Couple questions about shooting double action

[Lead Fred]

I shot my SA, SA, and my DA, SA!

Carried SAs my whole life. Dont even mess with the DA

[Three44s]

A lot of good advice thus far.

I concur on setting sights for SA and figuring out why you are hitting somewhere else in DA. It should not be that way.

I shot at a lot of different things starting out and finally settled on golf balls. Very good contrast except in snow and they take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.

I find that the DA dry and live fire helps smooth triggers and build muscle memory and tone. What's not to like?

Being a farmer/rancher I find that I could "single the double" as Elmer Keith put it in his iconic book: Sixguns ......... it just goes with working out doors with your hands.

Now one word of caution about the Ruger DA's ...... watch out for lite primer strikes when you start swapping out springs. I should know, as my RH and previous SRH had been lightened by the same GS and they both had to be fed with the Federal primer series to preclude having FTF's.

Best of luck and best regards

Three 44s

[StrawHat]

Once you practice and have the trigger pull to where it does not disturb the sights, then you add speed. Anyone can shoot the shots in the time required, the winners do it accurately.

Kevin

[Petrol & Powder]

I concur with Three44's with a caveat. Ruger DA's come from the factory with strong springs, far too strong in my experience. You can reduce the spring weight a little and do nothing else and improve the DA pull considerably without reducing the reliability of the gun. I can never remember the spring weights but basically you drop the main spring by a few pounds and sometimes the trigger return spring by a little bit as well.
However, if you want to reduce the spring weights more than just a few pounds you must also smooth up the action in conjunction with the reduced spring weights in order to maintain reliability.
I believe Ruger double actions are very well made guns but they suffer a bit from a lack of internal polishing and fitting. IMO, Ruger compensates for that lack of internal polishing by using springs that are a bit more robust than needed in order to ensure 100% functioning.
I've worked on a small pile of Ruger DA revolvers over the years have found that one can safety reduce the mainspring by a few pounds and easily maintain 100% functioning with any primer but in order to go any lower than just a few pounds; one must do a fair amount of polishing as well. Reducing the weight of the trigger spring will reduce the perceived pull weight but it comes at the cost of slower trigger reset as well.

Polishing lockwork is basically introducing artificial and accelerated wear into the gun. It produces fast results but not necessarily better results than practice. It also short-circuits practice time with the gun.
Char Gar may wish to chime in here because I believe he may share these sentiments. The best way to improve the action of a good quality revolver is to shoot the revolver and shoot it often.

Ruger DA revolvers come from the factory with very heavy springs and you can drop the mainspring weight by a few pounds and still have a completely reliable revolver with any decent cartridge AND greatly improve the DA action. It is possible to take that improved action even farther with even lighter mainsprings, lighter trigger return springs and careful polishing but that is when the reliability window gets narrow. In addition, there is little benefit in performing that work when plain old practice will smooth out the action AND improve your skill at the same time. There is no artificial substitute for practice.

So, To recap : you can drop the mainspring on a Ruger DA by a few pounds and improve the action while maintaining 100% reliability.
You can go farther with the modifications but there are diminishing returns of doing so. The best "bang for your buck" is a slightly reduced power mainspring and a lot of practice.

Good Luck and remember, "Beware of the man with only one gun......he probably knows how to use it."

[MBTcustom]

I concur with Three44's with a caveat. Ruger DA's come from the factory with strong springs, far too strong in my experience. You can reduce the spring weight a little and do nothing else and improve the DA pull considerably without reducing the reliability of the gun. I can never remember the spring weights but basically you drop the main spring by a few pounds and sometimes the trigger return spring by a little bit as well.
However, if you want to reduce the spring weights more than just a few pounds you must also smooth up the action in conjunction with the reduced spring weights in order to maintain reliability.
I believe Ruger double actions are very well made guns but they suffer a bit from a lack of internal polishing and fitting. IMO, Ruger compensates for that lack of internal polishing by using springs that are a bit more robust than needed in order to ensure 100% functioning.
I've worked on a small pile of Ruger DA revolvers over the years have found that one can safety reduce the mainspring by a few pounds and easily maintain 100% functioning with any primer but in order to go any lower than just a few pounds; one must do a fair amount of polishing as well. Reducing the weight of the trigger spring will reduce the perceived pull weight but it comes at the cost of slower trigger reset as well.

Polishing lockwork is basically introducing artificial and accelerated wear into the gun. It produces fast results but not necessarily better results than practice. It also short-circuits practice time with the gun.
Char Gar may wish to chime in here because I believe he may share these sentiments. The best way to improve the action of a good quality revolver is to shoot the revolver and shoot it often.

