vaquero bisley

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shu

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Just want to say I had to go get a SA wheelgun to broaden my horizons. Ruger Vaquero Bisley 357mag. The Bisley, 357mag, and 5.5 inch barrel are probably anathema to Cowboy shooters, but that's something I don't expect to get into.

(Of course I also said I would never get into reloading, but the main craving behind this gun was to have a revolver to share and compare reloads I build for the Winchester 94 357mag.)

Anyhow, I like the gun, evan tho it shoots about 2.5 inches left at 15 yd. It will still be automatics for carry, but this one sure is a boot to shoot.
 

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No "anathema" about it...that combo is well known in CAS/SASS circles.

The Ruger Bisley actually dates to an early 20th century design...which would be a bad thing, 'cept Elmer Keith had a hand in it and owned the first one ("Number 5").

You might want to see how one feels with Eagle "Gunfighter" grips. If the current grips seem too "fat", those are skinnier. Recoil control is compromized a bit but in 357, you don't need as much recoil control as with 44Mag/45LC+P or hotter.

What else...if it's shooting left a hair, the barrel needs to be screwed into the frame a tad more. Which is OK so long as your barrel/cylinder gap isn't already at minimum. Basically, you can send it back in to Ruger, or price having a local gunsmith do the tweak...when pricing the latter, remember that there'll be shipping costs back to Ruger so that's not totally free. Since the mod isn't that expensive, esp. if you're having any other work done too the costs of turning the barrel a bit might be low plus faster (no shipping times).
 
Nice gun!! My wife bought me this one for X-mas a few years aog:

bisley_vaquero_l.jpg

Tons of fun to shoot, and pretty darn accurate too. Hope you enjoy your's as much as I do mine.

Good Luck...

Joe
 
JoeHatley claimed:

Tons of fun to shoot, and pretty darn accurate too. Hope you enjoy your's as much as I do mine.
Click to expand...

Define accurate... Really...

Because I've got exactly the same gun and from a bench getting 5" groups at 25 yds is a real chore.

All the cylinder throats on mine are .450 to .4508 - I pinned 'em with gauge pins. What that means is that .452 diameter bullets get swaged down to the throat size and then pushed out a bore with a diameter of .451. Put swaged down to .450 bullet thru .451 bore and you get lousy accuracy. Put .452 bullet thru .450 cylinder throats and you get leading as well.

I called Ruger about this and asked if they'd fix the cylinder throats. NOPE! Those throats meet their spec. YEAH RIGHT! MORONS!

Except for the cylinder throat diameters I think the vaqueros are very well built weapons and I agree that they are fun to shoot (would be even more fun if I could get better than 5" groups out of the two I own).

However, it'll be a cold day in hell before I ever buy another ruger product since their engineering specifications (at least on the vaquero line) don't seem to have been terribly well thought out.

OH well - I'm gonna send both cylinders out to have the throats reamed to the right size - that'll help.
 
Interesting thought... I was not greatly impressed with accuracy right off but then I did not have a rock steady rest available, my eyes are getting old, it is a new gun for me, and most of the spread was laterally.

Anyhow, i took a westcoast plated flat-point 38 bullet (not having any 38 cal straight lead available). It popped witha mild push through all chambers of the cylinder. I then pounded it down the barrel with a wooden dowel rod. The resultant slug drops freely through all chambers.

So that seems not to be a problem here.

I would like to close up the barrel to cylinder gap a bit if that could be easily done.
 
shu,
The problem with cylinder throat size seems to be unique to the 45LC models. for some reason Ruger just can't get it thru their heads that the throats need to be at least .0005" bigger than the bullets which are nominally .452" which adds up to a required cylinder throat size of .4525" not the .4500" to .4510" that Ruger seems to consistently make them. I've got two of the Vaqueros in 45 LC and both have undersize cylinder throats.

for the longest time I couldn't fiigure out how I could shoot 2" groups with a Glock 22 (.40 S&W) at 25 yards but couldn't achieve that with my Ruger revolvers. Then someone told me to measure the cylinder throats so I went to the machine shop where I worked and used gauge pins to measure. Sure enough they're small. And that accounts for the leading and lousy accuracy I see. I'm not the only one that has this problem with his Ruger Vaqueros.
 
Werewolf,
Define accurate... Really...
Click to expand...

If the range lighting is good (my eyes have trouble with the blade sight) I don't have any problem getting 2" --> 3" groups at 25 yards off hand.

My cylinder throats are right at .45, just like most everyone elses, but it doesn't seem to bother my "fun factor" too much.

Joe
 
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