[Aged In Oak]

Greetings all! My first time posting here... been poking around for years. Finally decided it was time to take the plunge with a question of my own.

I have an S&W 5904 that I bought cheaply as a police trade-in (common story, I know). Has holster-worn finish and grips, but the guts are in good shape and the pistol functions well. Still, I'd recently considered getting rid of it... I don't care for the grips or the loooong SA trigger pull, and the mag release button is in an awkward spot for my hands.

However, the reason I'm posting here is because I've also wanted to try some DIY pistolsmithing. It occurred to me that it might be a good project gun to try my hand on. If I fail, I'm only out however much it would be worth as a trade-in (not much).

Question is, do those with more experience feel that something like trigger work on this gun as a worthwhile/doable starter project? How easy/difficult is it to shorten the SA trigger pull? Or is the work too complex/advanced for someone with little experience? Thoughts?

[jeepmor]

Sounds like you just need a cosmetic cleansing and some trigger work. Both doable for the DIY type. And, since you're not emotionally attached to the gun, have at it.

For trigger work, polishing contact surfaces does a whole bunch even if you never bring out a file or stone. A dremel with a felt tip and some metal polish creme does wonders. Especially on a smith auto trigger if my CS40 and 1076 are any indicator of your trigger. I suspect they are.

I've not tampered with my smith guns yet, but the work I did on my Witness, ruger rifle and semi-auto rifles was time well spent. The work was easy, the results were all worth the while.

You'll never get rid of that long slow take up for a DA, but you will be able to make it much smoother. Which will be a nice change. My witness has the best DA and SA actiong trigger of all my guns. All I did was polish a couple parts and removed a burr on another. Still heavy DA pull, but smooth. Wonderful SA trigger pull.

The ruger trigger is about as simple as they could get, but with rough sliding surfaces on the sear and extra meat on the trigger hook for about an 8 lb trigger. It took all of the weight of my gun and scope to break the trigger while hanging from it. Now it takes about half that. I don't have anything to accurately measure, just feel. It feels much better, can't wait to go to the range with handloads and this new trigger.

On the semi auto, I simply polished the sear surfaces with a dremel felt cone and metal creme (Flitz). It's a NM trigger and it breaks much nicer now, and was pretty good to begin with. Breaks much better now.

Sorry to veer off a bit, but I wanted to state, by example, how happy I am I did this work to these guns and state how easy it was for the results acheived.

As for finish, a duracoat would be a fun way to go if you already have an air compressor. Small airbrushes are pretty reasonable, and the duracoat systems are pretty reasonable too. This stuff and a variety of scotch brites and degreaser elbow work before hand should have you moving this gun up considerably on your likeability list.

I refinished a youth 12 gauge single shout and took a $40 beater into a resprectable $100 or so gun. All I did was refinish the stock and give it a good cleaning.

[GunTech]

The internals on the old S&W autos can be tricky. It will be money well spent to buy a copy of Firearms Disassembly for your pistol. There are typically trick to a detail strip and reassembly.