Ruger Hawkeye 77/357

I got to shoot this rifle, finally. Fifty rounds of factory Indepence 158 gr JSP's, and fifty of my 155 gr Lyman SWC's over 13 grs of IMR-4227.
A real frustrating day. The factory loads shook the Ruger scope mounts loose, walked off the paper at fifty yards before I caught on to what was happening.
The feed ramp on this rifle cuts into the chamber a bit, leaving a bulge on one side of the brass that does not iron out. My lower pressure handloads are OK in that regard...but, this gun hates FN's. Pretty much hand fed them.
On the plus side I did fairly well with the cast boolits after I took the scope off and used the iron sights. A three and a half inch group was the best I got with my eyes and getting the 'Kentucky windage' right.
Lots of work to polish this t*&d. Looking for a good mold number. Round nose under 200 grs with a gas check. I think RCBS makes one.

The factory loads shook the Ruger scope mounts loose, walked off the paper at fifty yards before I caught on to what was happening.

Those scope mounts ( same design as on the Ruger new model 77 Mark II ) will work well with a 458 Lott.

If 357 magnums caused them to loosen, someone didn't put the rings on the rifle's receiver and / or the scope properly.

Nothing at all wrong with Ruger's design.

if the feed ramp cuts into the chamber I'd make a call to Ruger.

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Originally Posted by Ben

The factory loads shook the Ruger scope mounts loose, walked off the paper at fifty yards before I caught on to what was happening.

Those scope mounts ( same design as on the Ruger new model 77 Mark II ) will work well with a 458 Lott.

If 357 magnums caused them to loosen, someone didn't put the rings on the rifle's receiver and / or the scope properly.

Nothing at all wrong with Ruger's design.

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Yep, the installation was all my fault, I failed to double check before leaving. I only mentioned it as being part of the days disappointment.

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Originally Posted by Blammer

if the feed ramp cuts into the chamber I'd make a call to Ruger.

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It's not a flaw, it's the way they designed it. An unsupported area similar to what is found in some autoloading handguns. With rimless cases though, you can use a 'bulge buster' to iron them out. Not so with the 357. They probably did it this way to keep the action short. That's just a guess though.

http://www.rugerforum.com/phpBB/view...980c5a42fb84c4
Lo-tek wrote

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After being frustrated with myself for not be able to figure this mag thing out, I enlisted the help of one of my shooting buddies who has extensive experience in all things "gun". He is the retired CO (full colonel) and master armorer of one of the military marksmanship units. We started in one the none feeding mags and discovered some problems that were easily corrected. I got chastised a little that I hadn't done some of this myself. The comment went something like "you designed ICBM's and you can't figure this out".

So here is what we found. The screw/shaft that holds the mags together was slightly bent in one and caused the rotor to bind on the wall of the mag after inserting 3 rounds. The last two rounds just sort flopped around. Fixed that and tightened it back up and the rotor wouldn't move until the screw was backed off almost a full turn. This made the back wall of the mag sit away from the main part so the mag did not enter or eject form the gun without difficulty. So now we took the mag apart and started measuring to see who was the problem. Turns out that when the screw is tightened up fully the inside from front to back of the mag is .030" smaller than the length of the rotor. Removing .020" of this amount of plastic .005" at a time from the front or round end of the shaft on a Unimat mill until the rotor spun freely when the screw was tight did the trick on that part. We did not reinstall the spring to do this. We made it so the rotor spun freely in the mag body minus the spring. We also found that .010" must be removed from the little 1/4 moon shaped part of the rotor shaft at the rear of the mag. This we found after assembling one mag. The pressure from the spring made this necessary. The next thing was to remove the mold "flash" from the anywhere we found it on the rotor. We found this on 4 of the 5 mags I have. This flash is a very thin bit of plastic at the mold parting line and on two rotors was enough to make a swishing sound as the rotor was spun in the mag. That came off with a sharp knife and a small file. When all the rotors would spin freely when the screw/shaft was tight, we quit.

Next came assembly. After years of figuring out this sort of thing for a living, it was actually easy. I put the mag together by putting the spring back on the rotor and getting the two prongs to go into the hole on the mag body and the one on the rotor. Have the screw/shaft in position as you do this. Tighten the screw/shaft just enough to hold the back end plate on. One or so threads is enough. This makes the mag loose. Hold the mag tight together with on hand and tighten the rotor spring two turns and hold it in place low in the mag with a small screwdriver or awl. Now the tricky part, the feed lips. I used two jeweler's screwdrivers to hold the rotor as I slip the feed lips into place. You have to slide the lips in and then take the second screwdriver and put through the opening in the feed lips to keep the rotor down. The lips will pop into place and then you can tighten the screw/shaft until it bottoms in the "nut" on the back side of the mag. The mag is now tight and will not not hang up in the mag well and will feed 5 shells very smoothly.

