The Bisley Revisited

By Joe Berk

One thing about Ruger:  Nobody can top their customer service.    Ruger may not explicitly state their firearms come with a lifetime warranty, but in effect, they do.

You may remember my story on the Ruger Bisley I won in a Rock Island Auction (I wrote about it several months ago).  I had wanted a .357 Magnum Bisley for its heavy construction and longer barrel and, truth be told, I was surprised that my bid prevailed.  When I won the Rock Island Auction, I ponied up all the nutty fees that come with such an undertaking (they are significant), and then when I received the Bisley I was disappointed.  It wasn’t particularly accurate (the group sizes were mediocre), and it shot so far to the left the rear sight had to be adjusted all the way to the right to get the shots on paper.

I figured I was kind of stuck with the Bisley and my initial thought was I’d look at the gun for a while, stick it in the safe, and then maybe sell it somewhere down the line.  But it bothered me.  Owning a firearm that doesn’t meet my expectations doesn’t set easy.  If there’s such a thing as having an obsessive-compulsive disorder with firearms that are less than perfect, I’d make for a good clinical study.

I wrote to Ruger and told them what I wanted, which was an accurate Bisley  that didn’t shoot to the left.  I told them the revolver left their plant in 1986, so I was more than willing to pay whatever it took to make me happy.  I also mentioned that I wanted to buy new grip frame screws and a new ejector rod shroud (cosmetically, they looked beat up).  And finally, I mentioned that extraction was difficult with hotter loads.  I asked the Ruger folks to hone the chamber walls so the fired cases would extract easily.

Ruger charged me $45 for a Fedex mailer (which they emailed to me), told me how to package my revolver (a plain brown box, with nothing on the outside to indicate its contents), and advised it could be 4 to 6 weeks before I saw the gun again.  Four days later, it was on its way back to me, with no additional charges other than the initial $45 I paid for the Fedex mailer.

A new ejector shroud on the Bisley.
New grip screws all the way around.
The rear sight, approximately centered. This is way better than what it was when I returned the Ruger.
Ruger honed the chamber walls to prevent sticky extraction. The gun extracts flawlessly.

Ruger mentioned in the paperwork returned with the gun that they retorqued the barrel, installed a new ejector shroud, honed the chambers,  replaced all the grip screws, test fired it, and sent it home.  The first thing I looked at was the rear sight.  Comfortingly, it was a lot closer to being centered than it was when I sent the gun to them.

So how did it do?

Yessiree, that’s what I’m talking about!

Just fine, thanks.  The day I received it, I hopped in the Subie, motored over to my indoor range, and fired three different .357 loads at 10 meters.   Now, I know 10 meters is only 30 feet, but I wanted to get an idea how the revolver was working.   One load was a relatively mild Bullseye-powered concoction with cast 158-grain bullets, another was a gonzo 158-grain Hornady jacketed bullet load with a max charge of Unique, and the third was an even more energetic load with the same 158-grain jacketed hollow point Hornady bullet and a max load of Winchester 296 propellant.  On that indoor range, even with my Walker electronic earmuffs, the concussion of the big Bisley and its full throated .357 loads was starting to give me a headache.  But the targets?   Oh, boy…the Bisley and I were back in business.  I ran another target out to 50 feet (the longest range available at the indoor range), and that group was just as good as the ones at 30 feet.

Winchester’s 296, Unique, a finished .357 Magnum cartridge, the 158-grain Hornady XTP bullet, and the 180-grain Hornady XTP bullet.
A macro shot of the Hornady 159-grain and 180-grain XTP bullets. Viewed from outside the cartridge case, the bullets appear identical. The difference is in their length below the cannelure.
A couple of loaded .357 Magnum cartridges. I’ve always liked the .357 Magnum cartridge.

The day after that, I took the Bisley to our Wednesday morning Geezer get-together at the West End Gun Club.  I had three things in mind: I wanted to show off a bit to my friends, I wanted to chronograph the two balls-out .357 loads I mentioned above, and I wanted to see how the revolver would do at 100 yards.   Yes, you read that right:  100 yards.

100 yards with the Bisley. The first 30 shots or so were with the Unique load. When i switched over to the 296 load, the group tightened. Next time I’m out I’ll try the 180-grain bullets with 296 and dial in a little windage.

My buddy Kevin spotted for me with his spotting scope, and he was amazed with the first load (8.0 grains of Unique and the 158-grain Hornady jacketed hollow points).  Kevin gave a hearty “whoa!” and I suspected things were looking good.

