Gun Digest's CCW Revolver Customization Concealed Carry eShort: CCW revolver grips, barrels, triggers, sights, and the best tactical holsters for concealed carry revolvers.

By Grant Cunningham

In this excerpt from the Gun Digest Book of the Revolver, Grant Cunningham reveals how to improve the action and trigger on your revolver, plus aftermarket sights, finishes and grips.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gun Digest Books
• Release date: Jul 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781440234026

Grant Cunningham

Grant Cunningham is a renowned self-defense author, teacher, and internationally known gunsmith (retired). He's the author of The Gun Digest Book of the Revolver, Shooter's Guide to Handguns, Defensive Pistol Fundamentals, and Handgun Training: Practice Drills for Defensive Shooting, and has written articles on shooting, self-defense, training and teaching for many magazines, shooting websites and his blog at grantcunningham.com.

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Contents

Cover

Concealed Carry: CCW Revolver Customization

Copyright

Springs make a big difference in trigger effort, require careful selection and testing to verify reliable operation.

Firearms are surprisingly personal objects. Despite their origin as the first mass-produced items (via Whitney’s invention of interchangeable parts) in the history of mankind, each one comes to hold strong meaning for its owner. It shouldn’t be surprising that these highly personal objects are often further personalized.

Personalization can take the form of changes to increase the gun’s usability, to better fit the physique of the owner, or simply to make them better looking. No matter how good a product a factory produces, there are always those who want more – and there are those who can oblige them by delivering more. We call them gunsmiths. Many gunsmiths can produce customized revolvers to meet just about any need or desire.

Start with the action

Making the gun easier to shoot well should be the first goal of any customization project. If it doesn’t shoot well, why own it?

Many guns come from the factory with trigger actions that are less than ideal. While proper technique can go a long way to shooting such guns well, the fact remains that a quality action is easier for everyone to shoot.

Light hit on left-hand primer is result of too-light hammer spring. Proper primer indentation on right assures reliable ignition.

What makes for a ‘good’ trigger?

We have to distinguish between double and single action, because they each have their own criteria. While this book concentrates on the double action, and I personally shoot just about everything in double action, there is a place for the single action capability of a revolver. If you’re going to use it, you might as well get familiar with what makes for a good one.

Most aficionados would agree that a ‘good’ single action starts with a light pull weight. While what constitutes the ideal weight is a matter of debate, most shooters would accept something in the neighborhood of three pounds as being a good baseline. A good single action should have little to no creep, which is any trigger movement before the sear releases. If the gun is cocked and you very slowly bring the trigger back, any felt movement prior to the hammer dropping is creep. Sometimes the creep is obvious because of roughness felt through the trigger, but it can be so smooth as to be nearly unnoticeable.

After the sear releases any further rearward movement of the trigger is called overtravel. All factory double action guns available today have a certain amount of overtravel, and it has the effect of making the trigger feel heavier than it really is. A single action trigger with no overtravel feels very light.

Overtravel is important determinant of practical accuracy. If there is substantial overtravel, the trigger may still be traveling backwards while the bullet is exiting the barrel. If the trigger is moving so is the trigger finger, and that can result in the muzzle veering slightly off of target alignment. This isn’t a concern in most single action shooting, but in the high-accuracy games like metallic silhouette it can mean the difference between a hit and a miss at 200 meters.

The single action sear should release without any jumping or sudden movement of the trigger. Some triggers will release with what can only be described as a snap, the result of which is a slight movement of the gun just as the bullet is sent on its way. For this reason many people describe the ideal single action as feeling like breaking a thin glass rod. You’ll see this ‘glass rod’ term used in gun magazine articles and online.

Of course there is substantial variability in opinion. Sometimes what constitutes ‘best’ comes down to personal preference. Some shooters don’t mind a little creep, as long as it is perfectly smooth and doesn’t call attention to itself, while others like having a slightly heavier trigger weight. It can be a matter of what one gets used to in other areas of shooting. People who shoot a lot of military rifles, in my experience, tend to prefer a slightly heavier trigger and don’t mind some creep as long as it’s not gritty or