Early 80s Ruger Security Six problem solved.

[parallaxbill]

My high mileage Security Six action was getting rough, as in not cocking smoothly in DA or SA mode and it was bothering me to no end. So, some time back I disassembled it to investigate what might be causing the problem. I didn't notice any burrs or damage in the simple lockwork, reassembled it and put it back in the gun room. But it was in the back of my mind that I needed at some point to check it again and that I would be unhappy shooting it until I finally figured it out.
The symptoms were that it would cock in SA or function normally if the revolver was tilted to the right but got rough and balky if tilted to the left or leaned over in the "gangster" attitude.

Today I took it apart again for a closer look and found the left side of the transfer bar burred up quite a bit. Yeah, I should have seen it the first time bit I didn't.
I deburred it with a small mill smooth file leaving a less than .010" chamfer where the burr was. That fixed the problem 100%.

I knew this old workhorse was a very high mileage Ruger but never suspected that there would be this type of burr. It just goes to show that you need to check every moving part when diagnosing action roughness in a revolver.
I hope this information might be useful to anyone else that has similar action symptoms in their revolver.
Btw, the high mileage I speak of has had zero effect on this old Ruger's accuracy. It is an extremely accurate revolver.

[jeffh]

Mar 4, 2023 17:13:49 GMT -5 parallaxbill said:

My high mileage Security Six action was getting rough,...

Realizing that you repaired your Ruger just fine on your own, I still say that if you don't already have Kuhnhausen's book on the Security Six series of DA revolvers, you can't do any better as "aftermarket accessories" go.  If yiou DO have it, you know what I mean.  If you don't, you'll enjoy it a lot.

I can't imagine what it would take to wear one of these out - and I tried once when I was younger - but I had my hands on a Service Six once which was "retired" police gun.  They must have trained every officer on a 300-strong force on that one gun for thirty years.  STILL, there was very little actually wrong with it, but Kuhnhausen's book had a few tips on making a couple subtle tweaks which nice to do, if not outright necessary.

Even if you never use it as a repair reference, it's loaded with really neat information regarding the engineering behind these guns.