David Bradshaw Photos Vol. 111 - Ronnie Wells Gripframe Pt 5

[Lee Martin]

Ruger 03 with Ronnie Wells brass Bradshaw Bisley grip frame, which lengthens factory LOP (length of pull) 3/16”. Panels are linen black micarta cut & fit exactly to grip frame by Ronnie.


For David, the aesthetic issue of brass grip frame on stainless revolver is settled.



Ruger 03 cocked, (left) hand in firing position. Illustrating trigger finger as weight-bearing digit. Top of trigger guard rests on trigger finger.



David's hand indexes to Bradshaw Bisley on the draw, important for a trail gun configured for practical duty. Position of trigger finger, well into triger guard----distal joint contacts shoulder of trigger. Trigger finger helps support revolver. Distal digit pivots to squeeze trigger. Squeeze: imagine a dotted line from trigger to eye.



Optional placement: trigger finger touches trigger guard without supporting weight. Just enough contact for distal digit to pivot into trigger. Again, dotted line to shooter's eye. Wide recoil hump on Bradshaw Bisley, in conjunction with 3/16" setback of Ruger Bisley, helps direct heel of hand to heel of grip. Handles full house loads one-hand without death grip.



Scallop of frontstrap and scales helps index hand without exaggerated roll of Peacemaker recoil. Traditional single action taper----wide butt, narrow top----inclines hand upward, wrong direction for managing heavy recoil.



Brass Bradshaw Bisley very slightly narrower at butt than at top. Minimal rounding of heel doesn't check hand on draw, indexes with or without glove.



Air gap between trigger finger and revolver, achieveable with Bradshaw Bisley. Whether to employ this option depends on personal anatomy, not doctrine!


Air gap between index finger and frame places finger-tip on trigger. Theory says better control at finger tip. Against doctrine, more meat on trigger adds leverage, especially useful on a heavy trigger. Ruger 03 trigger currently 1-1/2 pounds, fully controlled in any weather when squeezed with meat of distal digit.



-Lee
www.singleactions.com
"Chasing perfection five shots at a time"

[bradshaw]

Beaucoup thanks again to Lee for posting this series on precision grip frames by Ronnie Wells.

Leastwise with my hand, the 3/16” extension of the Ruger Bisley into Bradshaw Bisley allows two methods of single action trigger squeeze

1) Trigger finger/trigger guard contact
A traditional way to fire single actions uses trigger finger to help support forward weight of revolver. Middle digit of trigger finger becomes a weight-bearing digit. Tip of finger (distal digit) pivots into trigger. This may place pad of finger beyond trigger----strong leverage for a heavy pull. Squeeze trigger straight back on a dotted line to your eye.

2) Trigger finger air gap
Trigger finger doesn’t touch revolver. Light visible between trigger finger and gun. Unless the grip allows weight to rest on the middle finger----as with a hand-filling double action grip or Pachmayr-type single action grip----the hand will be strained. A two hand hold, Isosceles or modified Weaver, allows hands to share weight 50/50. Unless some weight rests on index (trigger) finger or middle finger, the hand strains to both revolver and squeeze trigger. Squeeze trigger at the same time.

My preference over half a century is to rest partial weight on trigger finger.
David Bradshaw

[dhd]

Thanks for posting these pictures. I have been wanting to see the brass and SS together. It also appears that some work was done to thinning the triggerguard to get it similar to the RBH.

[bradshaw]

Oct 15, 2020 6:34:07 GMT -5 dhd said:

Thanks for posting these pictures. I have been wanting to see the brass and SS together. It also appears that some work was done to thinning the triggerguard to get it similar to the RBH.

*****

dhd.... correct. I use a Dremel with 1/2” drum sander to contour trigger guard, finishing with fine wet emery paper. Jeweler’s files, even a chainsaw file, would work for rough contouring, but take it easy. Brass is great to work with hand tools, and the trigger guard may be contoured with sandpaper alone. Emery, continually wetted, cuts a long time. Dry emery plugs fast.

PRECISION spells the the HUGE ADVANTAGE of a Ronnie Wells grip frame. Cannot overstate the value of his precise work. Ronnie starts with brass BILLET, about the only way avoid casting voids with brass. During a visit to Ruger’s Southport plant in the early-to-mid 1970’s, my late shooting Partner Ed Verge and I tried to buy some brass Super Blackhawk grip frames. Steve Vogel told us they had just scrapped two barrels of brass grip frames. Bill, Sr., fed up with the rejection rate and customer complaints of voids. Of course, the good Ruger brass grip frames were beautiful, but the casting was a nightmare.

