HomeSmith Tuneup: Spirits of '76

[Shotguncoach]

Taking a short break from working on trainwrecks to mess with some that just need a little love and attention.

I was initially going to put this into the General section as a "Hey check out this neat pair" thread, but the initial inspection and cleaning of the 4" gun turned into a bare-frame teardown and repair...so here we are.

This is a pair of Ruger Security Six .357 revolvers, one 4" and one 6", both made in 1976. Both guns have the phrase "MADE IN THE 200TH YEAR OF AMERICAN LIBERTY" stamped into the left side of the frame. The target grips on the 6" gun cover up part of the inscription so I'm searching for another pair of the Ruger branded rubber grips to match the ones on the 4" gun.

 

[Shotguncoach]

The 4" gun was in worse shape than the 6" so let's start with that one...

The first issue was the was immediately noticed when the gun was unpacked at my FFL: the cylinder release was very sticky and required a deep, hard push on the release button. This appeared to be from a combination of factors. One, the contact surface on the cylinder release lever was worn (or made) with a messed up tip that could be seen through the center pin hole in the frame. The other issue was that the front plunger on the barrel was full of goo and gunk that made it very hard to depress and slow to return to the rest position. A spray of WD40 onto the plunger helped a bit, indicating that a deeper clean was needed.

The other obvious issue was that it had been dropped on the front sight. The impact was at an angle and pushed up a large burr on the right side of the sight. When viewed in the shooting position the front sight looked like the letter P. No bueno.

Funny how neither of those issues ended up in the auction description.....

 

[Shotguncoach]

Timing and lockup were good, as were the bore and all 6 chambers. The single action trigger pull was just under 4 pounds...not great, not terrible. The double action pull was typical Ruger and maxed out my 12 pound trigger pull scale.

The trigger and hammer also were showing the typical Ruger surface rust.

First to come off were the grips (not a S&W so I can call them that ) and the patent pending specialized gunsmithing tool was used to remove the hammer spring and strut.

 

[Shotguncoach]

A small brass punch was used to push out the hammer pin and the hammer came out the top easily. The same punch was used to remove the trigger group and then the cylinder assembly and cylinder catch were removed.

The interior of the frame and the trigger group were just plain nasty. My guess would be that the previous owner was in the habit of removing the grips, spraying aerosol lube into the back of the frame and calling that "clean".

I knew that I wanted to replace the cylinder release and check its' pivot pin for straightness before I started this adventure and the retaining screw/pivot pin had been soaking in Kroil for a couple of hours. A medium size jewelers screwdriver brought the screw/pin out easily....Kroil really is magical stuff.

 

[Shotguncoach]

The cylinder assembly was next to come apart. If you don't have the Power Custom cylinder rod tool yet I highly recommend getting one. The yoke barrel was covered with a sticky grey sludge that was even nastier than the trigger group channel. Ick. More to come on that later.

Next up was the front sight blade. I've gotten into the habit of buying parts kits instead of individual parts because I never know what I might need. This time there was an extra bonus in that I got to practice removing the front sight blade from the parts kit barrel before I started working on the one that mattered.

The sight pin was visible but flush with the side of both barrels. Not wanting to mar the sight rib with an errant strike, I used the point of my smallest roll pin punch to move the pin just a bit below the surface and then switched to a regular punch that matched the pin size. Tap tap tap and out it came. The replacement sight blade had rusted in place and would require cleaning prior to installation. That's ok though because it was otherwise intact. The sight pin on the project gun came out just as easily using the same method.

I realized as I was cleaning out the front sight channel that there really wasn't much left on the frame. The front ejector rod plunger, the firing pin, and the rear sight were all that was left. What the heck. There were some rust scabs on the side of the frame. Let's do this as close to "right" as we can get.

The rear sight came off so easily it was surprising. Remove the screw, tilt the sight up, take out the rear spring with a pair of needle nose pliers, then push the pin out. There was no hammer involved. With the tension removed the pin just slid out to the side and the rear sight was off. Again, lots of nasty stuff under the rear sight. The sight pieces from both guns went into an empty bullet box with a lid so that they wouldn't evaporate on the bench.

 

[Shotguncoach]

The firing pin retaining pin is shaped to the recoil shield and looked like a royal pain to reinstall in the correct orientation. So far I had gotten three pins out without any issues so I decided not to press my luck. I left it where it was. The front ejector rod plunger also looked to be a real joy to reinstall, so it stayed in place as well.