Kevin said several of the shots (after I had warmed up a bit and got into my long-range groove) grouped like I was shooting a rifle.  I sure didn’t mind hearing that.  I checked the chronograph and the velocities were respectable, too.  The bullets were hitting to the left a bit, but I had room to adjust the rear sight to bring that in.  And where a gun prints on target is a function of how it is held.  I wasn’t consistent with the Bisley yet (I actually haven’t shot it that much).

The 158-grain Hornady bullet with 8.0 grains of Unique. It’s a max load and velocities were respectable, but not like what I attained with Winchester 295.

Then I switched to the heavier-duty 296 load (with the same Hornady XTP bullet), and wowee, I was keeping them in the black on that same 100-yard rifle target.  And those loads were smoking hot.  Winchester;s 296 propellant is good stuff.  Check this out.

Whoa, baby! 1500 fps plus! 296 is a dynamite powder in the .357 Magnum.

All the cartridge cases extracted easily and even with the 1500 feet per second 296 load above, there were no pressure signs (other than a hellacious muzzle blast). As mentioned above, Ruger honed the chambers for me and the prior extraction issues had evaporated.

With replacement of the grip frame screws and the ejector shroud, the Bisley looks like a new revolver.  And other than me paying for the initial shipping to Ruger, it was all on the house (Ruger’s house, that is).  Bear in mind what I said earlier in this blog:  The Bisley, purchased used, is a 38-year-old revolver.

The Bisley went from being a regret to a gun I’m excited about owning.  You probably know that Ruger also made these guns in other chamberings, to include .44 Magnum and .45 Colt, and you might be wondering why I wanted the .357 Magnum.  Back in the 1970s when I was a handgun metallic silhouette shooter, I competed with a .357 Magnum and I was a rarity.  While everyone else was shooting a .44 Magnum or a .45 Colt, or custom-built bolt-action handguns shooting what were essentially rifle cartridges, I was one of the very few people (in fact, the only one I knew of) who shot a .357 Magnum in that game.  With the right loads, the .357 would topple the 200-meter rams (the toughest target to knock over) more reliably than either the .44 Magnum or the .45 Colt, so there was a certain coolness (and a bit of smugness) on my part associated with that.  The other reason is weight.  When Ruger chambers different cartridges in the same firearm, the gun’s external dimensions remain the same, so the .357 Magnum Bisley weighs more than the .44 Magnum or the .45 Colt versions.  More weight means the gun holds steadier and that means greater accuracy.

What’s next for this revolver is working up a load with Hornady’s 180-grain jacketed hollow point bullet and 296 powder and getting the sights dialed in at 50, 100, 150, and 200 yards (the four stages of a handgun metallic silhouette competition).  When I used to compete in metallic silhouette competition, I used a cast 200-grain bullet, but nobody makes that bullet commercially.   Well, almost nobody.  I previously found a guy who sold a 200-grain bullet for the .357, but his bullets leaded terribly and accuracy fell off after the first three or four rounds (and cleaning the bore was a pain).  If I can get the 180-grain jacketed bullets to group well, I think the metallic silhouette rams at 200 yards won’t know the difference between a 200-grain cast bullet and a 180-grain jacketed bullet, and I may get back in the game.  We’ll see.


That term:  Balls out.  You might think it’s a crude anatomical and testicular reference, but it’s not.  Engine governors used to use lever-suspended rotating metal balls that moved further away from their axis of rotation as rpm increased.  When the engine speed reached a preset maximum value allowed by the governor, the centrifugal outward movement of the balls operated a lever that prohibit engine speed from going any higher.  At that point, the engine was running “balls out.”


Never miss an ExNotes blog:



Don’t forget: Visit our advertisers!


A .357 Magnum Ruger Bisley

In a prior blog I described bidding on a Ruger .357 Blackhawk that had been owned by Hank Williams, Jr.  The Rock Island Auction folks predicted the gun would sell for between $900 and $1,600, and I wanted it so I put in a bid at $2,000 (which I thought was ridiculously high).  That gun sold for $5,000.  There are evidently guys out there who have the disease worse than me.

The Hank Williams, Jr., Ruger .357 Magnum Blackhawk. It sold for $5,000. The buyer’s premium on top of that would have been nearly a thousand bucks!

