Fun Stuff > MAKE
Gunsmithing (no politics)
Noxx:
--- Quote from: GarandMarine on 24 Aug 2014, 09:43 ---Hmmm. I do like an all arounder, though I think it detracts a bit from my stated intent of making a dangerous game rifle. Now Larry at Midway obviously disagrees, and hunts all of Africa, dangerous game and plains game with his .375 H&H Mag, but there's something about a field artillery piece disguised as a shoulder fired rifle...
Decisions decisions....
--- End quote ---
eh, I'll just finish here.
Don't be misled by the .375's more friendly characteristics. It is absolutely a dangerous game rifle, and that was the intent at it's design. Guys like Capstick and Karamojo Bell knocked down plenty of unfriendly fauna with them. The appeal is that you can also take one on a deer hunt and not require orthopedic surgery. More importantly really, is that it'll shoot in a very narrow range with all manner of bullet weights, where the larger bores start to vary dramatically, and you have to either pick a favorite weight and always use it, or take a lot of care to remember what you're loaded with before squeezing it off.
All of that is immaterial tho if you want to have a safari rifle just for the sake of having a safari rifle. Let's be realistic, as North Americans, the biggest scariest things we have going are Elk and Bear, and while either will settle your bill in short order, you don't need a howitzer to knock 'em down. Frankly you can drop anything on our continent with a Mosin. Given that, if it's a mostly "neat to have" thing, yeah by all means build an insane cannon of a rifle, just don't plan on toting all day
edit- if you get the chance to find a local with one, see if you can fire it before you commit to a caliber. A lot of people reevaluate after their first concussion induced nosebleed LOL
GarandMarine:
That's a fair enough point, though a local has confirmed you can hunt elk with a .458. It'll bisect the thing, but you can do it. I like .50 BMG rifles despite generally being too poor to afford one and haven't had an issue shooting them. I do want to hunt Africa one day, though as goals go it's on a subsection of bucket list labeled "This Would Be Cool, but only once everything else is done and you have a ton of money left over somehow"
Also Noxx, if you think Elk or Bear are the scariest things on the North American continent I need to take you to Alaska and introduce you to the god's own hate tank, moose, and the Alaskan bear variants of course, which are where the term "pain train" comes from, because you're either in dead or in pain, and in experienced coroner will think you got hit by a freight train at high speeds.
Noxx:
I dunno why Moose didn't pop into my head, but yeah, same point tho
Caspian Sea Monster:
--- Quote from: Grognard on 22 Aug 2014, 19:32 ---
--- Quote from: Noxx on 22 Aug 2014, 00:49 ---
--- Quote from: Caspian Sea Monster on 21 Aug 2014, 22:30 ---The GP100 family is superior to anything S&W has ever built and I will defend that statement to the death. I really want a Bowen GP-44 in .45 Colt with a 4" barrel. The P-series is really nice too, I loved shooting the P89.
--- End quote ---
You have clearly suffered a blow to the head. The Smith 686 is the finest revolver ever made by man.
--- End quote ---
you are clearly going senile.
the RUGER Sec6 is clearly one of the top three revolvers ever made.
The S&W 65 is superior in smooth trigger pull, but lacks in robustness.
and the RUGER GP100 is (im told) a perfect hybrid of the two.
but I'd put the S&W 686 in the top 5.
--- End quote ---
Almost every hand-ejector revolver I've ever handled that had more than a couple thousand rounds through it, regardless of how carefully it was handled, had a huge amount of slop between the yoke/crane and the frame. This causes timing and alignment issues, which are bad juju. This is my number one pet peeve with revolvers.
Putting a detent at the very front end of the ejector rod doesn't cut it, you have to lock the yoke to the frame directly. A lot of manufacturers are taking the easy way out now by putting a ball detent somewhere on the yoke, as in the Smith X-frames, but that doesn't release when you press the cylinder release tab. That means having to apply more force to pop the cylinder out, potentially warping the yoke like the dumbasses that flip their revolvers open/closed with their wrist. The dimple in the frame is also more likely to wear out that way.