The frame made a trip out to the back porch and I reminded myself that brake cleaner splashes everywhere when you put the nozzle into a tight space. Half a can of brake cleaner did a fine job of de-nastifying the inside of the frame and washed a truly amazing amount of junk out of the front ejector rod plunger area.

There is a reference in my previous post to some rust scabs on the frame that may seem to be just a random thought that doesn't belong there. It wasn't random. I removed the rear sight because I was planning on boiling and carding the frame while it was mostly from together. I put a pot of distilled water on the stove to boil (She Who Must Be Obeyed was still at her church camp so I was able to do this inside instead of outside on the grill side burner) and turned my attention to the trigger group. I wanted to boil and card the trigger guard but all the pieces needed to come out first.

The transfer bar is easy...just pull the trigger and it falls out. At least it would fall out if it wasn't gunked in place by 48 years of gack. A few drops of Hoppe's got it un-gacked and out. The hand/pawl (whatever Ruger calls it) was next and was done inside a plastic bag to prevent the dreaded ZING! I needn't have bothered. The pawl plunger and spring were also gacked in place and required solvent and a pair of pliers to remove.

The trigger is held in place by a pin inside a pin. The trigger return spring pin is hollow and the pin that holds the trigger/spring assembly into the trigger guard slides inside the hollow pin. That one was easy to remove. Getting the spring out of the trigger was also easy with the use of a small parallel clamp.

All of the various pieces that were to be boiled were strung up on wire and into the pot they went. That's the rusty front sight blade on the end of the wire attached to the frame.

 

[Shotguncoach]

What shall we do while we boil? Let's polish some stuff.

First up was the trigger sear. I attached the RDA adapter to my Power Custom sear jig and installed the trigger as best as I could interpret from the instruction pictures, but I wasn't happy with the way it flopped around because one of the pins was too small...that didn't seem right so I stopped with the plan of contacting Power Custom on Monday. As I'm typing this it just occurred to me that I needed to have put that hollow pin into the trigger when I mounted it on the jig. That would make the pin the correct size and stopped the flopping. I'm glad that I didn't proceed because it would have cut the sear angle incorrectly.

Having struck out on the sear, I moved to the trigger face. This one had wonderfully sharp serrations that had to have been designed by a sadist. The serrations were also about 3 miles deep, so I didn't try to completely remove them. I used a series of Cratex bits in a Dremel to knock the sharp edges off, gently round the sides, and then polish the rust off of the flats. The hammer flats were also polished to remove the rust and provide a smoother finish that won't scale up quite so easily.

The rest of the boil time was spent happily polishing/stoning every piece that rubbed on something else.

 

[Shotguncoach]

After the boil and cooling off period it was time to card and start putting things back together. The bluing cleaned up quite nicely. It's not factory perfect, but it's much better than it was.

I've wondered for a while why Smith & Wesson went to the trouble of putting the gas ring into the cylinder assembly, but now that I've cleaned up this mess I understand. After the brake cleaner and boil I still had to use a dental pick to remove the built up powder residue from the inside of the cylinder. It was actually packed so solidly in there that I didn't realize at first that the central hole wasn't just one smooth channel.

When the excavation inside the cylinder was done and reassembled with the yoke and ejector, the next step was to reassemble the trigger assembly. The parallel clamp worked great for removing the trigger return spring but putting it back together came down to just plain old hand strength. I don't know why everyone is so afraid of Ruger trigger groups. Just go slow, take pictures along the way, and pay attention. A Wolff reduced power trigger return spring was used during the reassembly.

Now it was time to bang on stuff with a hammer. Installing the sights again was so easy it was almost a let down. The same two-punch system was used to reinstall the front sight blade except that this time the small roll pin punch was used to seat the pin flush with the sight rib. The rear sight again didn't even need a hammer...the pin just pushed into place. When you do this, remember to put the front spring (closest to the pin) into place before setting the pin. The rear spring goes into place with a pair of needle nose pliers and thumb pressure is enough to get the screw started. I ended up having to dive into my parts kit again here because after all the careful storage of parts on the bench, I dropped the rear sight screw as I went to start it into the hole. I heard it bounce twice as it escaped into the bowels of the garage to join the other feral pins and screws. That would have been a show stopper if I didn't have a spare.

