Back to the revolver game.

[Uncle Malice]

I've been over here a couple of times over the years. I had an SP101 and a Ruger Alaskan 44mag for a little bit. Ended up selling both of them.

Got a nice deal on a 4" GP100 today. I was really thinking about ordering the 3" Wiley Clapp, but was really looking for a 4". If the WC was 4" it would have been ordered. No worries though. I think I'm going to make it a slight project gun. I'm going to do a slight trigger polish job drop some Wolff springs in it. Already have a High-Viz fiber optic front sight on the way. I absolutely love how simple it is to replace the front sight on these.

Mine did have the common issue of the rear sight pin drifting out, just from 100 dry fires, it came out about 1/4". It always seemed to slide from left to right, so I pulled the pin out and tapped the end with a hammer to give it just the slightest mushroom burr and gave it the slightest bend to increase tension, then reinserted the pin from left to right. Seems to have fixed the issue and you wouldn't know there was anything different about it.

Looking forward to getting back into the revolver game. The SP101 was pretty nice but was heavy for it's size, but still light enough to not be all that fun with full power 357's.... so I didn't see the niche. The Alaskan was pretty cool, but SO expensive to shoot and not very practical for any of my uses. This one I really bought with the primary purpose of being a range gun and perhaps occasional camping/woods gun.

Looking forward to giving it a break-in!

 

[Model12Win]

You would do well my getting some snap caps and dry firing the hell out of it before installing lighter springs and polishing the trigger.

It will smooth up very nicely on it's own. Ruger puts the weigh springs they use in these guns for a reason. I'd keep them in there. It's your gun, do what you want, but make sure to put the factory spring back in if you ever sell the gun.

 

[wpsdlrg]

Do yourself a favor and check the cylinder throat diameter(s), as well. Ruger seems to have a problem with sizing these correctly (often, they are too tight). Too tight plays havoc with accuracy and almost guarantees leading problems in the barrel. The forcing cones on Rugers are usually cut at around 5 degrees, in addition, which is not really suitable for cast bullets. If your GP cone is like that, consider having it re-cut to 10 degrees.

 

[Slimjim9]

Congrats! I recently picked up its shorter brother, the 3" model 1708. Only had it out once (the day I bought it) but have since put on Williams Fire Sights and full Lettt-style grips. Want to put some rounds through it in this configuration before I start messing with springs but that's almost inevitable.

 

[MrBorland]

Congrats. I have several 4" S&W 686s, but I'd seriously consider a 4" GP100 if I were shopping for another 4" revolver.

As you mentioned, Ruger's interchangeable front sight is a very nice feature, and Rugers tend to respond very nicely to tuning. One of the smoothest revolvers I've ever shot was a well-tuned GP100. And few other features help make it a very robust design to boot.

 

[Uncle Malice]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I am dry firing the crap out it. It seems to be smoothing out a good bit. The DA is overly heavy.

I'm planning to just start by putting in the reduced power trigger spring. That should bring it down quite a bit without effecting ignition at all. We'll see where that gets me. If I think it needs to be lightly, I might go ahead with the 12lb hammer spring. From all of the research I've done, everyone reports that the 12lb spring maintains perfect reliability where the lighter ones could cause problems.

It will take me a week or so to get the spring kit anyways, so I'll be dry firing it and practicing until that time anyways. The fiber optic front sight will be here tomorrow so I'll probably wait for that, and then hit the range on Friday.

 

[Mr.Bro]

I picked up a GP 100 6 inch not long ago. I got it from my cousin, he bought it new and only shot a few hundred rounds in it. I dry fired it a couple hundred times myself and shot a few more boxes in it before getting the Wolff springs. While it was plenty smooth, the double action was still pretty heavy.

For the springs, I went with the 8 lb trigger, 10 lb hammer to start, after reading about others experiences with them. The double action was amazing! Much lighter and smoother than the factory. Very crisp single action as well. I shot another box of factory ammo and it definitely helped my accuracy from the bench. I then shot some reloads and found I had a little trouble with them, getting light primer strikes. Turns out that's from the CCI 500 primers being the hardest ones available (what I have a few thousand of...). Most people recommend the Federal primers as they are much softer for those with the lighter springs. I have since switched it up to the 12 lb hammer spring, and kept the 8 lb trigger. Single action doesn't feel much different and the double action is only slightly heavier, but still great. Need to shoot some more reloads to test, but as I said, didn't have any trouble with factory ammo and the lighter springs.