According to Ronnie Wells, brass is exceedingly difficult to investment cast. Furthermore, Ronnie is a CNC guru, from designing programs to tuning machine tools. If it ain’t perfect, he ain’t happy. Again, I can hardly overstate the pleasure of working with these grip frames. Wish I could have brought Ronnie to meet Bill Ruger.
David Bradshaw

[dhd]

I've had to slim a triggerguard or two for my rifles (PT&G) and the SS was not soft and I ended up having to whip out the dremel. I took it slow and was happy with my results. Your efforts look really nice and I appreciate the shape you ended up with. It's funny how the gentle taper around the inside of a triggerguard can make shooting the gun more comfortable or make the gun bite.

I also appreciate how these gripframes have plenty of "meat" so you can whittle it to where you want it.

[RDW]

For someone who claims a very modest capability of fitting and blending talent! You sure have done a jam up job on this thing David!
It looks fabulous! Your lines and blending are not even in the finish stage yet and it looks as professional as can be sir. Very impressed.
Great pictures. Sorry man but i just have to post the test cocobolo panel pic you sent me!
Cant wait to see it done whenever you decide on which panels to use. Hell as we have spoken about before. Just make several, then you can swapem out when you decide your tired of the others.
But i had a feeling that you would like the cocobolo the minute i cut the block of it in half to make the panels. It just exploded with flavor and i pushed the walnut aside temporarily to try it out.





Cant begin to tell you how Happy it makes me to see a  revolver that i have read about in so many articles (Old #3) wearing my grip frame!
Happy Happy Happy Drool Drool.
Fixing to order that site block or make one now. Gotta copy this look as is!
I love it! Great job Dave!

Have fun shooting today.

Happy Trails and Hot Lead! LOL.

[bradshaw]

Ronnie.... think i’m falling in love with your Cocobolo on the Ruger 03. Your brass Bradshaw Bisley has been on & off the 03 several times in the past week, as it is now my meter for other grip frames. Took a thigh-pumping hike yesterday up a granite knob. May not rise to the dignity of a mountain but like the lakes below would swallow a man without notice. Not a place to navigate in the dark. Some may argue this an environ for tough ole Micarta. The spirit of fall calls for a dress code. Cocobolo panels, shaped----if not finished----to my hand the day before----jumped on board. Brass belt buckle with copper tongue, brass grip frame, brass cartridges, patina’d brown leather surround a stainless sixgun clear as the harmony of Fall. There clash of brass on stainless is an illusion shot down by the Ruger 03.
David Bradshaw

[bradshaw]

Having received questions of tactile & durability qualities of Micarta for revolver grip scales, I’ll answer the former. Black cotton Micarta panels by Ronnie Wells have a consistent, friendly feel conducive to accuracy. My inclination is to leave this scales on the Ruger 03 as sanded----not polished. Ronnie says the Micarta is just about bullet proof for durability, quite the opposite of the faux ivory made by Ruger, which is brittle. While I wear cocobolo on the RW brass Bradshaw Bisley most of the time, I prefer the RW black Micarta for thrashing around equipment and chainsaws, etc.
David Bradshaw

[leftysixgun]

I may have missed it, but whats the purpose of the yellow painted rear sight blade? Is it just give contrast against the front sight blade?

[bradshaw]

Feb 9, 2021 13:27:12 GMT -5 leftysixgun said:

I may have missed it, but whats the purpose of the yellow painted rear sight blade? Is it just give contrast against the front sight blade?

*****

Contrast against forest darkness.
David Bradshaw

[leftysixgun]

Thanks David, now can you tell me how you got a SRH sight base on a Blackhawk? Did you have that base installed by someone? Who?

[Odin]

Feb 10, 2021 19:13:34 GMT -5 leftysixgun said:

Thanks David, now can you tell me how you got a SRH sight base on a Blackhawk? Did you have that base installed by someone? Who?

singleactions.proboards.com/thread/10567/david-bradshaw-photos-vol

[bradshaw]

Feb 10, 2021 19:13:34 GMT -5 leftysixgun said:

Thanks David, now can you tell me how you got a SRH sight base on a Blackhawk? Did you have that base installed by someone? Who?

*****

leftysixgun.... the Ruger 03 is a factory one-of-a-kind fashioned in 2003 at the Newport factory to my specifications under Bill Ruger, Jr. For this shooter the Ruger 03 commemorates Bill Ruger’s vision to innovate modern civilian arms using design & manufacturing lessons he learned during World War Two. For Bill Ruger, Jr., the 03 celebrates an association between a manufacturer and a marksman. The Super Redhawk front sight is part of my input. I quietly hoped the Ruger 03 would become a production model, as did a few others in the Newport plant, but that was not to be.
David Bradshaw

[bradshaw]

20 May 2021
CUSTOM vs PRODUCTION
Ronnie Wells describes David Clements as a master machinist and master of ELECTRON DISCHARGE MACHINING. The subject is as abstract to me as mathematics and chemistry. Which is why I see EDM as PRECISION EROSION. Wells and Clements have backgrounds manufacturing. To my way of thinking, there experience in the hardware world forms a base similar to the foot of an Egyptian pyramid from which to make purpose of life. If great things have been born in a vacuum I haven’t seen them. One way or another, important steps in our development have an undeniable social origin and social goal. Why wouldn’t we want to share something that works?

