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.”


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The Rimfire Series

By Joe Berk

I liked good buddy Jose’s blog about his Marlin Glenfield .22 rifle, and we thought it would be a good idea to include a Rimfire Series category here on ExNotes.  When the idea first surfaced, I thought we might have done a blog or two on .22 rimfire firearms.  When I searched through our blogs, I found that we’ve already posted six .22 blogs.  For your quick reference, here they are:

A Tale of Two .22s (a CZ Model 452 and a Remington Model 504)

A .22 Colt Trooper Mk III

¡Siluetas Metálicas!

First Person Shooter

A 200th Year Ruger .22

A Tale of Two Springfields

We’ll be including a category for these on our Tales of the Gun page, too.


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Watch for upcoming rimfire stories in this series, including a blog or two on the GSG .22 1911, the Ruger Single Six, the Smith and Wesson Model 41, a Mannlicher CZ Model 455, a Trainer CZ Model 452 , a Winchester Model, a Remington Custom Shop Model 504, a Ruger Mannlicher 10/22, a 200th year Ruger 10/22, a target grade Ruger Mark III, a vintage Winchester Model 62, and more.  Yep, we like our rimfires.  Big time.  Stay tuned, Amigos!


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The Rimfire Series: ¡Siluetas Metálicas!

Metallic Silhouette Origins

The sport of metallic silhouette shooting came to us from Mexico, where it started roughly 80 years ago as a part of a culture of rural village celebrations. They used live animals in those days tethered to a stake, which made it a lot harder to hit them because after the first shot the animals tended to take evasive action. I guess it was considered politically correct in those earlier times because the match would be immediately followed by a rip-roaring barbeque (at which, of course, chicken, pig, turkey, and ram were on the menu).

I learned all of this from a world-class metallic silhouette shooter named Jose Porras in the 1970s. Jose used to drive up from Mexico to shoot with us at Fort Bliss when I first got into the metallic silhouette game. He was the guy to beat, and I never did. I didn’t care. I just liked hearing his stories about the old days and the origins of the sport.

Metallic Silhouette Targets and Distances

I had last shot in a metallic silhouette match about 45 years ago. By then, the sport had morphed into shooting at metallic silhouettes, like you see in the photo at the top of this blog. There were chickens at 50 meters, pigs at 100 meters, turkeys at 150 meters, and rams at 200 meters (this was for the handgun competition).  All of the silhouettes were life-sized.  For high power rifle (which we always shot with a scope back then) the targets were the same, but they were located at 200 meters (chickens), 300 meters (pigs), 385 meters (turkeys), and 500 meters (rams). Those are long distances, and all of the rifle shooting was offhand (no slings or shooting jackets). You could shoot from a sitting position in the handgun matches, but the rifle competition was all a stand up affair. It was challenging, and that’s what made it interesting. The winner usually connected with only about half the targets, and you either hit them or you didn’t.

Just hitting the targets didn’t count.  You had to hit them with enough energy to knock them over.  In the rifle competition, that alone ruled out the light cartridges.  And you couldn’t use magnums, either, because those cartridges would damage the targets.  Nope, in the rifle game, it was a Goldilocks affair.   The energy had to be just right.  7mm Mauser, 7mm-08, .308, and .30 06 were the favorites back then.

In the handgun competition, everyone either used a magnum cartridge (.44 Magnum was popular), .45 Colt loaded to the max, or a custom wildcat (I’ll say more about that below).   .45 ACP, .38 Special, and the standards of the day didn’t have enough energy to knock the targets over, and their rainbow-like trajectories meant there wasn’t enough adjustment in the sights.   9mm?  Fuhgeddaboutit.  The 9mm was woefully anemic for this game.

Metallic Silhouette Handguns

In the International Handgun Metallic Silhouette Association (IHMSA) national championships in 1976 in El Paso, I tied for 5th place and then lost a shootoff. I was out of the money in 6th, but I was still pretty pleased because I was using a bone-stock Smith and Wesson Model 27 .357 Magnum with my cast bullet reloads, while all of the guys who did better than me were shooting custom XP-100 Remingtons. The XP-100 was a single-shot pistol based on a rifle action, and in those days, guys would have them custom barreled in 30×223. The 30×223 was a wildcat based on the 5.56 NATO cartridge blown out to take a .30 caliber rifle bullet. It ultimately became known as the 300 Blackout cartridge. Jose used one of these 30×223 custom handguns for culling coyotes on his estate in Mexico during the week and for winning matches in El Paso on the weekends.  He was really, really good.  I imagine the coyotes hated him.

.22 Rifle Metallic Silhouette Shooting

Well, to make a long story slightly less long, I had been wanting to get back into metallic silhouette shooting for the last four and a half decades, and one day a year or so ago I did.  I broke the suction between my butt and the seat in front of this computer and I shot in the .22-caliber metallic silhouette rifle match at the West End Gun Club. I shot my Browning .22 A-bolt (a relatively rare and semi-collectible rifle).

I didn’t know it when I went out there, but they shoot two classes: One with scopes, and the other with open sights. The open sight targets are roughly four times the size of the scope targets, and for whatever reason, on the rams the targets for the scoped guns are set back an additional 10 yards (for the other three animals, the distances are the same). At all distances, though, the targets for the scoped guns are really, really small.  Take a look.

With apologies for the lack of focus, here’s a zoomed-in shot of the turkeys. The iron sight turkey targets are on the left; the scoped-rifle turkeys are on the right…

Like I said, the scoped-rifle targets are really tiny. You can see that in the photo above. They were maybe two inches tall. Shooting at these things offhand was a challenge, but I had a blast out there.  There were four guys shooting scoped rifles (I was one of them) and 14 guys (and gals) shooting iron-sighted rifles (mostly lever guns; all with expensive aftermarket aperture sights). It was a good crowd…mostly older guys (my age and up) with a few folks in their 20s and 30s. Everybody was friendly.

I could have started this blog by telling you I came in fourth in the scoped class and let it go at that, but the fact is I had the lowest score in the scoped class. I only got 14 out of 60 silhouettes, the next guy got 18, another guy got 20, and the highest guy got 22. It’s a tough game. I’m pretty happy with what I did, though. I had only zeroed my rifle at 50 yards (where I got about half the chickens). I got about a third of the pigs I shot at (these were the 65-yard targets, and every shot at them when I connected was at the low edge of the target). I only got one each of the rams and the turkeys (the turkeys are always the toughest), but like I said, I wasn’t zeroed and those were just lucky hits. Next time I’ll do better (and there will be a next time). This was all shooting offhand at teeny, tiny targets. I’d like to try the open sight class next time, too, just because the targets were a lot bigger. It all was a lot of fun.

The club also has a centerfire lever gun silhouette match, and I’m thinking I’ll try that, too. Those distances go out to about 140 yards, it’s all open sights, and it’s all lever guns. They told me they mostly shoot .357 Magnum (a handgun cartridge) and .30 30 for the centerfire metallic silhouette competition. The bug has bitten and I am enjoying being back in the game.

Good times, folks.  Life is good.


More Tales of the Gun stories are here!