Then last month another Rock Island auction rolled around, and this one had a Ruger .357 Bisley.   The concept and history of the Bisley is interesting.  Bisley is the name of a target range in England, and when Colt introduced a target variant of its famed Single Action Army revolver in 1894, they named it the Colt Bisley.  The most obvious differences between the Bisley and a standard Single Action Army is the Bisley’s longer grip with a more pronounced hump.  Colt’s Bisley also had a rear sight that is adjustable for windage and interchangeable front sight posts for elevation adjustment.

Ruger introduced a modern Bisley version of its Blackhawk revolver line in 1985 (with revolvers chambered in .357 Magnum, .41 Magnum, .44 Magnum, and .45 Colt).  I always thought the Ruger Bisley was a marketing thing and I thought the Bisley’s odd-shaped handle was visually unappealing, so I never felt the need for one.  But needs and wants can change.   A friend of mine let me try his .357 Magnum Ruger Bisley a few years ago.  I liked its heft and slightly longer barrel (7 1/2 inches versus the standard Blackhawk’s 6 1/2 inches).  Ruger stopped making the .357 Magnum Bisley a few years after it was introduced, and they are hard to find now.

A sense of scale: Ruger .357 Bisley, Ruger .357 Blackhawk, Ruger .44 Super Blackhawk, and Uberti Colt Walker.  They are all big guns.

The modern Ruger Bisley has a massive appearance, and that’s kind of cool.  At 7 1/2 inches, the barrel is an inch longer than the .357 Blackhawk and the Bisley has the larger grip frame.  The Bisley grip frame feels awkward to me, but it is easier on the hand under heavy recoil. I’m probably just used to the standard Blackhawk grip frame.  For me, the larger Super Blackhawk grip frame is the best of all.

Some might call these big guns horse pistols, which have been defined as handguns usually carried in a holster while riding a horse.  The Bisley is smaller than a Colt Walker (a monster of a handgun), but by any other measure the Bisley is a huge revolver.  It is heavier than the regular .357 Magnum Blackhawk for four reasons:  The unfluted cylinder, the longer barrel, the grip is larger, and the gripframe is made of steel instead of aluminum.

Ruger’s .357 Magnum Blackhawk (on the left) and their .357 Bisley (on the right). Note the difference in the grip shape and length.

The Rock Island folks guessed that the Ruger Bisley would go for between $600 and $900 on their website before the auction.  I bid $600.  I wanted it, but not so badly that I was willing to go crazy, which is kind of what my previous results told me you had to be to win in the Rock Island crazy competition.  To my great surprise, I won the Bisley with my $600 bid.  Then I received the emailed invoice and I was even more surprised.  There was a 17.5% buyer premium, which tacked another $105 to the price.  There was a 3.5% credit card fee, so that was $21.  The gun had to ship 2nd day air to my FFL, and that was $46.  There was insurance, and that added $7.05.  And of course, the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia sales tax for another $60.39.  My $600 Bisley suddenly became an $839.44 toy and it hadn’t even arrived.  When it did, there was the California DOJ fee and the FFL transfer fee ($74.90).  My $600 Bisley was now up to $914.34.  I guess that’s okay, though.  If I had seen a .357 Ruger Bisley in new condition for a thousand bucks, I would have pulled the trigger (literally and figuratively) and felt good about it.  In that sense, I was $85.66 ahead of the game.

Another difference between Ruger’s standard .357 Magnum Blackhawk and the Bisley is the cylinder. The standard Blackhawk has a fluted cylinder; the Bisley has an unfluted and roll-engraved cylinder.

When I saw the gun in person (the day I started my 1o-day waiting period), I was blown away (figuratively speaking, of course).  I could see that it was in excellent condition.  The quality, fit, and finish are light years ahead of what Ruger is producing these days.  You’ll recall that when I lost the Hank Williams Auction I bought a new Ruger .357 Blackhawk and its quality was terrible.  The Ruger Bisley’s quality appears to be much better in both fit and finish.  I looked up the Bisley’s serial number on Ruger’s website and learned that my gun was manufactured in 1986; I guess Ruger cared more about what was leaving the factory back then.

I’ve been to the range a couple of times with my Bisley.  On my first day out with the new-to-me Ruger, one of my friends (a bench rest shooter) came over to watch.  There was an old bowling pin laying on its side on the 100-yard line. You know the situation…like the bad guy in an old western movie, it was just begging to be shot. I asked my friend to spot for me.  The first shot went high, kicking up a dust cloud about three feet above the pin.  I held lower and my second shot sent up another dust cloud two feet below the pin.  Okay, I had the elevation dialed in (I wasn’t actually adjusting the Bisley’s sights; I was just holding the front post at different heights).  My third shot hit just to the right.  On my fourth shot I nailed it, sharply kicking the bowling pin back 10 yards and spinning it violently.  Now, just the pin base was facing me, presenting a 3-inch diameter circle.  “Okay, let’s see you make that shot,” my friend said.  I did, and the pin was kicked back another 10 yards.  I looked back and smiled.  “Piece of cake,” I said, and we both had a good laugh.

