Waveform

Thanks Smithy - good stuff. So the Redhawk has stayed around because it has a fan base who simply prefer the style of grip and overall aesthetics? I'm glad they still make them but I'm a bit surprised given Ruger's history of discontinuing products that still have a loyal following (44 Carbine, Old Army, Red Label, etc.) They don't seem to be making very many Redhawks these days judging by what I've seen in dealer's cases and online. But I see plenty of Super Redhawks. I do like the Alaskan by the way and wouldn't mind owning one.

So final question - is there anything you think the Redhawk does better than the Super Redhawk?

Wave

Smithy

Simply, Carry lengths. In the Super Redhawk you either have an Alaskan at 2.5" or you have a much longer heavier SRH with a pipe for a barrel at 7.5 or 9.5". Then here comes the Redhawk in easily with a 5" barrel, or 4" or 6" and it's hard to produce in the SRH frame. I had a SRH in 9.5 with a scope and it was too heavy for me to hold long enough to get on target so I did the only thing I could. I chopped the barrel at 5.5". Now remember all the problems I talked about shortening a SRH barrel. Smith's wanted a LOT of money to do barrel work on this gun. Tech's at Brownells were the one's telling me about the galling problem and Ruger having a special anti-galling paste for assembly. Well, I used my trusty hack saw and then a slow methodical process of facing, instepping, and crowning the barrel with piloted reamers from Brownell's. It all worked great. But in the end I ended up with a 5.5" SRH that had NO open sights (yes I could have fixed that) and was overly massive in that barrel length. Not nearly as streamlined and perfect as the Redhawk in a similar barrel length. So the Redhawk wins hands down in the carry length department and the SRH makes an excellent last ditch bear gun in their Alaskan and quite the hunting piece for dangerous game in their 7.5 or 9.5 inch length tubes. Smithy.

Waveform

Thanks Smithy. From just the aesthetics of the design the RH looks better to me. The SRH Alaskan looks good too but the longer barreled SRH have always looked odd to me. (SRH owners are now gathering their pitchforks and torches...)

exlogger

A major inovation that seems to be twisted throughout this thread is the single spring design. This innovative design by Ruger is what sets it apart from all the rest. Two springs create a compounded pressure towards the trigger pull. Not only compounded, but more mechanical resistance. How some members in this forum turned this into a negative is beyond me.

The spring works off a lever in the grip frame, one of the reasons for the full grip frame. This is not possible with the peg grip frame design of the SRH and GP. I have five DA Rugers with the double springs and my Redhawk has the lightest/smoothest pull.

Ruger claims, right on their website, that this design makes for a lighter trigger pull.

Ruger® Redhawk® Double-Action Revolver

WyoShooter

I appreciate all the comments from everyone and a very good read.

I like the looks of the Redhawk and the way it feels in the hand. I handled a comparable S&W and like the Ruger more. Never owned a S&W. Guess I am too much of a Ruger fan and have several Ruger pistols in the safe, so I'm not new to their products.
Most of the Rugers I have owned over the years have been single action. I have owned three single actions in .44 mag over the years and wanted to try a double for a change.
The reason I got rid of the GP-100 I bought over twenty years ago was I wanted a gun with a little more punch and I could not hunt big game with it in my state and my carry gun was a semi-auto so I didn't have a need for the .357. This was in my earlier years of hand guns and was in a buying, trying and selling phase. If I didn't like it I sold it. Bought a P-85 back then too. Didn't like it and sold it.
I am now in a buy and keep phase. I pay a little closer attention to what I buy and the last six guns I have purchased in a years time I still have and they fit all my needs. I have been selling and trading guns I don't shoot anymore for guns I will strictly use for hunting, target shooting and concealed carry. I used to have several safe queens but not into that anymore.

41RED

I own several of the standard Redhawks and several of the Super Redhawks in the Alaskan model. The main differences I see is the grip frame on the Super seems bigger than on the Standard. I think Ruger did extra work on my Alaskans as the trigger pull is much smoother out of the box than the standards were. The last difference is in the internal components. The Standard Redhawk is a little more involved taking apart for cleaning and reassembly. I personally like both. I think the 4.2 Redhawk balances evenly in the hand and the Alaskan just sits in the hand along with all the weight and is very easily controlled. The only real trouble with the standard Redhawk is if you don't like the factory grips the only alternative I've seen is Pacymahr or Hogue both in the rubber. Altamont offers wood but they are basically the same as the original factory. The Super has a few more alternatives.

kevfin

Sent a NIB 4" Redhawk to Magnaport for tune up. They did an amazing trigger job along with some other things. My friends have some 629's with great triggers but there is no comparison. Added a Pachmayr Decelerator handgrip with the padded backstrap and this is a very shootable hand cannon. Not to mention the fact that the Redhawk is THE most robust 44 magnum revolver ever made. I don't think you can go wrong with this gun.

