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Thread: Alternative to half lug?

  1. #1
    Site Supporter OlongJohnson's Avatar
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    Alternative to half lug?

    Just noticed Miculek shooting an S&W 686 Competitor in one of his videos. The point of that model is to be able to adjust the mass in the barrel lug as desired. You could even, by stacking light weight spacers, position the same amount of weight farther forward or rearward, if you weren't using all the weights, so you could affect the radius of gyration independent of the total weight. Pretty neat.

    The bored out lug got me thinking. Suppose a person likes GP100s but doesn't like the nose-heavy feel of the full-lug barrels. Maybe, rather than just cutting it off and making a round barrel ahead of the ejector shroud, which would require remarking the caliber for it to look right, it would work to just bore it out. Make it hollow to take a lot of the weight out. Unlike making the barrel round, drilling the lug would be a simple, single machining operation and require little to no refinishing (at least on a stainless revolver). At least, if you have the precision capability to get the hole drilled right. Whereas, the lug could be removed and the barrel made reasonably round with a saw, grinder, files and progressively finer abrasives used by hand.

    Drilling would keep the meaty full-lug profile and look, and keep it fitting snugly in more common holsters. There's no reason you couldn't make it like the S&W Competitor, but that would be a little extra work. Could also go with tungsten weights that way, if you were so inclined and had the money to get it done.

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  2. #2
    Member Hizzie's Avatar
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    IIRC SDM Fabricaring at one time did mercury filled underlugs.
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  3. #3
    I once owned an early nickel Python with hollow underlug. We called it the Airweight Snake. I traded it for a blue one. The Airweight Snake made a couple more moves but ended up back in the hands of one of the group that shot together in those days.

    It is an interesting idea but drilling a small hole that deep is not a trivial pursuit.

    King's Gunsights would add a weight tube under the barrel of a Colt Woodsman. Weights, spacers, and a spring let you adjust the balance.
    Last edited by Jim Watson; 09-21-2017 at 11:56 PM.
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  4. #4
    Site Supporter Hambo's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Watson View Post
    It is an interesting idea but drilling a small hole that deep is not a trivial pursuit.
    That makes me cringe just thinking about it.
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  5. #5
    Site Supporter NEPAKevin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hizzie View Post
    IIRC SDM Fabricaring at one time did mercury filled underlugs.
    Sounds almost like Harrt's recoil reducers which had tubes filled with Mercury and I think steel balls.
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  6. #6
    Member JonInWA's Avatar
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    While I'm not saying the concept isn't interesting, a couple of things:

    The list of the S&W as equipped is $1439, the list of a GP100 Match Champion (by definition a half-lug) is $969. That's a $470 delta between the two, so then the issue in GP100 vs S&W PC might be recast as: How much would it realistically cost to enact a similar configuration to a full-lug GP100 (with a list price of $829) (and to truly be on par with the S&W, I'd suggest that you'd need to factor in both the cost of the lug mods and an action tuning).

    Owning a full lug, thoroughly custom-tuned 4" GP100 and a lightly touched-up 4" Security Six, I'm not convinced that the juice of performing the lug mod on a full-lug GP100 warrants the squeeze. In comparing my full-lug GP with my half-lug Security Six, I find that the Security Six is more dynamically effective regarding initial presentation/shot times, but the GP comes into it's own where multiple shots are required, as the full lug definitely is a stabilizing split reducing mass. And, the dynamic presentation advantage the Security Six has isn't all that overwhelming.

    I strongly suspect that the true beneficiary of the S&W PC gun with it's moddable lug is a really dialed in and committed revolver competitor...not so much those of us who use a revolver as a general-purpose gun, i.e., for duty/self/home defense, hunting/wilderness, AND (possibly) competition.

    In other words, it's an interesting, spiffy concept, but for all but the uber-competitor revolver shooters amongst us, I think it's money better spent on training and practice; I'd recommend deciding which configuration you like and then simply going with either a "regular" full-lug GP100 or a half-lug Match Champion.

    In my personal experience, FWIW, while I really like, appreciate and use both my GP100 and Security Six, my accumulated IDPA match and classifier scores strongly suggest that I do my best revolver work with my full-lug GP100-but that's me, and YMMV.

    Doesn't mean I thing the S&W PC execution is without merit (and interesting, both intrinsically on the S&W PC gun and as a transferable concept to a GP100), I just think that for most of us there are better ways to spend our discretionary income.

    Best, Jon
    Last edited by JonInWA; 09-27-2017 at 05:05 PM.

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  8. #8
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    For what little it's worth, around here you could get the underlug drilled out of a gun with an EDM for about 150.

    ETA: without an EDM this job would be a nightmare. I'm also skeptical that it's worth doing, but putting mercury or a bunch of tungsten beads or something in there would probably be nice for competition.
    Last edited by scott; 09-27-2017 at 11:06 PM.

  9. #9
    First, measure the lug, decide what wall thickness should be left; determining what diameter hole you could drill and how deep.
    Calculate how much steel that would remove to save weight, how much lead, tungsten, or mercury you could put in to add weight.
    I doubt it will be much.
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  10. #10
    Revolvers Revolvers 1911s Stephanie B's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Watson View Post
    First, measure the lug, decide what wall thickness should be left; determining what diameter hole you could drill and how deep.
    Calculate how much steel that would remove to save weight, how much lead, tungsten, or mercury you could put in to add weight.
    I doubt it will be much.
    I noodled around with this a bit. I'm guessing that on a 6" gun, there is 3" of metal that can be removed. The underlug isn't as thick as the barrel, and I don't have an L-frame handy to measure up.

    So, going by the bore diameter as a guesstimate, do the calculation for the area of a cylinder and the volume of that space would be .479cc. Mercury has a density of 13.53 grams/cc, so you'd add 6.5 grams.

    Stainless steel has a density of 7700kg/m3, or 7.70 grams/cc. So you'd take out 3.68 grams of metal. Total gain is 2.79 grams. Doesn't seem worth the effort.
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