25-yard targets shot with the .357 Magnum Ruger Blackhawk (left) and the .357 Magnum Ruger Bisley (right).

On a subsequent range outing I compared the Bisley’s accuracy to the regular Blackhawk using the same heavy .357 Magnum load in both revolvers (8.0 grains of Unique and the Hornady 158-grain XTP jacketed hollow point bullet).  They both shoot groups that were about the same size, and both are biased with the sights adjusted as far as they will go.  The regular Blackhawk shoots high at 25 yards with the rear sight all the way down (the front sight is not tall enough).  The Blackhawk prints about 3 inches high at 25 yards with the rear sight adjusted as low as it will go.  I’ve contacted Ruger and they sent me their shortest rear sight blade for the Blackhawk, but that’s the one the revolver already had in it.  Custom gunsmiths offer a taller front sight (Fermin Garza comes to mind), but I don’t know if I want to do that.  It’s custom work I shouldn’t have to pay for.

The Bisley’s elevation is okay at 25 yards, but it shoots to about one inch to the left at 25 yards.  When I received the revolver from Rock Island Auctions, the rear sight had been cranked almost all the way to the right by the former owner.   He ran out of adjustment range and the gun still shoots to the left of my aim point.  I thought that the leftward bias could be due to a poor ejector rod shroud fit, or it may just be due to the fact that I was shooting max loads and it’s how the gun reacts in my hand.  I fired a few rounds of .38 Special wadcutters and the gun still shot to the left, so I don’t think it is a function of how hot a load I’m shooting or how it reacts to my grip.  Then I took the ejector rod shroud off to see if that would make a difference.  The ejector rod shroud was very poorly fit to the Bisley and it was pulling the barrel to the right, but when I took it off, the point of impact did not change.  You would think the manufacturer would deliver a gun that shot to a point that was within the gun’s adjustable sight range.  I’ve been inside a revolver manufacturing facility (not Ruger), and all they do is proof each gun with a high pressure load; that other manufacturer did not check where the gun printed.  Ruger evidently does not, either.

The regular Ruger Blackhawk ejects all cases easily (even with the max loads I was using).   The Bisley does not.  With the max loads I shot in the Bisley, one chamber wants to hang on to the cartridge case.   Less than max loads (38 Special and mid-range .357 mag loads) eject satisfactorily from the Bisley.   The Bisley has a sloppy surface finish inside its chambers (there are machine marks from the chamber reaming operation).  It shouldn’t have left the factory back in 1986 like that, but it did.

There’s one other quality-related observation on the Bisley I should mention.  The Bisley makes a firing pin primer indentation in the primer that is bigger and deeper than any I have ever seen.  Looking at the firing pin after it has been hit by the hammer, it looks bigger and sticks out of the breech face more than I am used to seeing.  I had a bunch of max load .357 rounds with Aventuras primers I had assembled earlier, and Bisley pierced the primers on the first five (so I didn’t shoot any more of those).  The firing pin is smooth and round (there are no sharp edges on it); it’s just taking the primer cup material near enough to its yield point that the pressure takes it the rest of the way.   These same cartridges worked fine in my regular (i.e., non-Bisley) Blackhawk with no pierced primers, and the same .357 load with CCI primers and Winchester primers worked fine in the Bisley.  Note to self:  Don’t use Aventuras primers for hot .357 loads in the Bisley.

The Bisley’s firing pin in the extended position. It’s smooth, but big.
Pierced primers on .357 Magnum cartridges loaded with 8.0 grains of Unique, the 158-grain Hornady XTP jacketed hollow point bullet, and Aventuras primers.

So there you have it.  My knowledge base on the Ruger .357 revolvers continues to grow (and yours does, too, if you’re reading this).  I’m still looking for that perfect .357 Magnum revolver.   I’ve owned a bunch over the last 50+ years, and I’ll keep looking.  I still dream about wandering into a rural pawnshop somewhere and finding a brass grip Blackhawk like that Hank Williams, Jr., Ruger for $200.  You never know.


More Tales of the Gun!


Never miss an ExNotes blog:



Don’t forget: Visit our advertisers!