sight is my absolute favorite, but they dropped it from production years ago.

Some years ago, I messed around trying to figure out a way to bring down the DA trigger pull on a 617 while maintaining 100% ignition reliability. I tried all sorts of stuff, including the factory hammer, the first-generation Apex rimfire hammer, a cut-off Carmonized stock hammer, and a variety of factory and aftermarket firing pins. The Apex hammer did not work for me, and neither did Carmonizing the factory hammer. I experimented a lot, and finally settled on a plain, unmodified factory hammer and (although it makes me shudder to say it) the C&S extended firing pin. Taking weight off the factory hammer works great when busting centerfire primers, but not for rimfire ammo. For some reason, the extended length pin allowed me to drop the mainspring tension down a little further and still work. Be advised that dry-firing with any extended firing pin will cause the tip of the pin to contact the edges of the chamber mouths and ding them up. I did this on my 617 without realizing it. This is not a cause for any huge panic--if it happens, just relieve those dinged spots with a thin conical cratex tip in your Dremel tool and carry on. The other thing to be aware of--if you lighten the action on a 617 to the point that it's getting close to the raw edge of reliability, you will need to keep the chambers and extractor clean if you don't want clickers. Also, many 617s have notoriously tight chambers that need the touch of a finish reamer--it's no fun having to beat on the extractor rod to get the empties out.

All other things being equal, shorter OAL will be faster to reload. As others have stated, the difference won't be tremendous, and there are other factors that are more important.

The other nice thing about running DS-10s is that you are supporting the originator and not a copycat. That's important to me.

It's almost assuredly cut for .45 ACP and moonclips, so why not just load up some mild ACP ammo and give it a whirl?

Everybody thinks of me as a revolver shooter, and I guess that's sorta true deep down, but with so little competition in USPSA Revolver in recent years, I have been mostly shooting other divisions--mostly Production and Single Stack. I have no interest in "winning" a division in which I am the only competitor! I even spent a whole season shooting Open Division with my 2011s, and did fairly well. I am fortunate to own all the gear for every USPSA division, but at the end of the day, I like the process of stage planning/reloading/gun-handling that comes with the lower-capacity divisions, and I've had a hard time staying interested in Open, Limited, PCC, and Carry Optics. Here's a dirty little secret--many dedicated (and competent) revolver shooters are NOT good at handling pistols with single-action triggers because they get so acclimated to the rolling trigger pull of their DA wheelguns. I know that because I used to be one of those guys! Eventually I got tired of that situation, and committed myself to learning trigger control with a single-action pull. This has allowed me to enjoy the sport much more, and I love the challenge of shooting back-to-back matches with different guns. I heard Leatham say one time that "shooting is shooting." And I think he's right about that. A good all-around handgunner should be able to be successful with all the various equipment platforms. When ammo and primers are available again, buy a bunch and stack it deep. It will never go down in value, and then you won't have to worry about weathering the next storm. I know this isn't helpful for folks who are in a bind right now, but they need to learn from this experience and not let it happen again. Many people would find it sickening to see my hoard of components and loaded ammo. I probably have a 20-year supply of pretty much everything I will ever need. My friends will remember when I announced years ago that ammo is the currency of the future, but they aren't laughing at me now.

Exactly.

My Second Chance gun is an 8-3/8" 7-shot Baumannize Model 27 that I bought from....coincidentally enough, Brian Enos.

I give guns to my old friends. You're my young friend. You're just gonna hafta wait.

This is pretty good advice, boys.

I say forget it. I used to shoot my .45 wheelguns all the time. But mine hadn't seen the light of day for so long, I finally gave one away to an old friend. The others just sit there in the safe. The dark old safe.

I do agree with Mike4045 that the fitting of the beavertail is crap. But, to be honest, it's a cosmetic thing--you really can't feel it when you're handling the gun. I thought about re-contouring mine, but I really don't want to cut through that nice black finish. I'm just going to leave it.

I shot mine this past week and was pleasantly surprised at how well everything worked and how well it shot. I had a few premature lockbacks at first (probably due to my long-loaded Limited gun ammo), but about 5-6 file strokes on the slide stop took that away completely. My gun seems quite accurate--I was dinging my plate easily at 35 yards. Trigger is not half bad! I have the Series 80 delete kit on the way from Brownells, and will probably just tune the sear spring a bit when I have the gun apart. Otherwise, the only thing this needs is a magwell and it's ready to go. This is a really nice gun for the money. In fact, I'll just say this is a really nice gun, period.

Not to be a Negative Nelly, but for your sake I really hope Taurus has improved the metallurgy on their revolvers. They were good sponsors of competitive shooting about 25 years ago, and we all really wanted to like them, but unfortunately the guns did not hold up. The earlier 8-shot guns were notorious for going out of time very, very quickly. If you ever see Tom Drazy at a match, he can tell you plenty about his experiences with Taurus wheels. For those seeking to save a few dollars by trying to make a Taurus into a match revolver, I would suggest that you tread carefully. Yes, Smith & Wesson revolvers do need some work to be competition-ready, but once they are set up properly, they tend to run trouble-free for an extremely long time.

OK, gotta ask.....other than "because it's there".....why bother putting all this effort into the Ruger platform when it appears far easier to simply stick with your S&Ws?