My new 686 Plus 3 inch round butt works fine. But the DA is a little heavy.
I want to lighten the mainspring but leave the trigger return spring alone. I’m just going to step the mainspring to the next lower weight Wolff sells. I haven’t checked yet. Reliability is very important of course.
When I tighten the mainspring tension screw (at the base of the grip) should I put some blue Loc-tite on it?
Also, the wood grip looks great but is actually awful. Would be good for concealment. But otherwise it lacks texture, doesn’t offer any cushion, and the finger grooves couldn’t be in a worse place for my hand.
Any of you have experience with the current Hogue or Pachmeyer rubber offerings?
In the olden days we’d cross drill the mainspring tension screw hole and tap it for an allen head setscrew. We’d also recut the threads for the tension screw itself to be neat and thorough about it. Then it was a simple matter to tune the mainspring tension to be reliable and as light as was practical. This was preferable to us when compared to loctite in case we wanted to experiment a bit more. Other options include Wolff reduced power mainsprings: https://www.gunsprings.com/SMITH+&+WESSON/K,+L,+&+N+FRAME/cID3/mID58/dID264 and I personally have had good luck with rebound springs in the 13-14 lb range. I normally buy rebound spring assortment packs and start at the low end and try each one in normal dry-fire until I get the lightest spring that gives me the trigger return feel that I want. It usually takes 2-3 tries to get exactly what I want. I tend to buy individual springs direct from Wolff instead of others manufacturers “kits”, not counting the Wolff rebound spring assortment mentioned earlier of course.
For grips, have you considered G-10 micarta? VZ has some really decent looking designs. My 686 wears Hogue wood grips, which fit my hand better than their rubber grips do, but mine is a square butt, so there’s a significant difference there. For rubber grips I prefer Pachmayr Compacs or Compac Professionals. I tried to look them up, but Lymans website is poorly done and their Pachmayr cataloging is horribly challenging.
After further research, I’m not going to replace the mainspring. It’s too easy to get light strikes in these S&W’s. I’ll keep an eye on the tension screw and if there is ever any loosening I’ll tighten and loc-tite it.
Round butt or Square butt? I’ve got a set of hogues on a square butt and it’s comfortable, you feel something with heavier loads. You can also look at Pachmayer’s gripper, presentation and compac. I’ve had most of the Pachmyers at one point. they are good quality, but I don’t care for how they fit my hand.
With the wood grips, it was only slightly better than the King Cobra. Mild .357 loads were tolerable for a little while and good splits could be achieved at close targets. (.25 - .35 sec.)
But full strength 158 gr .357’s kinda hurt and slow things way down.
For that, try the Pachmayer compacts, just make sure you get the ones with the closed backstrap. I’ve got a pair on an S&W 64 that are great. Just inspect them before you buy them, some folks are complaining that they have a gap. If you you want something a little bigger try the hogue tamers.
I got the Hogue “Bantam” grip & really like it so far. Very size efficient, fits my hand very well, and the fitment could not be better.
Haven’t fired it with this grip yet.
Did more dry firing and researched mainsprings. Often leads to a rabbit-hole of strain screw mods, re-bending the mainspring, polishing, installing a longer firing pin, etc. to regain reliability. I’m not doing that I have enough projects. The more I dry fire it the better the trigger seems to get, anyway. It’s not bad.
The Bantam grip shoots great. It’s as big as it needs to be for my hand and no more.
Gun loves 180 gr bullets, very accurate. Very happy with it. Needs a CC holster. Recently got some soft-ish 185 gr LHP’s I’ll load up to about 925 fps.