Ruger DA revolvers come from the factory with very heavy springs and you can drop the mainspring weight by a few pounds and still have a completely reliable revolver with any decent cartridge AND greatly improve the DA action. It is possible to take that improved action even farther with even lighter mainsprings, lighter trigger return springs and careful polishing but that is when the reliability window gets narrow. In addition, there is little benefit in performing that work when plain old practice will smooth out the action AND improve your skill at the same time. There is no artificial substitute for practice.

So, To recap : you can drop the mainspring on a Ruger DA by a few pounds and improve the action while maintaining 100% reliability.
You can go farther with the modifications but there are diminishing returns of doing so. The best "bang for your buck" is a slightly reduced power mainspring and a lot of practice.

Good Luck and remember, "Beware of the man with only one gun......he probably knows how to use it."

This is a really great post.
I agree.

[coffeeguy]

The basics have been covered here...I prefer shooting DA because it seems smoother and allows me to keep my grip more consistent. Change something in your shooting sequence or style, and point of impact will probably change. I had my first pin shoot last week, used my 1911 and did, well, not so hot. One of the old hands who was timing me said after the fact, "You know you're using a revolver grip, right?" That made perfect sense; it came down to muscle memory. I chose the 1911 over my S&W 66 because I wanted that extra 2 rounds, but was shooting low and left and had more misses than I expected. Instead of re-learning my grip, I went back to the revolver and did fine... Progressing smoothly from right to left, shooting DA (which I almost always do), which let me re-acquire my sight picture on the move and by the time I was lined up with the next pin the hammer broke and it was like clockwork. Ditto on using the second segment to pull the trigger, but do what works best for you and your gun. Work on accuracy and consistency first, then speed; and save a lot of frustration!

[Bigslug]

Sounds like you're coming off the sights at the last instant to watch the impacts, rather than staying on them all the way through. You probably do this on SA too, only the effect is less pronounced.

[fourarmed]

I would strongly advise you to reread Blackwater's post carefully. Since you are pulling the gun to the right consistently, it is probably because your grips force you to turn the gun to the right in your hand a little in order to get the first joint on the trigger. I am not familiar enough with Redhawks to know what is available in aftermarket grips, but you need something to shorten the reach. Possibly the small Magna-type grips with a Tyler T-grip adapter or similar would be the way to go.

I recently start using a round butt N-frame Smith for DA shooting, and I was lucky enough to get a set of the Jerry Miculek grips with it. They give about the shortest reach you can get on an N-frame. Unless you can easily palm a basketball, reach is always going to be a problem when shooting DA on the larger revolvers.

[Blackwater]

P&P's post, and GS's echoes are right, but I've never had the patience or time to wait to do it that way. The quickest/best way to get a really good pull has proven, at least to me, to be a LIGHT polishing with no coarser than 400 and usually 600 grit wet or dry using popsickle sticks cut to fit each mortise. No need to overdo it, really, and if you've never done it before, less is always more. Keeps you from doing anything you'll regret later. You can always come back and polish more, but you can't put back anything you remove. Age old principle and always one to be followed. Deburr anywhere it looks necessary. Use 600 grit for this only.

Next, get a set of lighter springs. Try them, but this too can be carried too far, and guns sometimes vary as to how much is too light. If you get failure to fire due to light firing pin indents, add more mainspring strength. Another key to doing good, reliable lightening of trigger pull is getting the bolt (cylinder locking bolt) spring light enough to work with the springs you're using. If this spring isn't lightened to balance with the lighter mainspring, your cylinder may not lock up reliably, and getting the cylinder bolt locking spring too heavy for lighter spring sets CAN do this, so watch for that.

Mainly, though, DA revolver shooting is something that is, has always been, and likely always will be, acquired ONLY through GOOD practice. By that, I don't mean just going out and shooting repetitively, but noticing what you're doing as you shoot - catching yourself when you pull right, left, up or down, and figuring out why you did it. It may well be due to ill fitting grips. The handgun is the least powerful (generally) and hardest to shoot accurately firearm we can use, so it takes more skill and practice to get good with it than with other arms. With DA revolvers, we get a std. grip from the factories, but we're not all built the same. We have different finger lengths and girths, differing hand/palm sizes with differing amounts of "meat" on them, and the difference between finger lengths varies, so naturally, good grips HAVE to vary accordingly.

Fortunately, this isn't hard to achieve, but it's not a "quick fix" overnight thing, and it too needs some attention. Just notice how your grips fit and what that fit tends to make your fingers do. Sand accordingly. You can even add bondo to a grip, and then send them off to be duplicated on a pantograph in some decent wood or other grip materials, so they just fit your hand exactly. It really does make a difference. Good grips, for instance, tend to seat in your hands right with the first shot, so that if you ever grip them hastily and don't get a perfect grip, recoil from the first shot seats it back into your hands and 2nd and subsequent shots are where you want them to be. That's no small thing, especially if you're ever in a hurry.

