A New Model Old Model Blackhawk

I know you are not looking to burn anyone, but would you let us know who supplied the grips so others can avoid similar problems?

Post #18

First step is getting the slop off the back and leveling the playing field. A few dozen even swipes on grounded sandpaper removes the backside finish and removes the dips and bumps in the panels. A check and they still clearance the locator pin and lay flat and tight without any assistance from the grip screw.



From the first photo, it is clear the wood panels are in no way stabilized. If so, pores would be filled and buffing would bring the wood to a shine, i.e. no finish work beyond polish would be needed. Since its not stabilized, the first of several coats of thin/deep penetrating urethane sealer will be rubbed hot and dry into the wood, wooled between coats to keep the finish level and prevent the cheep built up bar top epoxy look of a glopped on finish.

A good bit of work both getting off the TruOil glop and doing some shaping so the grips fit my hand and I am able to hang on to the gun. I needed (smaller hands) much less wood at the top of the grip than what was provided and some thinning of the grip on the right panel for my trigger finger to reach the trigger and center it up on the pad for a consistent pull. Initially the tops of the grips were so thick and long that I couldn't reach the trigger easily and the grip was forced up and out of my hand....i.e. very little purchase with the last finger of the grip hand.

So, to the shaping....right panel first.....a bit of room by way of a relief for the middle finger of the shooting hand.



Similar work to be done on the left panel but this a bit higher and for the thumb to wrap around. Nicest part is the extra wood at the top allows shaping and I can retain some of the swell for repeatable positioning of the shooting hand.



After relieving both panels for fingers and thumb a bit of thinning, blending and shaping of the upper swells on the grip panels. Not as chunky as they were and not so thin as factory grips. Better for my average size hands.



The upper panels are compared as I go to get the swells much closer in size and shape to each other than they were to begin with. In all, I'm sure I removed over 1/16 to 3/32 of wood from the swells of each grip panel and they are still wider up top than factory ruger panels. These grips were rather club like in shape....much like a marlin stock, way too much wood in the wrong places to look well or even fit well. But, more is better, I suppose, since it allows for fitting to the hand and/or gun later.



The upper halves of the grip panels are now much closer in shape. The left grip panel grooved a bit to the rear for the wrap around of the thumb from the backstrap. The right panel, grooved a bit to the front for the wrap around to the front strap of the middle and trigger fingers. The overall feel of the gun in recoil and recovery is much more repeatable and my grip is no longer so low on the grip frame that I seem to have eliminated the feeling that the gun is oozing up and out of my hand....i.e. the grip handle feels longer, more fingers wrap around it.



Wet sanded twice with 220 and 400 and it looks pretty good.....but wait....



After drying and the first coat of urethane is rubbed in hot and hard......sanding marks pop up. I like to freeze the grain and sand once or twice more after whiskering as I've found with very hard figured wood like this that urethane will show any of the remaining sand/tool marks that water wiskering just won't bring out. Better to find it and smooth it out now than notice it in the final rub out. Some sanding marks that were not highlighted by water whiskering show up now in the lower grip at 3 oclock in the photo. More work with 320 and 400 after the first coat of urethane kicks over should clear them up.

I was recently advised that I in fact may not know what a quality grip looks like......I think these amboyna burls, nearing completion of their rework will rank among those fine home spun grips of curly maple, bloodwood and afzelia xylay that have been shaped for other projects. I think I'll stand beside those and these for quality. Mebby mine ain't masterful...but they look pretty darn good to me, and more importantly, they fit the gun and my hand.

The first freeze coat of urethane dried and polishing the last of the markings out of the wood. Wet/dry paper is used and the lube is that finest and most readily available of sanding paper helpers....spit.



Second coat of urethane rubbed in and the panels are done polishing. Time to move forward with carding and coating about four more times and then a final rub out back nearly to the surface of the wood for a dead level finish and a satin glow.

Making up a try sight. I have four long ramps. So, plenty to experiment with. I want to end up with a ramp and bead/blade combination about .530 above the barrel.

Jigging up to drill a pair of ramps for an 8x40 retention screw.



The Williams scissors jig paid for itself with the first four holes in a mauser many years ago. To this day it still delivers centered holes, even on tapered parts over and over again on my drill press.



Countersinking both ramps for a pan head 8x40 screw.



The ramp is screwed to an old barrel stub and the top is ground down to the line.



Now it fits the sight dovetailing jig and I plow out one corner for the dovetail bead.



Plowing out the other corner then I'll plow out the middle. All done with hack saw and files.



Final fitting of the sight to the ramp will be done with safe sided triangular files and no jig. The jig purposefully cuts a slightly undersize dovetail. Its finished when the sight can just be pushed snugly about halfway into the ramp with very firm finger pressure or light taps of a brass rod. From there only a sight pusher is used. Never use a hammer and punch to move sights on a ramp whether screwed or soldered on. To do so is to invite immediate removal of the ramp from the barrel.