A friend, the late artist Robert Rauschenberg, said of his art, and I paraphrase, I have to make it to see it. I don’t remember his words exactly, but I doubt he would mind my replay. I see the concept as intrinsic to original art.
ART by definition is original. (Many artists apparently don’t know that.) For me, an artwork reveals information. In my Steel & Dynamite sculpture, I want more than what I envisioned. The only way to get there is too make it. A successful piece may not reveal itself immediately; you may have to step back. To like one’s own work too soon may signal weak art.

Same thing, or a parallel track, you step to the Firing Line ready to shoot. it’s a big picture. You apply paint, one stroke at a time. The strokes fuse.

I’ve spent my shooting life in pursuit of marksmanship, for the most part with factory instruments. Little tweaks here & there, trigger work, bedding....

.... and grips. What would a handgun be without grips?

For this shooter, custom work makes a good instrument better. If the work imparts beauty, so much the better. However, PERFORMANCE is the purpose. To shoot straight. To shoot straighter. To tone skill. To conserve anatomy in order to CONTINUE. Clements and Wells are real gunsmiths. To reach his goal, each discovers & confronts imperfections in a manufactured revolver. Each smith knows he could make the whole object better. Short of that, these gentlemen take a very well designed Ruger revolver, and go from there. In conversation with David Clements yesterday, I said, Each revolver is an individual.

“I had two, consecutively numbered Rugers,” says Clements. “Totally different revolvers.”

A gunsmith in the league of David Clements and Ronnie Wells deals day in day out with dimensional irregularities in production guns. Both men have faced QUALITY CONTROL in manufacturing. Another gunsmith, whose free-spin pawl is popular, says that, due to subtle differences in the channel cast into the Ruger frame, it is impossible to make a universal drop-in, free-spin pawl. Fitting is necessary. To achieve “free-spin,” the Ron Power pawl relies on an extension which contacts the channel cast in the frame. The factory pawl has no such contact, thus is less sensitive too fitting.

Fortunately for you and me, the shooter, Bill Ruger made the rear and bottom planes of his single action frames exact, and the five screws holes exact. This vital detail liberates Ronnie Wells to turn loose his knowledge, experience, and creativity to fashion his grip frames----in infinite permutation----to drop-on a Ruger frame. The outward finish must be blended to the individual gun. No way around that. A Wells grip frame comes perfectly machined in every way that matters. Perfect hardware to work with.

Ronnie Wells Hammer
Through measurement of Ruger components, in conjunction with design, experiment and programming, Ronnie is ready to make hammers & triggers for Ruger Single actions. He may branch into the Colt Peacemaker. A look at photos of the Ruger Bisley hammer cocked on the Ruger 03 with RW brass Bradshaw Bisley grip frame reveal very little clearance between spur and backstop. A usual caution I practice in grasping is to not lay the web of my hand over the spur. Especially in winter with glove, this is more easily said than done. The Bradshaw Bisley pushes the Ruger Bisley 3/16” rearward, effectively removing my hand from the spur. All the while setting the spur closer to the backstrap.

Ronnie called to say he has EDM’d a new hammer, the Bradshaw Bisley Hammer, or Bradham for short. The Braham rotates the spur upward 8-degrees----1/8th inch higher. the spur is widened from .430” to .480”. Spur available serrated straight across or checkered. Having lived so long with Ruger spurs, I may prefer serrations. The graceful radius of the Bisley spur remains same, tilted upward. The change will allow the thumb to sink into the valley of the spur, for greater leverage and less chance of slippage.

Improve timing
As Ronnie illustrates under 2 Dogs announcement, elsewhere on Singleactions, the PAWL pivot hole in the HAMMER is pushed on an oblique angle ever-so-slightly outward. This advances CARRY-UP to match arrival of hammer at FULL COCK. Due to slight variations in factory guns----not Ronnie Wells components----slight dressing of the second dog on the pawl may be necessary. New Model transfer bar lockwork is famous for late carry-up at the end of rotation. All RWGF hammers will feature this improvement worked out by Ronnie.
David Bradshaw

[contender]

Another excellent, detailed & highly informative posting by David with Lee's help.

Seeing this all put together in good pics, with a layman's description is simply "just right."

Keep this stuff coming!