{"id":10646,"date":"2020-10-29T05:59:43","date_gmt":"2020-10-29T12:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=10646"},"modified":"2020-10-29T05:59:43","modified_gmt":"2020-10-29T12:59:43","slug":"a-tj-tune-for-my-model-60","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/10\/29\/a-tj-tune-for-my-model-60\/","title":{"rendered":"A TJ tune for my Model 60"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had trouble selecting a title for this blog.\u00a0 The other contender was 50 Shades of Gray<\/em> to go with the big photo you see above.\u00a0 I wish I could say I took that photo, but the credit goes to good buddy and master gunsmith TJ.\u00a0 TJ is the best pistolsmith there is<\/a>, and one of the things that makes working with him so enjoyable is his photography.\u00a0 When TJ works a custom gun project, he photodocuments it to keep you appraised of what’s going on, and a couple of the photos you see here are the ones he sent to me on my Model 60 project.\u00a0 \u00a0But I’m getting ahead of myself.\u00a0 Let me back up a bit.<\/p>\n

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If you follow the blog (and you all do, right?), you’ve been watching the Star reloader resurrection project I’m working.\u00a0 That’s coming along nicely, and I’m already making .38 Special ammo on my resurrected reloader.\u00a0 \u00a0This story started with my noticing an ad in my gun club newsletter for a Model 60 at a killer price.\u00a0 I’m normally not a snubnose kind of guy, but hey, a deal’s a deal and I like the idea of a snubnose .38.\u00a0 Maybe I watched too many cop shows in the ’50s and ’60s.\u00a0 You know.\u00a0 Cannon<\/em>, Kojak<\/em>, Hawaii 5-0<\/em>, 77 Sunset Strip<\/em>, Dragnet<\/em>…you get the idea.\u00a0 All those guys carried snubbies.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Anyway, the Model 60 was a good deal, but swinging the cylinder out to the side was a bit dicey…sometimes it wanted to stick.\u00a0 The seller told me about that but I didn’t see it as a problem.\u00a0 I saw it as an opportunity to do another project with good buddy TJ, and that’s what I’m doing.\u00a0 TJ is doing his Level 1 action job<\/a> for me (polishing all the internals and lightening both the double and single action trigger pulls), and I’m having him also put a mirror finish on the cylinder, the ejector rod, the cylinder release, the trigger, and the hammer.\u00a0 It will make for a nice, subtle contrast with the brushed stainless finish on the rest of the gun.\u00a0 That leaves only the grips, and I’m doing something about those, too.\u00a0 TJ put into words what I was thinking, and that was that the stock grips (the ones you see above) are butt ugly (pardon the gun pun).<\/p>\n

Back in the day Smith used to offer uncheckered rosewood grips, and that’s what I really wanted.\u00a0 They don’t sell those any more, though, and I mentioned to TJ that I should have bought a set back in the ’70s.\u00a0 You know,\u00a0 just in case.\u00a0 “Try E-Bay,” TJ said, and I did.\u00a0 I hit paydirt almost immediately, and the grips you see below are on their way to me now.\u00a0 Rosewood.\u00a0 Smooth.\u00a0 Just what I wanted.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The finish on my inbound grips may be a little funky, but that’s another opportunity, too.\u00a0 It’s TruOil<\/a>\"\" time, folks.\u00a0 TruOil<\/a>\"\" and a little patience will have these grips looking literally better than they did when they left the S&W factory in Springfield.<\/p>\n

The Star reloader is operational now (I’ll show you more on the Star resurrection<\/a> in upcoming blogs, and I’ll include a video that shows it making finished ammo).\u00a0 I’ll have the Model 60 back in a few days, so I went ahead and loaded a box of ammo with the outstandingly accurate 158-grain cast bullets I get from my good buddy Roy.\u00a0 It took only a few minutes on the Star (it would take closer to an hour on a single-stage press).\u00a0 For a machine that’s probably older than I am, the Star sure does a good job.<\/p>\n

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When I take my custom snubbie .38 to the range, I’ll grab a few photos and share a range report with you here on the ExNotes blog.\u00a0 Stay tuned, my friends, and keep your powder dry.<\/p>\n

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More Tales of the Gun<\/a>!<\/p>\n

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Enter your email address for a free subscription to ExNotes!<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had trouble selecting a title for this blog.\u00a0 The other contender was 50 Shades of Gray to go with the big photo you see above.\u00a0 I wish I could say I took that photo, but the credit goes to good buddy and master gunsmith TJ.\u00a0 TJ is the best pistolsmith there is, and one … Continue reading “A TJ tune for my Model 60”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[1513,1535,334,1533,1531,1528,1532,333,1527,189,1534,1530,1529,1486,870,1536],"class_list":["post-10646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guns","tag-38-special","tag-50-shades-of-gray","tag-ccw","tag-custom-smith-and-wesson","tag-edc","tag-model-60","tag-rosewood-grips","tag-sw","tag-smith","tag-smith-and-wesson","tag-snubbie","tag-snubnose","tag-stainless-sw","tag-star-reloader","tag-tjs-custom-guns","tag-tv-police-shows"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/JoeBerk-SW60-Before_010-900.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10646"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10675,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10646\/revisions\/10675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}