It takes some time to adapt a decent set of grips to fit your hand really well, but it pays off, and what's the point in keeping on using grips that don't fit your hand quite right? One size fits all grips, usually just don't fit most people, but most struggle along for an awful long time before they get tired of it and start seeking a set that really fits well. But it's very much worth it, and can help take you further and faster than any other factor I know of in DA shooting.

Some folks are better at adapting than others, and learn the "feel" of the right grip faster and better than others, but even then, grips that don't quite fit the hand well will always be a barrier. Some just cross those barriers easier than ohters, but only good grips will minimize the variations in your shooting. That's my experience, at least, and what I've observed in a number of others. Get the right grip, and it's MUCH easier to get good fast.

[RedHawk357Mag]

Anyone tried the Eagle custom grips? Thinking the smooth rosewood would probably be a good starting place. Never shot the RH double action with the stock panels. I should probably check that out as well... I absolutely know I did not like them on the 44. Actually probably never shot the 357 with stock panels as I bought the 357 after the 44. Dry firing with blank paper has pointed out a few things as well. Some gripping positions allow me maintain better sight alignment through out the pull. The current Hogue grips aren't helpful in achieving that type of grip with out a very purposeful two handed tinkering to accomplish it. I recently replaced the mainspring as I was getting quite a few FTF with Cci small pistol primers. I changed to the ten pound spring and honed the hammer face slightly to help with primer strikes. Increased dbl action reliability and smoother pull as well. Thanks a bunch for all the information stated so far.

[Blackwater]

" Some gripping positions allow me maintain better sight alignment through out the pull."

NOW you're REALLY learning to shoot DA revolver! When you start noticing what works and what creates unnecessary problems, you're on the road to getting probably MUCH better than you may have thought you COULD be! Just keep it up, and keep searching/trying grips, and you'll find what works for YOU. It really doesn't matter if it works just right for anyone else. These are YOUR guns, and they need to fit YOUR hand, and that's all there is to it. And it really can be amazing how much a good grip can aid you in both your accuracy and particularly with your CONSISTENCY. If a grip tends to place your fingers and hand parts in the right place to ALLOW your trigger finger to make a smooth, consistent, straight back trigger pull, and places your fingers so that any tendency you may have to jerk the gun right, left, up or down with your two lower fingers on your grip, how could that NOT help you?

It takes some time and shooting to get quick and accurate at the same time, but good grips that allow your hand and fingers to work right and smoothly and consistently, and thus fit your hand, really aid in developing both the speed and the accuracy we all aspire to. With prices what they are today, that's not great news, but .... it's just the way it is. I'm sure I could have bought another gun along the way with all the grips I've tried in my time, but one really good gun that really fits and is customized to your hand will beat a whole passel of so-so guns with grips that just don't quite fit your hand. In the end, handgunning is really all about delivering one shot that hits the target precisely where you intended it to, and not about volume of fire, etc. And the benefit is that when you find what works for you best, you can duplicate it MUCH more easily and reliably with like grips, and maybe a few small pieces of sandpaper. It's one of those gifts that just keeps on giving back to you in your shooting lifetime, and that ain't no small thing!

[Petrol & Powder]

I've used a lot of Eagle grips over the years but not on a RedHawk. They are decent grips, I put them in the affordable "semi-custom" classification. I've had very good luck with Pachmayr's and Rugers but grips are a VERY individual thing so what works for one person doesn't always works for someone else. The rosewood grips are nice and the color goes all the way through so you can sand on them and simply re-oil with linseed oil to return then to the original finish.
The 10# main spring sounds about right. BTW, de-burring & polishing the portion of the roughly stamped hammer strut that passes through the lower spring seat is an easy mod that yields positive results. Not sure what you mean by honing the hammer face but you can take a little material off the hammer face (0.020") to improve the strike to the firing pin. The Ruger DA hammer actually strikes the frame even when the transfer bar is in the raised position. By removing just a little material you can gain a little more transfer of force to the firing pin but this is seldom necessary. If you take too much material off you have to reduce the thickness of the transfer bar to restore functioning. Proceed carefully if you go that route.

[FergusonTO35]

I've gone to using the the area right above the first joint of the trigger finger for all my pistols and rifles. None of my guns have a light trigger pull and the extra leverage helps me keep it steady. Using the fingertip does work on a really light single action but that's about it.