Meet Bob, the 586 (or 7) Pinto

[-BTM-]

My old battle-axe 586 was begging for a refresh. After many USPSA Major loads, some porting and so on it was in need of a new cylinder and barrel to be useful.

What better time to graduate from Bubbahood? Got the parts, most of the tools and I’ve been studying up. So far the 7 shot SS cylinder is looking good - lockup, timing, endshake check out.

Hope to remove the barrel tomorrow and get lucky with the 3”SS snubbie B/C gap.

Oh yeah - going round butt as well.

I was inspired by Shotguncoach, so if it goes sideways I’ll send him the remnants.

 

[Shotguncoach]

Looking good! You'll do fine.....

Happy that my misadventures have inspired someone to pick up their tools and go to work.

 

[schutz5]

Attaboy! Looks like a winner!

 

[-BTM-]

Made some progress finally. Tooling up for a barrel swap took more time than I allowed but it worked out. The setup for removing the barrel needed to be VERY rigid. My vises are all swivel style, even the 5” was not able to handle the torque. Ended up mounting a drill press vise to our cabana LOL. The wife is not aware of that.

The donor barrel/frame junction had major galling, as in a good sized chip was raised. It looked like the union wasn’t as square as it could have been. Careful file work and a bunch of test fittings gave me a good contact ring all the way around, hand tightened to right about 11 o’clock.

B/C gap is about .003 with barely perceptible end shake. I’ll do a more thorough test of the timing next.

 

[schutz5]

Excellent!

 

[Shotguncoach]

Great job CabanaSmith! There's something extremely satisfying about being able to do your own work....

That .003 BC may be a bit too tight, but test fire it before you change anything there. If you start chasing an increase in trigger pull or seemingly random lockups that occur only at the range, come back and we'll talk.

Are you going to stick with the original sights?

 

[-BTM-]

10/4 on B/C gap, might be time to actually buy a tool instead of raiding the parts bin. The barrel breech looks Ok but the forcing cone has some tool marks, radial grooves, that look to have caught some copper.

Jury is out on sights. Fortunately the front is pinned, but the rear is old school with the long rear sight. I’d kinda like to try the XS big dot style.

Also reconsidering the round butt idea. Can’t figure out how to transition from the grooved backstrap to smooth. Also I can still roll this back to an all stock 586 ND, reshaping the frame is crossing the rubicon.

 

[Shotguncoach]

Shoot it for a while the way you have it and perhaps try rounding just the stocks.

I haven't done a round butt conversion yet, but someone who has will be along shortly. I think if I were doing that to a grooved backstrap, I would try for a fade effect. If your instructions to your barber include numbers you've got the idea.

 

[jack the toad]

I'm not an expert and this may be contrary to the do it yourself principle, but I have faced this same question and what I've came up with is keep the serrations there now and go with the fade. A 2nd option, and may require some help, is since you have a good head start, put the missing serrations back.
Of course, with either of these, it's possible to add some cross serrations and have a checkered back strap. I currently have one and kinda like it. A third option, that I've not tried and don't recall ever seeing it except on the factory "Airweight" models and don't know what else it might be called or best way to do it, so included a pic.
ETA:
Of course, I'd leave out the lanyard attachment point.

 

[-BTM-]

Turns out Bob is like a bad comedian - his timing isn’t very good. With a firm trigger pull or a firm SA cocking, the cylinder stop is fully engaged but without any momentum it is not quite there. It’s not off by much, but I can hear the stop go all the way up with a tiny turn of the cylinder.

Tried a different, slightly thicker hand but the problem persisted. I think it is the ratchets. With the chamber at TDC it seems like the face of the ratchet should be vertical, while they seem to be “tilted” a bit. I’d rather try peening them than fitting a new hand, which probably won’t help anyway. Any advice?

I compared this to 3 other cylinders and they all looked like they should. Maybe the smaller ratchets on the 7-chamber cylinder wear more?