Durabilty: Ruger GP-100 vs. S&W 686

[38splfan]

Weeeeeeelllllll........

I fired neither of the weapons in question, but based on my fathers 30+ Ruger Service Six and my 50+ year old S&W Military and Police, I will have to vote for the Smith. It seems to have less problems with it's age than the Ruger. The Service Six has a cylinder that seems to be slightly out of time and the action seems to be getting somewhat lighter, having trouble punching harder primers. Not a problem wiht big name factory ammo, but diffficult to use off-brands/handloads. OF course this may all be due to maintenance or lack thereof. Dad is not the most faithful cleaner
But, based on experience with older guns of both manufacturers, I will have to select the Smith and Wesson. It goes boom every time without a problem and the action as tight and strong as any new model. Either one seems to havethe capacity to last 60 years or more if maintained properly.
Shoot Safe.

 

[JohnKSa]

Ruger uses mainsprings that are IMHO, used to provide a "lawyer friendly" trigger pull rather than provide balance between performance and user friendliness.

Actually the mainspring is chosen to be 100% reliable. The trigger return spring may be chosen to make the trigger pull heavier than it needs to be. There's no need for the factory to weight the mainspring heavier than it should be when they can just stick in a very stiff trigger return spring.

Hal,

Wasn't saying you did say that--just saying that I wasn't playing the "my gun is better" game--I'm just calling it the way I see it.

 

[Boats]

Yes, the trigger return spring is part of the equation, but when one can take two pounds off of the mainspring weight and typically still enjoy 100% reliability, that says the 12# factory spring the GP-100 comes with was a very conservative pick.

 

[JohnKSa]

Boats,

You probably can drop the mainspring weight a bit without compromising reliability. However, the conservatism apparent in Ruger's choice of mainspring weight is more in the area of reliability than liability. I can see dropping the trigger return spring weight a bit, but even that is not entirely without the threat of reliability issues. I've never found it necessary to do the spring kit dance to make a GP100 shootable. I do go in and do a bit of polishing here and there, but nothing approaching a modification--just slicking things up a bit.

38splfan,

The older blued S&W guns seem to be more durable than the newer stainless offerings. Also, the Security and Speed Six revolvers are significantly less overbuilt than the GP100.