Most hand-ejectors only lock at the rear of the cylinder and the front of the ejector rod, as with nearly all S&W and Taurus revolvers, sometimes with a yoke ball detent either custom installed or from the factory. Colt revolvers lock only at the rear of the cylinder which is even shittier. The S&W X-frame and Ghisoni's youngest grandchild, the Chiappa Rhino, lock only at the rear of the cylinder and have a ball detent on the yoke/crane. Even the Ruger Security Six series and the coveted German Korth revolvers (for those with more dollars than sense) use the ejector rod lockup like a standard S&W. Most Dan Wesson revolvers lock only on the yoke, with the release in front of the cylinder.
Only two revolver families have been made with positive mechanical locks at both the rear of the cylinder and on the yoke/crane. One is the S&W .44 Hand Ejector First Model New Century, aka the Triple-Lock, the first N-frame Smith; .44 Special, won't handle +P loads, and commands ridiculous collector prices these days. Only made from 1908 to 1915, after which S&W buried the Triple-Lock mechanism forever more (because at the time no one wanted to pay more for the complex mechanism.) The other is every Ruger hand-ejector from the Redhawk onward.* The Redhawk cylinder design holds the cylinder on the crane barrel using a pair of ball bearings rather than simply trapping the cylinder between crane and a tab on the frame, and the ejector rod is non-rotating. The GP100 is the result of applying the Redhawk cylinder system to the Security Six frame, along with a Dan Wesson style spike grip frame, and a redesign of the trigger pack to make fine-tuning easier and reduce the occurrence of light-strike missfires compared to the Security Six/Redhawk trigger design. (The Security Six and Redhawk used a single spring as both the mainspring and trigger spring - this turned out to be not a great idea, and the GP100 uses two separate springs.) S&W revolvers, especially Performance Center offerings, tend to have better triggers out of the factory, but any GP-family Ruger can be hand-tuned to be just as nice as any S&W.
Ruger revolvers have also always been a bit overbuilt compared to other options; the SP-101 (five-shot .357, six-shot .32, eight-shot .22) is somewhere in between a J-frame and a K-frame, the GP100 (six-shot .357, seven-shot .32) is somewhere in between an L-frame and an N-frame, and the Redhawk/Super Redhawk (six-shot .44 or .475) is not an N-frame analogue so much as it is a shortened X-frame analogue before the X-frame was even a thing. Being so overbuilt makes them a bit heavier on the draw than a comparable S&W but in return they are much more resistant to abuse and have more options for rechambering. Bowen Classic Arms regularly converts Redhawks to five-shot .500 Linebaugh platforms with no problem. The old six-shot .357 Magnum Redhawk (no really, this is a thing) has about the thickest cylinder walls I have ever seen and is considered a handloader's paradise.
The cherry on top of all of this is that S&W and Colt say, more or less, "Keep your plebian hands out of the inner workings of your our gun, don't even try to open the frame or you'll just wreck it. Be a good little child and bring it in to a company-trained armorer for fine tuning or repair." Whilst Ruger has said since the Security Six days, "Here, have a revolver that breaks down for maintenance about the same way as an SKS rifle."
Smiths are okay, but if I'm going to spend money on a revolver, it's going to be a Ruger, full stop. My only complaint is that they haven't built a Redhawk-size revolver with the GP/Super Redhawk grip and trigger but the classic Redhawk style frame/barrel, as the Super Redhawk bull-nose frame is kind of ungainly. Fortunately, as I linked to before, Bowen has started modifying Super Redhawk Alaskans into exactly this. As a five-shot .500 Linebaugh it's only slightly less powerful than a .500 Magnum while being much handier and less obnoxiously huge.
*I'm not counting the LCR in this statement.
::deep breaths::
...right then. For no particular reason, I want to rebarrel a Ruger No.1 falling block for .577 Snider. Just because. I think it'd be a fun boulder-thrower to shoot and reload for without being as, um... belligerent as a .577 Nitro Express. Contrary to popular belief I am not a recoil junky.
Noxx:
I have passed my trebuchet rifle phase, and am working on becoming a velocity junky.
Nice write up btw.
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