 

[Shotguncoach]

We were in the home stretch now and the last thing to hang on the frame was the replacement cylinder release from the parts kit. It took some finagling (I'm amazed that spell check actually contains that word) to get the plunger oriented correctly to snap into place, but a bit of help from a small screwdriver popped it back in. A drop of oil on the screw/pin thingy, turn turn turn, and we have a complete frame again. I rather like how the stainless button looks on the blued frame. Short & Sweet has one too....I'm sensing a pattern here. The difficult cylinder release was gone when everything went together for the final assembly. Yay.

The cylinder assembly, cylinder stop, trigger assembly, hammer, and hammer pin were all lightly oiled and snapped into place. Then came the hammer spring. The same Wolff reduced power spring kit that the trigger return spring came from contained what was labeled as a 14 pound reduced power hammer spring. It was labeled that way but it sure didn't look right. Out of the bag it was almost a quarter of an inch longer than the original hammer spring. A test assembly resulted in significant coil bind and the hammer would only go to full cock if I forced it into position. The spring was binding so badly that it turned into an S shape on the hammer strut and the double action pull was quite a bit heavier than before.

It's just another example of why my life story will be titled "Why should this be different?"

I did some quick research on that internet thing and found that this is a common problem now. Apparently the current hotness is to use springs intended for a GP100 and buy an assortment to find out which works best. Maybe I should have researched before I bought 4 of the Wolff kits. Oh well. Clicky clicky...a set of GP100 springs is on the way.

The hammer spring in it's current state was useless to me and the other springs were days away, so the original hammer spring went in again. This caused something I've never experienced: now the whole gun rang like a tuning fork when the hammer fell. Something about the way I reassembled the spring onto the strut and the relationship of all the internal parts set up a harmonic when the hammer struck the frame. It was really strange. It wasn't the satisfying ping that you get when an M1 ejects the empty clip...this was like ringing a bell. Not acceptable. My simple mind would never be able to handle that on the range.

I didn't want to play the Carol of the Bells every time I pulled the trigger so I decided to experiment with the too-long spring. Making too-short into longer takes work, but making too-long into shorter is simple. I started cutting coils off of the new spring until I got rid of the coil bind. Three full coils came off before it would compress and release smoothly. Thankfully, the ringing sound also went away. I missed the opportunity to record the sound so you'll have to trust me...it was very much annoying.

The cut spring and other internal work yielded a single action pull of 3 pounds 2 ounces and a double action pull of 9 pound 10 ounces. Not great, not terrible, but still better than it was. Measuring the hammer tension was interesting because there is a definite push-over spot halfway through the hammer travel. The heavy side is currently 50 ounces, the light side is 42 ounces.

I'll have to establish a baseline hammer tension measurement for Rugers the old fashioned way: by turning money into noise. It isn't quite as easy as turning the strain screw on a Smith but it won't be bad. I'll take a spare hammer strut and plate with me along with my assortment of screws and an assortment of ammo. I have .38 ammo on hand with Federal and Winchester primers as well as some .357 loaded with CCI primers. That data will come along in a week or two depending on how long it takes for Wolff to ship my order.

The last step was to break out the bottle of Testor's 1127 and paint the front sight bright orange. Note to self: saying "front sight, front sight" to the phone does not help it focus.

Later this week I'll open up the 6" gun and see how it looks. For now the 4" gun is just waiting for function testing. Stay tuned.

The time on this one (not counting the paint drying) was 4 1/2 hours. More than I originally intended but much more entertaining than anything on TV. Don't be afraid to actually do stuff. It's fun.

 

[serger]

I've got a 4" bicentennial that's stainless.
It was a birthday present from my father
when I got home from boot camp. We
went to the Gart Brothers Lakeside Mall
store in the Denver Metro to get it.

I did a trigger job on it in the 80's after
I got out of the service. At that time my
wife decided she wanted it and since then
I got her a Kramer horsehide holster and
it lives there.

I had to knock the aggressive serrations
off the trigger with a dowel wrapped in
sandpaper followed with crocus cloth. I
think better than half of the Ruger's I've
handled needed this. It must be one way
Ruger enhanced the longevity of his guns.
(If it hurts to shoot more than 1 box in a
shooting session then wear on the gun
goes down and it appears to last longer.)