Smithy

I hope that you are not referring to me as one of the twister's. At least that certainly was not my intent. I think that I did a fair job in explaining the differences and also indicated that for certain purposes both line's are necessary. Ever try to get a Redhawk in .454 Casull? Not going to happen. Nor is getting a SRH in a 4" barrel. Also, Not going to happen. There are those who prefer the looks, handling, engineering, involved with the Ruger Redhawk and those that prefer those same elements in the SRH (I being one of the later). And some just plain like both and have examples of each.

As far as personal experience with my Redhawk: It had a tremendous double action pull. Horrible, gritty, and a fair amount of creep and overtravel (ie. too much). Single action was a little better. I then polished the internals and checked for burrs. I also tried lighter springs to get a better trigger pull. None were reliable other that the full force factory spring. If I got a spring maybe one or two pounds lighter, it did not have enough power for reliable ignition. So improving the pull was a wash. Not so with the SRH. With the two models I had I did the same with the internals and dropped the lightest spring that was available in the Wolff Spring Kit. Extremely nice pull both in single and double action. When firing, there were absolutely NO FTF's with any of the ammunition I feed to it.

That experience pushed me over to being a fan of the SRH instead of the standard model. Now, let's take a look at my sample size. I had exactly ONE copy of the Ruger Redhawk and exactly two Ruger SRH's. Not exactly what one would call statistically significant sample size. And I do not rely on that experience to cloud my description of the guns. I know that I had an early production example of the Ruger Redhawk and most definitely got a less than prime example of one. That and I may have just "Lucked Out" and got better than normal examples of the SRH's. So to each his own and I'll keep my SRH's and be more than happy as will you have your Redhawk's also being more than happy. (people can and do like different things in a gun). And like I stated: You can not monkey with the trigger spring of a Redhawk without affecting its firing reliability. You can however with the SRH, swap out ONLY the trigger spring, leaving the hammer spring alone and improve its trigger pull. Sure a lighter hammer spring also affects trigger pull, but in the SRH you have that option. Smithy.

exlogger

Smithy-- I'm not saying the SRH does not have advantages over the Redhawk. I believe it does, but the double spring is not one of them. This advantage, I believe, goes to to the Redhawk. If I were pointing out the advantages of one weapon over another I would point to the more obvious. The Ruger site lists advantages of both models and I tend to agree with them.

The SRH with it's extended frame and forged barrel is an advantage. These attributes, I believe, make it better suited for the 454 and mounting a scope. If someone told me this makes the SRH a better gun... I'm not going to try to prove them wrong or discredit these features. I would just say they are not what I'm looking in a 44.


If your hammer spring breaks, what good is your trigger spring?
I find this observation speculative and not based on solid evidence.

I agree with you on most points, but I do not agree with your assessment that the single spring a disadvantage.

Waveform

I dug back and found this quote from Harry Sefried, designer at Ruger, regarding the Redhawk:

"Roy Melcher and I worked together on the Redhawk - with Bill, of course, who laid out for us what he wanted. It was Bill who thought up an ingenious ejector, where the rod was in the center of the cylinder, but it was not in the center of the axis of the frame, a change from the usual double-action revolver geometry. The ejector rod on a Redhawk doesn't rotate axially with the cylinder; it is offset, allowing a thicker frame in that area.....

...I worked on a little different leverage system for the Redhawk's hammer spring. The S&W system, which has a separate trigger return spring (inside a block that is also the hammer retracting system, when the trigger is released), unnecessarily increases trigger pull and does not give you any additional energy for the hammer fall, which you want to ensure cartridge ignition....

...So I worked out a system with a single mainspring operating on two linkages - one to push the hammer forward, the other to return the trigger. As you pulled the trigger you also compressed the hammer spring. This gave us the possibility of a beautifully light trigger pull. Unfortunately, we couldn't take full advantage of this; because even though we could get completely reliable ignition with a double-action pull as low as seven pounds, we didn't think a trigger pull that low was appropriate for an all-around-use revolver. We decided to not go under a nine or ten pound trigger pull, to keep it in the range of conventional double-action revolvers. Our double-action pull still felt very smooth and controllable - the best in the business.