Looking good. Should be fine when pushed home later.



Now is a good time to clean up the left and right sides of the ramp and round over the nose.



Next stop for this assembly will be on the barrel of the New Model Old Model to see how it looks.

After four coats of urethane rubbed in and cut back level and to the woods surface, the urethane is final polished with fff compound. After which, the first coats of hard wax are buffed into the wood by hand until hot and dry then rubbed out with clean terry. About 4 to six coats of wax will be rubbed in over the next day or so. The Glop is gone and the wood neither looks garish nor wavy. The feel is satin smooth and warm to the touch. Not cold like a shiny bar top. The shape is good. The fit is good. The grip is solid and the barrel to grip centerline runs along my arm bone without deviating left or right. Should make for a good pointer. And with the bit of swell up top in the grips, should handle recoil a bit better for me. A bit of arthritis in the fingers and gripping becomes more of a chore each year. No where near as beautiful as Afzelia Xylay in the alligator pattern but just fine for me and I'll leave this as is and move out front. Finally, the new steel and shorter ERH is inbound from the parts house, soon I can decide on barrel length and front sight options.

You need to get a hobby mill - make all that dovetail work quicker.

Nah. The number one point of my threads it to show what a feller can do by hand without the investment of expensive and often unnecessary tooling. Also, in the 20 minutes it takes to set up and verify a mill I can have a dovetail pretty much knocked out by hand. Tools like a mill are fun but really only add speed on the back end. On the front end they cost about the same amount of time and the $$$ invested are never recouped for the average feller that needs to cut only a few dozen dovetails in his life. Besides, working with my hands is relaxing and good for the arthritus.

A bit of finish work on the try sight ramp. Knocking off the sharp edges for a smoother less ruger square/sharp/blocky look.

Along the serrated portion of the ramp the edges are lightly filed to a 45 degree angle



and then bootstrapped with 120 grit to create a rounded over edge.



The parallel edges on the dovetail portion do not need beveled over with the file. A simple kiss, bootstrap style with 120g is sufficient to soften and round over the sharp edges.



Very small changes add up over all. The ramp remains substantial yet looks much less blocky. All that's left is to smooth over the nose out front.

Photos of the project to date in natural light.

Taking the sharp corners off the ramp was a nice touch. Looking forward to the final product.

Back from ol kantuck....a couple days on my hands....so I planted 29 bulbs out front and got a buncha wild flowers and sunflowers to do yet but some time on the New Model Old Model too......

Sheriff length Vaquero steel ERH arrived today.......compared to the original steel full length ERH on this gun.....



Flame wrench and a good pipe full......the front sight has to come off it shorten the barrel and to jig the barrel for a new hole for the shorter ERH.



Jigged up and I use a dull drill and a small mallet to mark the spot I previously measured out and intented....if the dull bit just turns off the color around the divot I made, the jig is properly aligned for drilling the 6x48 hole for my typical stud and nut arrangement on the ERH.



After drilling about 1/10" deep I tap it 6x48 with bottoming taps and I get just over 4 threads....plenty.



New 6x48 hole left....factory 8x36 hole right (the old ones had factory 8x40 holes....don't know why they changed....finer threads hold better in my opinion.)



The new Vaquero Sheriff ERH is test fitted, its spot on....



The muzzle is squared and crowned using piloted hand tools. I'll shorten a bit later and crown deeper too. Final touch will be rounding over the circumference of the barrel so the edge is not sharp and scraping into the holster or cutting fingers in cleaning chores.



With a little black max adhesive, the rough front sight ramp is placed on the barrel to get the overall look.....the ramp will need some more rounding and smoothing.

I got a chance to see one of these handguns in two tone. But not the typical stainless or brass and black. Factory hot tank black and good old fashioned Plumb Brown. What a fine combination. It has me thinkin hard on Plumb Bown for this one!

Back from Chi-Kag-o where I stuffed myself on Chi-Kag-o Dogs with Sport Peppers at Portillos and Deep Dish Pizza at Giordanos for 4 days and now I gotta work it off.

So, finish up the ERH attachment by fitting a 6x48 screw in the freshly drilled barrel and making a pinch nut from some good old lasalle fatigue proof steel. Takes a nice thread and machines really well. I prefer the stud and pinch nut arrangement. If anything strips out in the future, it ain't likely to be the tender threads in the barrel, but if that ever does happen, I can open the hole in the barrel to 8x40 and make up a new stud and pinch nut. 6x48 is plenty strong. Ain't had one break yet on 45 Colt or 357 Magnum.



