Great tip with the 12-point socket but let's be clear — the socket for a Model 52 should be used just like an
oil filter wrench for your vehicle. You only need that frustrating tool when you are tasked with removing a filter that some
IDIOT before you installed and grossly over-tightened. This is where the 12-point 3/4" socket is superb. Use the socket to un-do the idiot's gorilla installation.
After that, finger tight and no more. Frankly, you don't need to be messing with the bushing all too often anyway. Keep in mind that those threads are extremely fine — if you cross thread them you will have likely turned a fantastic machine in to a parts donor.
Other tips for your first 52:
—the trigger is two-way adjustable, for pre-travel and for over travel. If you have never adjusted a trigger, it's relatively simple UNTIL it isn't. Myself, I find fantastic advantage when the over travel is adjusted very finely where I want it but note that if you adjust it too closely, two negative results can happen. First is that what feels perfect in the basement at your bench may not actually work during live fire, mostly due to the ability for the trigger to properly reset. So adjust it at home but be prepared to fine-tune at the range under shooting conditions to ensure that it operates 100% of the time.
The other pitfall is that your adjustment screw can migrate under live fire, and if you have it "just right" but it moves on it's own, it can lead to function issues. I use just a pin-dot of blue loc-tite.
Adjusting the over travel is a little annoying in that you have a magazine disconnect safety, so it is mag in mag out mag in mag out when adjusting.
Model 52's are world famous for being exquisitely accurate and also for radically punishing any shooter's poor marksmanship habits. Follow through is perhaps more necessary with this handgun than any other I'm aware of. You'll look like a genius when you are on your game and you may look like a rookie if you aren't doing your part 100%.
Truth: at the end of the second magazine I ever sent through my first 52, my prevailing thought above all other thoughts was, "…oh God, this gun is out of production, owning ONE of these is not enough!"
That's how much I love the Model 52.