On the single-action trigger pull, of course, you could get just about anything you wanted. That's pretty good too! Our new linkage system also gave us the possibility of going pretty light on double-action or single-action pulls, without having to worry about misfires."

I also found a quote from Jay Jarvis, Ruger designer, who discussed the barrel breakage problem on some early Redhawks due to "...extremely rough usage and a phenomenon called stress corrosion cracking. The particular lubricant that we used at that time on the barrel threads was the major contributing factor, so that situation basically disappeared once we discovered this and changed lubricants. It's not a safety problem, but certainly was embarassing!"

And

"...There's been talk every year since then [design and introduction of the Super Redhawk] as to whether we want to drop the Redhawk, and come out with a shorter barreled Super Redhawk; and perhaps taking the Super Redhawk and shortening the front of the frame, to make up a shorter version. Most of the design work is completed on all of that. Until the latter part of 1994, we were still considering dropping the Redhawk from the catalogue."



So here we are in 2012 and thankfully both the RH and SRH are still in production. And I think I'm starting to see why - more differences than just what meets the eye.

Wave

Smithy

exlogger, as I stated: My experience showed everything I have posted correct to the letter. But, I also stated that my sample size alone was not exactly enough to draw general conclusions about the Company, The line, Or that specific model of handgun.

I still stand by my personal conclusions that I prefer the SRH over the Redhawk for all the reasons stated. Yes I did try to "Dial in any trigger pull I wanted" in both single and double action and was unable. Putting in a spring just one pound under the factory poundage produced misfires. plain and simple, period. On the few SRH's I've had I've been able to swap out either trigger, hammer, or both springs up to and including the least poundage for both available from the Wolff spring kit for that model, also plain and simple, period. But that does not say that you did not, or others have not, had completely different experiences than I.

Go ahead and be happy with your Redhawks. That's fine indeed. Just don't try to change my opinion of what I truly experienced. I very well may have had a particularly bad example of Redhawk at the time. I realize that, but with those experiences I've grown to favor the SRH and that alone. Let it be and we both can be happy. Smithy.

exlogger

Smithy-- I bought a brand new Redhawk in 1996. Couldn't believe it had a 9lb trigger right from the box. I was really impressed until our first trip to the shooting range. Several misfires with 3 different kinds of ammo. Rather than send it back to Ruger so they could install a heavier spring, I looked it over myself (Al Gore hadn't perfected the internet yet ).

I did a little test while watching the firing pin. First with the trigger pulled and the hammer down, and then while holding the hammer back and pulling trigger I reached in and pushed the transfer bar with my finger. I noticed the firing pin protruded further when pushed with my finger. This told me there was excess space between the hammer and the transfer bar (not so with my other Rugers).

The wheels started turning so I decided to perform a mild surgery (again no internet to tell me it was wrong ). I filed a little off the flat of the hammer, periodically checking the difference, until the firing pin protruded about the same distance with both tests. And then, just for piece of mind, I drilled a little extra from the recess in the hammer (even though there was no contact with the hammer and firing pin). I haven't had a misfire since. I was able to eliminate my misfires with out losing the 9 lb trigger (which is now 8lb after 17 years of use).

Not sure what this has to do with what what we were talking about , but I just thought I'd share it with you since we we were talking Redhawks.

Waveform

exlogger, looks like your 9 pound trigger pull out of the box was exactly what Ruger designers were intending. But you should have had reliable ignition without having to tweak the hammer. At least you were able to analyze the problem and make a correction yourself (and without any YouTube video either!) I see there is a Wolff spring pak available for the Redhawk with what looks like three mainsprings - I wonder if they are lighter or heavier springs? A seven pound trigger pull in DA would be interesting....

Wave

exlogger

Waveform-- When this first happened in 96, I first tried to take the gun back. I made the mistake of telling them I was a reloader. Even though I mentioned factory ammo produced the same results. I guess when they hear "reload" their brains freeze up and they don't hear what else you have to say .

With my Redhawk it was more than just the spring. When I did the same test with my SP, it was clear the pin wasn't extending all the way. If I didn't have another Ruger to compare it to, I would never had performed the operation.

McD

Great thread... I love the guts of the Ruger revolvers. They show innovation and very thoughtful engineering.

I sure feel a better trigger on the Redhawk... but the GP100 is getting better with use.