Michael Tinker Pearce
Member
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2016
- Messages
- 1,578
For those that have not followed the saga of my Rossi M68 here it is in a nutshell-
My wife Linda has tried out a lot of guns over the years, and since her favorite gun ever was a revolver it made sense to set her up with one. To that end we bought her an inexpensive used Rossi M68, a part-for-part clone of the S&W Model 60. Before I got around to it she settled on something else, however, and the Rossi was 'surplus to need.' I decided to make it into a CC gun for myself.
I shortened the barrel from 4" to 2-1/4", fabricated a new front-sight with a red plastic insert and made a set of custom walnut grips. I also disassembled the gun and cleaned it out thoroughly and gave it a trigger-job. It came out pretty slick, and I was very pleased... until I took it to the range. It was unreliable- inconsistent ignition. OK, well enough. I replaced the mainspring and firing pin with Model 60 parts and took it back to the range. Still had ignition problems. Bugger. OK, I added a helper spring to the mainspring. It didn't- help, that is. Double bugger.
Finally I noticed that the firing-pin bushing was not so much round, but a big irregular oval. The was allowing the firing pin to strike off-center. Apparently the previous owner killed about a billion TV bad-guys dry-firing it. OK, another order from Numerich and I replaced the bushing. I took it to the range today to determine two things. Will it work? Yes, yes it will. The second question (since I basically guessed how tall the sight should be) was does it shoot near enough to point-of-aim? Yes, yes it does. Marvelous!
The double-action trigger pull is very heavy, but very, very smooth. I'm going to do some experimenting to see if the helper spring is needed, so there is a lot of room to improve that. Accuracy is quite acceptable at seven yards- below is a 7 yard target fired single-action to determine if the gun shoots to point of aim.
Nothing to be upset about there. Looks like the Rossi is finally ready for prime-time!
My wife Linda has tried out a lot of guns over the years, and since her favorite gun ever was a revolver it made sense to set her up with one. To that end we bought her an inexpensive used Rossi M68, a part-for-part clone of the S&W Model 60. Before I got around to it she settled on something else, however, and the Rossi was 'surplus to need.' I decided to make it into a CC gun for myself.
I shortened the barrel from 4" to 2-1/4", fabricated a new front-sight with a red plastic insert and made a set of custom walnut grips. I also disassembled the gun and cleaned it out thoroughly and gave it a trigger-job. It came out pretty slick, and I was very pleased... until I took it to the range. It was unreliable- inconsistent ignition. OK, well enough. I replaced the mainspring and firing pin with Model 60 parts and took it back to the range. Still had ignition problems. Bugger. OK, I added a helper spring to the mainspring. It didn't- help, that is. Double bugger.
Finally I noticed that the firing-pin bushing was not so much round, but a big irregular oval. The was allowing the firing pin to strike off-center. Apparently the previous owner killed about a billion TV bad-guys dry-firing it. OK, another order from Numerich and I replaced the bushing. I took it to the range today to determine two things. Will it work? Yes, yes it will. The second question (since I basically guessed how tall the sight should be) was does it shoot near enough to point-of-aim? Yes, yes it does. Marvelous!
The double-action trigger pull is very heavy, but very, very smooth. I'm going to do some experimenting to see if the helper spring is needed, so there is a lot of room to improve that. Accuracy is quite acceptable at seven yards- below is a 7 yard target fired single-action to determine if the gun shoots to point of aim.
Nothing to be upset about there. Looks like the Rossi is finally ready for prime-time!