Wolff Springs in a GP100 - Reliability for a defensive gun?

Sounds fine to me.

My defensive pistols with lighter springs all fire Federal HST fine. I do take extra care to keep the strikers / hammers clean. I'd avoid harder primers for defense, but they're fine for practice.

The factory mainspring has to fire the hardest primers in the roughest gun.
Luck or gunsmithing can give you a gun with less mechanical loss.
Primers have a known range of sensitivity, you can pick and choose.

My match revolvers have soft springs and get Federal primers.
My defensive revolvers get whatever spring is required to reliably ignite CCI primers. That insures a reserve of power on factory loads. My old Bodyguard needs the stock spring, my "modern" M640 will shoot CCIs with a reduced mainspring.

I THINK a 12 lb mainspring will be OK but there is no way to know except to install it and shoot with it.
The trigger spring must return the trigger smartly. It has no other function in a Ruger, unlike the rebound spring in a Smith, so you can do some "tuning."

The lightest springs in the Wolff kit for the GP100 are the 8lb trigger and 9lb hammer springs. Whether Redhawks, Super Reds, SP's, GP's, or Six Series revolvers, I have never had any reliability issues in doing action jobs using the lightest springs available from Wolff, ISMI, or Wilson - including the 9 + 8 GP100 kit, WITH ANY PRIMER. I've done a few dozen of each of these models, some have worse tolerance stacking or plain old slop issues than others, but none are so out of whack I can't get them running right with the minimum springs.

I almost exclusively use CCI primers in all of my loads, force of habit I guess.

If a guy has a good smith, have him cut the sear to a neutral angle, ADD weight to the hammer spring, and reduce the trigger spring. That's the best option for a defensive revolver. But lacking a smith or experience adjusting sears on your own (and jigs), it really doesn't take much work even in the worst of them to get them running with the 9+8 spring combo.

I have the 8 lb. trigger spring in my GP100 with the sear size reduced by 1/3rd of original, if I remember correctly. I didn't change the hammer spring from the original Ruger spring.

For defensive shooting the 8 lb. trigger spring just doesn't push your finger forward on the return stroke as strongly as the original trigger spring. If you can still go through all six shots quickly in double action mode without that messing with you, it ought to be good to go.

The good thing is, if you don't like the lighter trigger spring, it's easy to swap back.

chicharrones said:

the 8 lb. trigger spring just doesn't push your finger forward on the return stroke as strongly as the original trigger spring.

Click to expand...

Well, true, but one shouldn't be relying on the return spring to push your finger forward in the first place. Doing so is a bad habit and is why we often short-stroke the trigger when the action's lightened.

chicharrones said:

If you can still go through all six shots quickly in double action mode without that messing with you, it ought to be good to go.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I'd agree that rapid DA shooting is a decent test. If you fail the test, though, understand it's more a software than a hardware issue.

MrBorland said:

one shouldn't be relying on the return spring to push your finger forward in the first place. Doing so is a bad habit and is why we often short-stroke the trigger when the action's lightened.

Click to expand...

^^ Yup.

I have the exact spring kit in my GP100 and have had no misfires with either hand loads or factory ammo

Good to hear...

Good.
What does your wife say?

I would want to shoot more than six of my duty load in a resprung gun. And I would shoot a good deal of the same brand but a cheaper load.
At one time, CCI/Speer factory ammo had Federal primers because the cases came out of the Federal brass mill with primers seated. Speer just loaded powder and bullet. But that was years ago and I do not know the present practice.

years ago. Seen a S&W K22 lr and a Colt Python 357 produce misfires with the Wolff springs.

I bought the K22 and put factory spring in it. The owner of the Colt put the old factory springs back. No more misfires.


Do test with different brands of ammo/primers. Single and double action may produce different results when firing.

Rimfires take a harder blow to set off than centerfire, you cannot do much "spring engineering" with a .22.

My Colt Python has the Colt Custom Shop competition action job with modified lockwork and "raftered" spring by Don Tedford. It demands soft Federal primers. But it is a PPC match gun, not a defense weapon.

Vista Outdoors owns Speer, CCI, and Federal. I imagine the primers could by either CCI or Federal and have probably changed back and forth at numerous points in time.

At a minimum I'd shoot the whole box minus whatever is staying in the gun. A 6 round sample is very small.

CCI primers have a reputation for requiring the hardest strike, but I don't believe that is true any more. CCI changed the formula for their small pistol primers several years ago, and the new primers are softer than some other commercial primers. The CCI magnum primers are still quite hard.

When I am testing 38 special revolvers, I include some Remington UMC ammo in my testing. The Remington primers are moderately hard, but I am not sure if they are the hardest available. When testing magnum revolvers, I make sure to include CCI primers in the testing.

I wrote a long article about improving the triggers on Smith & Wesson revolvers, and the article has sections on primer sensitivity and testing spring changes. The article is focused on S&W revolvers, but many aspects of trigger turning apply to all types of revolvers.

The article is here:

Improving the trigger on Smith & Wesson Revolvers

The article is also discussed in this thread:

https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...wesson-revolver-triggers-please-review.817407

The lighter the springs, the easier to shoot.

I would put in the lightest set that still reliable set of your defensive load. You will be more accurate and therefore effective.