Sunday Sloth

Not entirely slothful, but certainly relaxing.  We began with coffee at day-light, and read the Sunday paper.  Then, cleaned up and went to church.

After church, the kids showed up and we cooked hamburgers on the grill.  93F for the high today and standing over the barbeque pit wasn't half bad.  Of course, hamburgers cook quickly on charcoal, so I wasn't over the heat very long.

Milady has been shooting her Liberty Model for about a week.  We took it to the club practice yesterday and she let everyone admire it.  We did a little more shooting today and we started comparing the hammer-cocking force with the Ruger and my Uberti.  After a brief discussion we decided to lighten the hammer force on that revolver.

The Liberty Model is a Pietta, marketed by Traditions, it is built by Pietta.  Removing the backstap showed me a common leaf mainspring, as in the original Colts, many of the Uberti's and other clones.  As such, we believed it would respond well to judicious grinding.  Luckily, I'm not the first fellow who has ever lightened a mainspring.  I've talked with fellows who have done it, and I've looked around on the internet for advise.

One of the best tutorials for slicking up a Colt clone, is over at Gunblast.com, courtesy of Jim Taylor.  The page is photo-rich and very instructive, so we took the Liberty apart, took out the mainspring and slowly filed it on a belt grinder in the shop.  Judiciously, slowly, stopping frequently to cool the spring, we reduced it by about a 32nd on each side.  Then I cut a leather washer to install under the spring, between the spring and the grip frame.

Very carefully, we put the revolver hack together and went out back to test it.  The hammer comes back noticeably easier.  Milady tried it (it's her revolver after all) and pronounced it Much Better. It still has plenty of hammer fall to reliably dent a primer, but the force required to thumb-cock the hammer is noticeably reduced.

The kids left for home and I looked at the weather map.  Thunderstorms to the southeast, heaing this way.  I went out, straightened the backyard and came in just as the first big drops started exploding on the deck.  Now, we're blessed with a good, old-fashioned summer thunderstorm.  I think I'll poutra little drink and repair to the porch.  It's good to watch it rain on a Sunday afternoon.