Newbie chiming in about the sport

[TheOtherLeft]

As an update to my last post on this thread, on my Uberti 1873 I have installed the PGW Action Springs (Lever and Lifter springs), PGW Speed (front) Sight, Flat Top rear sight, and Smith Shop Light Duty  Mainspring and Coil Safety Spring.

I would class Action Springs upgrade as only OK. The action is smoother but definitely not smooth when transitioning from the lever spring and engaging the lifter spring. I did some polishing of the lifter arm which may have helped a little.

The Sights upgrade was definitely very good as I hated the semi-buckhorn as I am used to normal pistol sights and the speed sight is miles ahead of the standard blade sight.

The Light Duty Mainspring and Coil Safety Spring made the biggest change and I highly recommend it. Cocking is noticeably easier and the trigger pull seems to be reduced a lot. With the trigger assembly out of the rifle I did notice the gritty feeling when cocking the hammer and working the trigger. However I was hesitant to pull it apart to give the parts a polish as I have no reference material or diagrams so wasn't confident I could put it back together again properly. I have looked around for the Gunsmithing Guns of the Old West book but they are out of print and Amazon want >$150 for it plus shipping.

I chose to buy the springs as opposed to griding/filing my current ones as there's a lot of fiddling around to get the springs light enough but still being reliable. Since I'm not a gunsmith or have much experience in it I chose to buy the new springs.

The closest gunsmith who has experience with Leveractions is 3hrs away (6 hr round trip)  and in Australia you can't send guns easily through the post - it has to go to your local gunshop who sends it away and hence there are fees involved.

So someone with a little fitting/machining experience can do some gunsmithing to make the rifle smoother and faster.

On my Stoeger SxS I have polished the mating surfaces at the hinge area.

On my Ruger NMVs I haven't done much, only removed the reverse-indexing thing which was only 1 screw. I am considering changing out the mainspring on both of them but am getting conflicting data on the factory spring tension. I think some some said it's #17 but Wolffe says it should be #22 and the lightest they sell is #15.

[cpt dan blodgett]

I am too slow to be competitive, local club sent me a bill for the hour glasses I wore out last match!!  I do compete against myself and try to do better than the last time, practice would help but...  I do try to shoot clean, sometimes with success.  Good day or bad day as far as score goes are all fun.  Enjoy time spent with the folks on the range, setting up or building props as well.  There a great folks in SASS, at Winter Range I was a Posse with 2 Shooters who placed first in Category and another that won the shoot off on Sunday, all three were fantastic hard workers on the posse, kidded and joked and looked like they were really having fun and were great to shoot with.  They did get pretty serious at the staging box, went to the line shot really fast and well.  Once they shot the stage went back into the help the posse mode.  I had no clue I was shooting with such top notch shooters.

[jimbobborg]

Interesting, I didn't know all that much about USPSA/IPSC.  I've shot IDPA and USPSA rules 3-Gun prior to CAS.  I don't think there were classes based on skill level in 3-Gun, just equipment classes.