Also took time to final square up the muzzle and deepen the crown (11 degrees) with piloted hand tools.



Final check assembly. I'll shorten the pinch nut a touch later, after the screwdriver slot is final filed and the screw head polished. Then it'll be flush on the ERH housing. And I noted, with the barrel at 3 3/4" long, just enough room between the muzzle and the 50th Markings to dovetail the barrel for a nice bead sight too. So, will have to look that over and compare to the ramp as I do some final shaping on it and make the decision later. (I also need to compare these two options to a Williams short ramp, just to be sure.)

Time for a try sight.....a sight about the right height (say .530 to .570 for short barreled 357 blackhawks) for function testing and the base of the sight carved undersized (less than .375) so that final fitting of the right sight can be done later.

357 barrels on these are meaty. I've shown the use of the dovetailing jig and saw/files many times. Many is the complaint fielded that the jig cuts a dovetail that's too small. Its supposed to. It allows for exact fitting of the final sight in the dovetail. And the right sight is fitted so that it enters the dovetail about 1/3 to 1/2 way then gets real snug.....a final push is needed to seat it so it won't shoot loose. (Final fitting of the dovetail is done to the undersides of the barrel dovetail cuts, jig removed, with a safe sided triangular file....safe side down, only doing the under cut to make the dovetail that last 5 to 10 thousands larger for a snug fit. You shouldn't have to cut the sight, cut the dovetail. Besides, the saw leaves rounded edges in the undercut caming the sight up....the safe side file gets the last little bit in the corners making them the right angle so the sight sits as low in the dovetail as possible.) No safe sided triangular file = ye'll be unhappy with the fit and probably tempted to booger up the sight to fit a slightly undersized and rounded edged dovetail.

Finally, a dovetail allows use of ramps (via a gib lock for a screw) or beads and blades and with beads and blades will allow for front sight windage adjustments. But, I never ran across a Blackhawk that shot off center even with the factory sight.....at least not after getting grips that allowed the centerline of the barrel to extend in the same plane as the centerline of the forearm bone.

Also, the barrel, at its final length is treated to a round over to remove the sharp edge where it was shortened. A simple tool from brownells, spun slow in a hand drill makes short work and the round over is ended so that its edge just meets the face of the ERH.

So, off to the range soon to verify sight height and then back to the bench to play with ramps, blades and beads till I make up my mind.







Oh yeah, the ramp don't cover the entire 50th marking and with it stickin out the tail, looks a lil funny......besides, I'm coming to like that marking and may well leave it so, it could be I need to show it all and not just the last letter!

The tall Marbles sights are squares......I like the front edge rounded so a lick on the belt sander and a few more swipes with the safe sided triangular file in the dovetail for the slightly larger new sight and it presses snugly home. The undersized and weirdly carved try sight goes back in the spares box for the next project.



Unlike the long ramp that doesn't quite cover the 50th markings, a bead sight in the dovetail leaves this marking unmolested. I like this look better than the ramp. I think this is the way it'll stay.



Getting pretty good at getting em straight up and down too. (Had a few crooked ones over the years!)

The stainless steel Bisley hammer to go with the stainless steel Bisley trigger.

First the hammer has its butt area reduced and contoured to match the original hammer and therefore fit the grip frame. Then given a high polish and the exposed sides jeweled on the drill press. Once installed and checked for pull weight, after a bit of takeup there is a clean 3 lb 7 oz release with no grit.

Here is how it looks installed on this shooters iron.







And here, the second step of the hammer nose is releved with several hundred strokes of a medium stone. Files won't cut these hammers. This eliminates transfer bar pinch and subsequent breakage of the transfer bar. I continue stoning and fitting and checking for an even strike on the transfer bar until ..... When the hammer has fallen, I push it into the frame....releasing the trigger the trigger snaps forward under trigger spring power (no matter how hard I push on the hammer) allowing the transfer bar to drop down with ever so slight a drag. The final fitting will be in polish of the second step and the transfer bar eliminating that last tiny bit of drag. At that point the depth of the second step is such that the transfer fully and completely impinges the firing pin but it not caught and squashed by the hammer. No click in the trigger return, the frame and transfer bar bear the blow equally and no broken transfer bar down the road.

30 minutes here, 1 hour there. It adds up and its done sooner than ya think. Or longer!

A few minutes work with an dremil and cut off wheel to rough in a wider slot in the ERH so that the button can cam out of the way. Allows dismounting the cylinder with out having to remove the ERH each time for cleaning. Less wear and tear on the retention stud and pinch nut. Works good. Just some final straightening and polishing to do. Not visible and best of all, free instead of $60 for a cam cut ejector housing from Cimarron.

A little draw file and some bootstrap and the Ruger Banner is gone. Front end is almost done!