All joking aside, the Six series are just
about indestructible. The Border Patrol
contract in 1982 required them to be able
to fire 10,000 full power .357's and still
stay in time without excessive wear. They
did it with a smile.

Thanks for the tutorial and the memories.

 

[Shotguncoach]

Good morning Serger, and thank you for your service. One of my grandsons turns wrenches on an F-18 and is currently somewhere around Japan with his plane.

It makes me happy to know that you still have your birthday gun. Yes, it's just a thing but the memories attached to it are priceless.

 

[Tanners Owner]

@Shotguncoach
I've enjoyed reading your restoration efforts- educational & enjoyable. My first revolver in the mid 80s was a Security six- unfortunately I traded it away years ago & wish I still had it.

 

[Pig Hunter]

Sometimes Rugers have enough play between the sides of the trigger and hammer and the sides of the frame they need shims put in to keep everything straight and true. Also push the firing pin out with a punch or a screwdriver to see how much protrusion it has. Then check by holding the trigger back. Sometimes the top forward step of the hammer needs to be shortened. Otherwise that part of the hammer is hitting the frame and not getting all it's force onto the transfer bar.

 

[Shotguncoach]

Funny you should mention that. I can fit a .013 feeler gauge between the hammer and frame on this one. A set of shims is already in the mail…..

 

[Shotguncoach]

Today was another nasty February day, rainy and cold as my mother in law's heart, which meant that after the chores were done it was time to get inside the 6" bicentennial Ruger. This was also supposed to be just a quick cleaning to allow for a baseline range trip before any modifications happened. Yeah right. You should know by now that my life doesn't work that way.

Dry firing this one made me think that someone has already been inside. Double and single action trigger pulls were better than usual for a Ruger revolver but were not as smooth as a Smith. The trigger pull gauge confirmed what the calibrated finger told me: 3 lbs 6 oz for single action, 8 lbs 12 oz for double action.

The pull weights weren't bad but it felt somewhat gritty. This leads me to believe that it had just a spring swap and not much else.

Hammer tension was quite a bit lighter than the 4" gun. The same high-low breakover point was observed at the midpoint of the hammer travel. The high side was 40 ounces, the low side was 32 ounces.

Taking the grips off revealed the usual mung around the edges and a pretty normal looking inside. The normal part stopped when the hammer spring and strut were removed. Instead of the usual pear-shaped strut end, this one has been shaved and threaded to allow a nut to thread on and form the top spring stop.

If the rest of the gun had been pristine and the trigger pull smoother I would think that this was a really cool gunsmithing trick. As it is, I'm more inclined to think that this was a home expedient repair for a spring that was just a wee bit too short to be reliable. I think I would have shimmed the spring at the bottom instead of threading the top. The threads at the very top may be rubbing on the hammer and contributing to the un-smooth action cycling. We'll put some Dykem on that later and find out.

 

[Shotguncoach]

Inspecting the rest of the gun revealed the usual Ruger oxidation on the hammer and trigger. I didn't clean that up because I know that I'm going to be inside this one again. There is enough side to side slop in the hammer and trigger to throw a cat through and my trigger/hammer shims haven't shown up yet. That adventure will be next weekend.

Aside from the usual dings, scratches, rust freckles, and holster wear that an honest handgun accumulates, there were a few other notable issues:

Someone engraved (or scratched) 4 numbers on the bottom of the frame. (At least is wasn't a full social security number....does anyone else remember when we were all encouraged to do that? ) Draw filing and rebluing that area is a low priority project for another day.

Removing the hammer revealed rust inside the frame and underneath the hammer pin. I was going to clean that up with a carding brush but then I looked more closely at the barrel....

The issue that pushed this one over the edge from a quick cleaning to a full tear down was once again the front sight blade. This time the sight blade was loose and flopping around. Joy. Oh well...as long as the front sight has to come out we might as well do it all. Two screws and one pin later I had another naked Ruger frame on my workbench. At least this time it went faster.

 

[Shotguncoach]

All the little parts went into a laundry detergent cup and I amused myself by scrubbing the trigger group with a toothbrush while the distilled water came to a boil.

The hand/pawl/cylinder turny thing has a horrible rough spot where it engages against the trigger guard housing. I didn't want to take the full trigger group apart twice, so I just made a note to clean that up when the trigger shims go in next week.

