Finally Found a Used SP101 with a Good Trigger

[Tallball]

Y'all are a bunch of enablers. I just wanted you to know that.

Everybody kept posting about finding Ruger SP101's with nice triggers, and the only ones I'd shot (especially the two I owned) did not have nice triggers. This made me sad.

I even posted that if I ever saw a used one with a good trigger at a reasonable price, I would buy it.

Well, I hadn't stopped by to see my friend at the LGS for a while, and what did he happen to have in his case... a used SP101 with a nice trigger. One thing led to another, and now I have another Ruger SP101. It's stainless, fixed sights, about a 2" barrel, factory black plastic grips, and chambered in 9mm. It has some minor scratches, but it locks up nice and tight. The bore and crown show no signs of wear. The "turn ring" scractches are mild. The one behind the cylinder is more noticeable.

I've not owned a 9mm SP101 before. For those of you who have, I have a few questions:

1) Can it fire without moonclips? I fire my 625 without moonclips all of the time. I don't know if the SP101 is headspaced differently or something.

2) Which moonclips would you recommend?

3) Are there kinds of ammo it prefers, or that I should avoid?

4) In my experience the factory grips don't work well for my XL hands. Are there any aftermarket grips you would recommend?

I don't plan on carrying it. It will be a range toy... maybe a nightstand gun if it's reliable and happens to be the easiest one to leave loaded some night. But...

5) but... if I were to carry it, is there a holster you would recommend?

6) If I were to decide to carry it, I would install a DAO hammer, or carefully grind away enough hammer away to make it snag-proof. I've done that before successfully. Or are the DAO hammers inexpensive and easy to install?

It seems like I'm mostly interested in window shopping for revolvers these days. If it's a really great deal, like those imported Baretta 81's a couple of years back... I'm not CRAZY; I will always buy something like that for $200. It seems like I have nice examples of every kind of semiauto I'm interested in, but there are probably dozens of revolvers I would have a lot of trouble passing on if the price was good. My wife will be very annoyed if I ever run across a Blackhawk 10mm convertible, for instance...


As always, thank you for your helpful advice.

View media item 3635

 

[DJW]

just shoot it and enjoy it for a while before embarking on making it "custom."

 

[adcoch1]

I found one also yesterday. 3 inch in 357 for 600. It is really calling to me but I don't have 600 free at the moment....

 

[Riomouse911]

Sweet! That’ll make a great carry piece, especially with the spur removed to prevent snagging.

I’ll admit my .38 Spl SP 101 is one of those guns with a less than stellar trigger... not too bad through the pull but a huge stack at the end.

Let us know how it shoots when you get a chance to exercise it a bit .

 

[Sistema1927]

I purchased a .327 SP101 last year. Trigger was, well, awful. But a little work with smoothing things out and shims corrected that. I find that the Pachmayr Renegade wood grips are a vast improvement for my large hands.

 

[C0untZer0]

I'm always curious to see how well a 9mm revolver extracts aluminum and steel cased ammo.

 

[KevininPa]

A set of Wolff springs improves the trigger. A lot of used ones have a nice trigger because the former owner already changed them out.

 

[Drail]

Springs can only go so far to improve a terrible factory trigger. A roughly finished gun will only be rougher if lighter springs are swapped in and lightening the trigger return spring will slow down trigger reset. On Rugers especially a lot of de burring and smoothing will be required. Ruger does not de burr ANYTHING - their guns are full of metal chips and burrs. Address that issue and then add your shims and see if you really want lighter springs.

 

[Rock185]

Perhaps just luck of the draw, but my 9MM SP101 DA trigger is smooth, but remains heavy due to the factory springs. I had it apart one time, didn't appear to have any non-factory work/smoothing, etc. inside.

Mine fires just fine without moon clips. I believe the moon clips I have are Ranch Products. I use the same ones for my S&W 940 9MM revolver. I have not used steel or aluminum cased ammo, but have tested it with quite a few types of brass cased ammo. It handles everything I've tried without issue. Even the higher pressure stuff. No sticky extraction, etc. As to grips, I have used Hogue rubber, nylon and wood grips. The wood grips seem a little fuller and might fit an XL hand. I don't have any holster recommendation.

BTW, some 9MM ammunition in these little 2" and 3" revolvers generate surprisingly good ballistics. The 9MM cartridge generates ballistics that exceed any major manufacturer 38 +P I've ever chronographed. I seriously considered one of the 10MM/.40 Blackhawks you mentioned, but ended up with one of the GP100 10MMs.

 

[Drail]

Look at it this way - those factory springs will build up your hand strength just like an exerciser. Shoot the crap out of it live fire and dryfire and you'll be able to shoot any double action gun you want easily (AND crack walnuts in your hand). The SP is one hell of a revolver for the price. A GP in 10mm is also an terribly good idea. You are pretty much set now. And when someone asks what kind of ammunition you shoot you can say - " I shoot BOTH kinds - 9mm AND 10mm." Full moon clips to boot. Life is good.

 

[ThomasT]

Congrats on the find. Those are nice guns. You can find instructions on the net for smoothing the triggers. Changing springs is part of it. You will never wear one in by dry firing. The parts are too hard. Its better to just take them apart and smooth the proper parts and replace the springs.

