What if... and I'm just throwing ideas out here, I'm not entirely sure if you can do this on a single action...you cut a second loading gate on the left side. Set the canned air device to blow the shells out that side while you load the newly empty chambers on the right.
Umm...you know what? That might be doable, EXCEPT you've got the wrong side.
See, if we set it up to spit empties out the left side (from the shooter's point of view), the empties will spend too much time rolling around to the ejection point. No, we don't want to do that.
BUT.
Ohhhh man. There's another way to get to the same place. And it's absolutely TWISTED, but it'll work. I think
.
OK, try this.
Step one:
disable the interlock between the loading gate and freezing the hammer! Unsafe? Not really. Granted, a "safety" is being disabled but as long as the transfer bar still works...? Basically, rig the gun so it'll fire with the loading gate OPEN.
Step two: add an extended opener lever on the loading gate, so it can be flicked open and closed while the gun is held in a firing position. This is something I've thought of before. There's a couple of fairly easy and cosmetically clean ways of doing it. One would be to drill a hole into the gate from the back of the gun pointing forward along the barrel, cut the end off of a small silver spoon or something, solder it in there,
Step three: open up the loading gate channel just a wee bit. On a 357 like mine, wouldn't take much at all.
Here's how it would work:
Fire the first round with the gate CLOSED.
Flick the gate open, cock it, fire again. The empty shell has moved to a position in the gate where the recoil from shot #2 should send the first empty flying! Repeat as needed. The LAST round only will need to be kicked out in the conventional fashion!!!
Holy...it'll work.
If it doesn't, the mod to the frame needed is very minor and the loading gate will still latch closed just fine. Back off on the disconnected interlock (probably replace one altered part, I'll have to figure out which) and we're back to square one, no harm done.
Wait...hold it, time out, how in hell do I unlatch the cylinder to get it spinning to LOAD it! Half cock modification? Doable...yeah...worst case, buy the Power Custom drop-in parts...dammit, he doesn't have an SBH hammer for that but...meh, he's got Bisley bits. That would do. But...is it half-cock that unlatches the cylinder to spin, or is it still the Ruger loading gate system? Might be the latter. Hrm...
WAIT, I got it. I think. Heh. It's bizarre but it should work!
Cut the top half of the loading gate off
. Cut a channel in the remaining bottom half, put a pivot pin it it, have a swivelling upper half. In other words, a two-piece loading gate. Fire, then flick the top half down...because it's sole job is to prevent live round number six from auto-ejecting when I fire the first round. The bottom half of the loading gate is still closed and that controls the cylinder rotation release! Fire the gun dry then flick the rest of the loading gate open, dump the last live round, re-stuff it (tubeloader?), close the whole loading gate, cock and fire, open the top half....yeah, it's doable.
ONLY real problem is...if the gun k'booms, it might send the top half of the loading gate and/or a piece of shell backwards right at me. Well...that's not that bad. I wear safety glasses 100% of the time - literally, I'm near-sighted and I don't wear contacts, and my glasses are safety rated. If a piece of metal that light hits my cheek, meh, pull it out and grab a band-aid.
Besides, the cylinder on this thing is beefier than a GP100 or S&W686. A k'boom is damned unlikely.
Yeah. Holy crap. Worst case, it doesn't work, how much are loading gates at Brownell's? Hah...$10. Yeah, I can risk THAT!
