BehindBlueI's
Grandmaster
- Oct 3, 2012
- 25,897
- 113
It has arrived:
Thanks to ITP for the smooth transfer and to Tooele Shooting Supply for a fantastically quick shipping time (same day!).
Initial impressions:
Neat. No more lawyer billboard on the side of the barrel. Left side is clean, right side says "45 AUTO - 45 COLT" on the half lug. Underneath it does say "read instruction manual..." but it's in a place you'll not see much and is better than the sides.
Grips are cool looking. There is a slight imperfection in the varnish on the left side, sort of like a hair got stuck in it. It's small enough I didn't notice but my wife did.
The gun has some serious heft. It feels substantial, for all the good and bad that implies. It's not going to be a comfy ankle gun...
Trigger is...meh. It's heavy. Even in SA it's heavier than I'd expect. In DA after about 200 trigger pulls I felt like I'd been using a hand gripper exerciser for too long. It's a workout. It is smooth, though, and it breaks cleanly in either DA or SA.
Shooting:
7 yards (ignore holes not on paper, they were already on the target)
Now here's the bad news. That should have been 12 shots. It only touched off about half of my reloads using 15 year old CCI primers. Now these are hard primers to begin with, my P220 will fail to touch one off about every 20 rounds or so, but I'd expected about the same rate of success from the Redhawk.
I did not take any factory ammo with me, so I bought a box of Geco from ITP. Geco is German ammo and shoots fine, but also has hard primers. 49/50 went off on the first strike. The 50th went off after three hits.
I believe this is likely a primer issue. Eyeballing I could not see any difference in depth of strike on the ones that went bang and the ones that didn't go bang. I called Ruger to ask and they said it's set up for American ammo but its possible my moon clips were out of spec and were too thin so they're sending me 3 new ones free of charge. (Ruger customer service is awesome, btw).
I did not try any .45 Colt for the simple reason I didn't have any. I got my brass in the mail yesterday and will load some up for this Friday, though.
POI/POA seems dead on. As I got tired I started to drift left, as this 7 yard target shows:
That was all double action and my forearm was complaining about the trigger pull by that point, though, so that's me and not the gun.
Sights:
Nothing real special here, a very servicable tried and true Ruger set up. The front sight is an orange insert blade that can be swapped out by holding in a plunger on the front and lifting it off. The rear sight is an adjustable rear that allows for up/down and left/right adjustment with a small screw driver. I might swap the front out for a brass bead, but then again I may not. The orange was perfectly serviceable.
Recoil control:
The .45 auto kick was pretty light recoil in such a heavy revolver. The round butt design is not conducive to rapid fire, though, even with light recoil. With my hands my left hand can't get on there much and the design is such that it rocks in your hand instead of pushing straight back. That's great for really heavy loads where you'd rather it rock than split the web of your thumb, but I wouldn't make this a competition gun trying to shoot light loads real fast.
All in all:
It's pretty dang cool. It looks good. It will fill its role as a woods/farm gun while still being able to carry in town discretely if you choose to do so. The inability to touch off hard primers concerns me a bit, but I'm reasonably sure a thicker moon clip will resolve this issue. I'll see how it works with .45 Colt and no moon clips and update accordingly.
Thanks to ITP for the smooth transfer and to Tooele Shooting Supply for a fantastically quick shipping time (same day!).
Initial impressions:
Neat. No more lawyer billboard on the side of the barrel. Left side is clean, right side says "45 AUTO - 45 COLT" on the half lug. Underneath it does say "read instruction manual..." but it's in a place you'll not see much and is better than the sides.
Grips are cool looking. There is a slight imperfection in the varnish on the left side, sort of like a hair got stuck in it. It's small enough I didn't notice but my wife did.
The gun has some serious heft. It feels substantial, for all the good and bad that implies. It's not going to be a comfy ankle gun...
Trigger is...meh. It's heavy. Even in SA it's heavier than I'd expect. In DA after about 200 trigger pulls I felt like I'd been using a hand gripper exerciser for too long. It's a workout. It is smooth, though, and it breaks cleanly in either DA or SA.
Shooting:
7 yards (ignore holes not on paper, they were already on the target)
Now here's the bad news. That should have been 12 shots. It only touched off about half of my reloads using 15 year old CCI primers. Now these are hard primers to begin with, my P220 will fail to touch one off about every 20 rounds or so, but I'd expected about the same rate of success from the Redhawk.
I did not take any factory ammo with me, so I bought a box of Geco from ITP. Geco is German ammo and shoots fine, but also has hard primers. 49/50 went off on the first strike. The 50th went off after three hits.
I believe this is likely a primer issue. Eyeballing I could not see any difference in depth of strike on the ones that went bang and the ones that didn't go bang. I called Ruger to ask and they said it's set up for American ammo but its possible my moon clips were out of spec and were too thin so they're sending me 3 new ones free of charge. (Ruger customer service is awesome, btw).
I did not try any .45 Colt for the simple reason I didn't have any. I got my brass in the mail yesterday and will load some up for this Friday, though.
POI/POA seems dead on. As I got tired I started to drift left, as this 7 yard target shows:
That was all double action and my forearm was complaining about the trigger pull by that point, though, so that's me and not the gun.
Sights:
Nothing real special here, a very servicable tried and true Ruger set up. The front sight is an orange insert blade that can be swapped out by holding in a plunger on the front and lifting it off. The rear sight is an adjustable rear that allows for up/down and left/right adjustment with a small screw driver. I might swap the front out for a brass bead, but then again I may not. The orange was perfectly serviceable.
Recoil control:
The .45 auto kick was pretty light recoil in such a heavy revolver. The round butt design is not conducive to rapid fire, though, even with light recoil. With my hands my left hand can't get on there much and the design is such that it rocks in your hand instead of pushing straight back. That's great for really heavy loads where you'd rather it rock than split the web of your thumb, but I wouldn't make this a competition gun trying to shoot light loads real fast.
All in all:
It's pretty dang cool. It looks good. It will fill its role as a woods/farm gun while still being able to carry in town discretely if you choose to do so. The inability to touch off hard primers concerns me a bit, but I'm reasonably sure a thicker moon clip will resolve this issue. I'll see how it works with .45 Colt and no moon clips and update accordingly.
