I spent some quality time after my last range trip to rectify a few of the faults from last time, and to make the final repair on the Webley RIC.

The Webley is supposed to have a flat spring in a slot in the cylinder-pin. Without it the cylinder rotates too freely; you’d fire two shots and the weight of the three loaded rounds would cause the cylinder to rotate backwards when you start to pull the trigger, and you wind up re-striking the cartridge you’ve already fired.  The original was missing and a replacement was unobtainable, so I fabricated a new one and tried it out.

It worked a treat. The gun is a tiny bit fussy about ammunition, but overall it functioned fine and shot well. I fired it at seven yards and then at five yards, with pretty decent results:

The load used was a 200gr HG68 SWC over 4.0gr. of Unique with a CCI300 primer. The only issue was occasional failures to ignite on the first strike; the firing pin strikes off-center and CCI primers tend to be a bit hard. I’m going to try Winchester or Remington primers next time.

Next up was the ASM New Dakota SAA. I’d already shortened the sight once and it wasn’t quite enough, so I shortened it a bit more. Now it’s shooting a touch high, though honestly that might be an aiming error on my part. It is shooting a bit to the left, and I may shave the sight a bit to bring the POI on-center.

The J.P.Sauer & Sohn custom Sheriff was shooting massively high, so I removed the front sight and replaced it with a taller sight that I made. this solved the problem with shooting high- it now shoots a little low, but that’s OK; it’s a lot easier to make a sight shorter than it is to make it taller. I also corrected the slight cant of the sight that was causing it to shoot to the left.

I’m liking this gun quite a bit- it’s accurate, easy to pack and, since it’s built on a .44 Magnum frame it’ll handle a stout load just fine. This gun may well wind up in contention for my sidearm for hunting.

The load used for both of the .45 Colts was a 200gr. HG68 SWC over 8.0gr. of Unique with a CCI primer.

I also brought The Dandy along as it was also shooting low last time. I ground the front sight a bit and wanted to try it out. It’s now shooting to point of aim. This a very pleasant gun to shoot; comfortable in the hand, nice trigger, mild recoil and good accuracy.

I’m going to look into honing the chambers; they were a bit sticky occasionally, and without an ejector it’s important the spent rounds come out easily.

Last up I put a few rounds through the Detonics Mk.1 Combat Master. Always a pleasure-

I did have a problem with the blued Detonics factory magazine; the follower has gone a bit out of whack and it would only fit five rounds. I’ll have it apart and take a look later.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 31 August 2018