After degreasing with non-chlorinated brake cleaner, the frame and hammer pin went into the pot along with a 15-2 barrel that needed some help and an FAL magazine body/floorplate that had seen better days. The magazine body had to come out after a few minutes because the flat side made it dance and move around in the boiling water.

Everything boiled for 45 minutes while I had lunch and played with the dogs. The carding went quickly and revealed no additional surprises. Now to mess with that front sight....

 

[Shotguncoach]

The movement in the front sight blade was all vertical. The horizontal dimensions are tight enough that I had to use the tip of a tiny jewelers screwdriver to gently pry the blade out of it's notch. Tight on the sides, tight on the top, vertical movement when seated and installed. The most likely scenario that I could think of was an oversized hole for the pin in the sight blade.

I haven't yet learned how to reverse drill a hole and make it smaller, so I started thinking of other ways.....

Locktite came to mind first and was discarded because I don't want to make this permanent.

Using a center punch to throw up a few burrs on the bottom edge was considered and quickly discarded with visions of flying sight blades joining the other feral parts in the bowels of the garage.

Stretching the blade vertically with a hammer and flat punch was also discarded because the displaced metal would have to come from somewhere and I would simply replace vertical movement with horizontal movement if I didn't do it perfectly.

Shims. I needed shims.

I sorted through the various bits and pieces of metal that all good hoarders accumulate and didn't find anything thin enough. A quick search online found some brass shim stock that I could order (and did) but it won't be here until next week and I want to shoot this thing tomorrow.

I was about to cut up my spare set of feeler gauges when I remembered that my wife keeps a roll of .001 aluminum shim stock in the kitchen. I poured myself a drink to make it look like I was in her domain for a legitimate reason, slyly tore a corner off of the aluminum foil roll, and then scampered back to the garage with my prize like a racoon running from a tipped over garbage can.

An X-acto knife worked perfectly for trimming several pieces of my new shim stock to the right size. A 1/16" punch was used as a slave pin for test fitting. A total of 8 shims were stacked into the sight pin channel before the slop went away. A little hammer hammer and we were back in business.

I'm not sure how I managed to get the rear spring underneath the rear sight on the other gun with the sight already pinned in place. It sure wasn't happening this time. A much better method turned out to be using two dabs of grease to hold the springs in place and setting the sight assembly on top of both at the same time.

I really do not like the designs that Ruger used for their wooden grips. They just don't work for my hands. The only thing worse for my middle knuckle than a set of Ruger target grips is a set of Ruger magna grips. I decided to dress this one up with a set of grips out of the pile. I think they may be Kassnar grips....if anyone recognizes the tag please let me know.

All clean and ready for the initial range trip tomorrow....stay tuned.

 

[Shotguncoach]

Today's range trip was both educational and frustrating.

First off, both Rugers functioned 100% with no light strikes, even on Winchester Small Pistol Magnum primers. That tells me I can still go a wee bit lighter on the springs. The GP-100 spring set hasn't arrived yet so we'll have to wait for next weekend to try that out. I may temporarily rob the hammer struts out of my other Security Sixes and pre-install the GP-100 springs on the bench so that all I have to do is swap the assemblies at the range.

I'm also eagerly waiting for the shims to arrive. Both guns still feel "stagey" (I hope that makes sense) as they cycle and I'm hoping that taking the 7 miles of sideways slop out of the actions will help that.

The 6" gun turned out to be boringly accurate. Forty yard offhand shots on a 10" steel plate were easy. This one is definitely a shooter.

The 4" gun is where I got frustrated because the sights are just....wrong.

The front sight blade that is on the 4" gun is .125" wide. (So was the one I took off - I checked) The problem is that the rear notch is only .105" and with the 4" barrel there isn't enough sight radius to allow any light on the sides of the front blade. I can't tell when I have it centered and I ended up with horrible horizontal stringing.

The 6" gun has the same .125" front sight but with a .140" rear notch. Very easy to see.

The spare parts kit that I bought has a rear sight with the .140" blade in it, so I'm going to swap that in and see how it works. More to come on that topic next weekend.

On another note, I learned today that my 48-2 requires a full 60 ounces of hammer tension to reliably ignite the 3 brands of .22 magnum ammo that I had on hand. You'll see more on that one later also.

 

[Pig Hunter]

The threaded mainspring strut must have been a fairly common way to adjust spring tension as I got one in a batch of parts I got.