One of my friends has the same rifle and it needed a slight amount of work on the feed ramp at the rear of the chamber. His was not centered so our armorer friend used a flex shaft machine and a green Cratex abrasive point to remove enough metal to center the feed ramp. Mine needed none of this to now feed 5 shells as fast or slow as I choose to cycle the bolt. He did polish the feed ramp on mine and my friends to a very shiny smooth finish.

I now have 5 mags that all function perfectly. The hardest part of the whole thing is getting the feed lips back in but you will figure it out quick.

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Well things got dry around here finally yesterday afternoon so maybe by tomorrow the range won't be a total mud hole.

We got the screw/shaft heat treated to a place we like but it not a process not easily done at home. A small temperature controlled oven that will reach 2000 degrees is a must. We used some temp indicator crayons from McMaster-Carr at http://www.mcmaster.com to get the proper temper after hardening the screw/shaft by heating it to nice cherry red and dropping it in quenching oil at my friends shop. This makes the unit very hard and brittle. I think he used a 1800 degree crayon for that. I was not there for that part. We then found that if we heated the hardened unit to 450 degrees and then quenched it we wound up with a tough screw/shaft that was not brittle. We used the 450 degree temp crayons to make sure of our temperature. When the crayon color turned brown, out of the oven it came and into the oil. We did ruin two screw/shafts in the process. One we had too brittle and the other we are not sure what went wrong. Both broke.

On Friday I turned down a couple of Allen head cap screws to the correct diameter and length and then threaded them on my Unimat lathe. It was raining hard so I had more time on my hands. They did not need heat treating as they were already tough enough.

The heat treating process we did was very precise and is easy if you have the right equipment. Without it, it would a guessing job and I am not sure how that might come out. I have done things like this with an oxy/acetylene torch in a pinch and the crayons will take some of the guess work out. I just worry about someone not getting it right and ruining a screw/shaft and having to buy a new mag. I have access to stuff at home and my friend has everything else that I don't and then some. He is even thinking about making a batch of screws for club members and beyond. Again, retirement and too much time to play.

In the end we now have 8 very nicely functioning mags. When things dry out, I plan on going up to the range and running a few dozen rounds through my 5 and see what happens. They so far they work very slick with dummy rounds, so I am pretty confident they will work nice and slick with live ones. Recoil is the only wild card my friend can foresee.

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Things were fairly dry at the range this morning and so I gave my 5 "fixed" mags a run through. I am up here still using the WiFi at McDucks. All 5 performed perfectly. No jams at all. The only bullet style I had even a small hick-up with is the few semi-wadcutters I had left. They still hit on the driving band but went in with a small shove. I am going back to the range as soon as the sun moves a little more in the sky. It was in my eyes and the 77/357 doesn't have a sun shade on the scope. I wasn't able to see the target real well so I have no real idea how well the gun grouped.

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Originally Posted by wallenba

It's not a flaw, it's the way they designed it. An unsupported area similar to what is found in some autoloading handguns. With rimless cases though, you can use a 'bulge buster' to iron them out. Not so with the 357. They probably did it this way to keep the action short. That's just a guess though.

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thanks for the information.

Scratch that from the list.

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Originally Posted by Ben

The factory loads shook the Ruger scope mounts loose, walked off the paper at fifty yards before I caught on to what was happening.

Those scope mounts ( same design as on the Ruger new model 77 Mark II ) will work well with a 458 Lott.

If 357 magnums caused them to loosen, someone didn't put the rings on the rifle's receiver and / or the scope properly.

Nothing at all wrong with Ruger's design.

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I bought a ruger 1b, the 'smith installed Leupold rings. when I installed the scope, it literally snaps in and is held tight without the top half.... I installed the top halves and have NEVER touched them since, it will be 25 years this summer.....

now... on to my M77MK11... Ruger SS rings so HUGE they could NOT tighten down on the scope enough to stop movement... (you could move it by hand)
it took 2 thicknesses of Elec tape to take up the slack... Sold that ***