My SP-101 is now so smooth that my record so far is 22 dry fires before I finally bounced a penny off the barrel. I bought my gun used and the original owner had cut the springs trying to make it smoother. So I ordered the Wolfe spring kit and followed the online directions on what parts to polish. After taking it apart about 10 different times it still wasn't to my liking.

Then one time I noticed a faint rub mark on top of the trigger group housing. So I looked a little closer and found that Ruger makes the exposed part of the hammer nice and smooth but not the bottom radius of the hammer. There was one small area of the hammer that was just barely rubbing on the top of the trigger group frame. So just a little smoothing on the bottom of the hammer and the gun gun turned into something magical as far as the trigger goes. It was just a fluke that I spotted that. And on the springs I used the heaviest trigger return spring. I like a good, snappy trigger return.

 

[camsdaddy]

I have owned a few of these over the years. I bought one last year that a local guy had performed a trigger job on. That gun had a buttery smooth trigger that would rival any S&W.

 

[Tallball]

Thank you for all of the kind and helpful comments.

I recalled that I shot one of my other SP101's much better with Hogue Mongrips on it, so I ordered a pair yesterday. They will do the job for the time being, anyway.

The weather is supposed to be dreadful this weekend, but I hope to shoot this thing on the next.

I ordered some factory moonclips, but if it ends up being just a range toy, I will probably shoot without them.

I have a bag with a bunch of random 9mm range ammo in it. It will be interesting to see what flavor the Ruger likes best.

 

[bigmike45]

When I performed my trigger jobs on both my wife's factory DAO SP101 and my factory DAO GP100, I completely disassembled the whole trigger/hammer mechanism and using a dremel and polishing pad, polished ALL surfaces to a mirror finish. This included the springs and struts and holes and any part that moves internally to make the gun go bang especially where it rubs against another part or the frame. The only surface I did not touch was the surfaces where the sear and hammer engage each other. I have approximately 40hrs. of polishing in each gun and have had nothing but compliments on how smooth their actions are. Another part that most folks overlook is the bore where the cylinder rotates on the crane shaft. I polished that as well. The key word here is polish!!!

 

[stonebuster]

Y'all are a bunch of enablers. I just wanted you to know that.

Everybody kept posting about finding Ruger SP101's with nice triggers, and the only ones I'd shot (especially the two I owned) did not have nice triggers. This made me sad.

I even posted that if I ever saw a used one with a good trigger at a reasonable price, I would buy it.

Well, I hadn't stopped by to see my friend at the LGS for a while, and what did he happen to have in his case... a used SP101 with a nice trigger. One thing led to another, and now I have another Ruger SP101. It's stainless, fixed sights, about a 2" barrel, factory black plastic grips, and chambered in 9mm. It has some minor scratches, but it locks up nice and tight. The bore and crown show no signs of wear. The "turn ring" scractches are mild. The one behind the cylinder is more noticeable.

I've not owned a 9mm SP101 before. For those of you who have, I have a few questions:

1) Can it fire without moonclips? I fire my 625 without moonclips all of the time. I don't know if the SP101 is headspaced differently or something.

2) Which moonclips would you recommend?

3) Are there kinds of ammo it prefers, or that I should avoid?

4) In my experience the factory grips don't work well for my XL hands. Are there any aftermarket grips you would recommend?

I don't plan on carrying it. It will be a range toy... maybe a nightstand gun if it's reliable and happens to be the easiest one to leave loaded some night. But...

5) but... if I were to carry it, is there a holster you would recommend?

6) If I were to decide to carry it, I would install a DAO hammer, or carefully grind away enough hammer away to make it snag-proof. I've done that before successfully. Or are the DAO hammers inexpensive and easy to install?

It seems like I'm mostly interested in window shopping for revolvers these days. If it's a really great deal, like those imported Baretta 81's a couple of years back... I'm not CRAZY; I will always buy something like that for $200. It seems like I have nice examples of every kind of semiauto I'm interested in, but there are probably dozens of revolvers I would have a lot of trouble passing on if the price was good. My wife will be very annoyed if I ever run across a Blackhawk 10mm convertible, for instance...


As always, thank you for your helpful advice.

View media item 3635

I've had an SP101 DAO .357 for a couple years now and here are the grips I've tried since, like you, the stock ones were too small for my hands. The wood Pachmayr look great and feel good until I shot 357s with it and the corners of the grip punished the basal joint of my right thumb. I did round off the corners with a dremel and it helped. The Hogue monogrip fits my hand well and tames the 357 well as does the Pachmayr Diamond Pro. As far as replacing the hammer with a DAO, it's extremely easy to switch hammers but finding a DAO might not be easy. Ruger won't sell you one. If you can't find a DAO hammer you might do what I did with my Speed Six which was to leave the original hammer alone and find another hammer to bob. Since you finally found an SP that has a nice trigger I wouldn't bob the one it came with in case you were to mess it up. The trigger on my factory DAO model is very smooth after some polishing, hammer/hammer dog shims and a 10# mainspring. I carry mine AIWB in an old Bianchi and it's very comfortable. If you want to carry OWB you might try an Azula like I bought for my Speed Six.(@$45) Good luck with your "new" SP.

 

[Blue Jays]

Excellent purchase decision, Tallball. You will likely enjoy the revolver.
Nearly everyone who has added a SP-101 to their collection is pleased.
Good for you. Have fun with it out at the range!