New Ruger MKIII - now what?

Prepper

Prepper

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I tried out my new Mark III today. It's the Hunter model, stainless steel, 6 7/8" barrel. Very nice gun. It wasn't as hard to reassemble after cleaning as some people have suggested it would be. I need to work on improving my accuracy with it though.

First (dumb) question: It comes with several little colored pieces of plastic that I can use to replace the one in the front sight with. As purchased, the red plastic in the front sight is impossible for me to see at the range I went to. I want to put the green one in. Is there a trick to replacing these without breaking something? It looks like I'm just supposed to pull back but it's looking like the thin little plastic will break if I do that. The manual makes no mention of swapping these.

Should I consider getting a scope to mount on top of it, or perhaps even Crimson Trace laser grips? Which might be a better choice for a gun like this? I've never put a scope on a handgun before (just on my Ruger 10/22) so I have no experience to go by.
 
There was somebody at the shoot today with a built up MKIII that was unbelievable. It had a bull barrel and red dot, and it was like POW! ping POW! ping, again and again. I asked him about it and he said he had about $600 in it. I'd start there. If that person is reading, please chime in -- I stupidly didn't get your screen name to get the build info when I got home. I think this is where my P99 money will go when I sell it. Believe it or not, out of all the guns I shot today, that one was the most bad-ass and must have!
 
That was my gun!

Build is as follows:
Ruger MKIII "Hunter" in stainless with fluted barrel
Volquartsen Target grips
Volquartsen Target sear (about 1.8# pull)
Volquartsen VQ compensator
Volquartsen EDM extractor

I had so much fun shooting it today! I went through 500 rounds in about 1.5 hours! It shoots like a pellet gun!
 
Prepper said:
Should I consider getting a scope to mount on top of it, or perhaps even Crimson Trace laser grips? Which might be a better choice for a gun like this? I've never put a scope on a handgun before (just on my Ruger 10/22) so I have no experience to go by.
Click to expand...


Is this your first gun?

If so, keep the iron sights unless your eyes are bad. It is good to learn to use them and if you are new to this watching that red dot bounce around can be troubling. Part of improving your accuracy is learing to hold still while breaking the shot and having the feedback of the dot can be too much.

This is definitely not a gun to put a laser on IMO.

If you want to put some $$ into it, start with a trigger job. TikTock can tell about how he did his.

Matt
 
Nope, it's not my first gun... I have a few. I'm still relatively new on the learning curve though, since I started getting interested back in 2001 but haven't spent a whole lot of time at the range until recently. I'm hoping to greatly increase my skills and experience with them.

The built-in sights are hard to see the dark-red piece of plastic; it just sort of blends in with the rest of the sight and all looks "black", especially with the range not being all that brightly lighted. I gotta figure out how to swap it with the green one, that might help some. I've had guns with easier to see sights than this one.

I haven't looked at those red dot optics up close in person. How do they work that's different than a regular scope? Do they reflect a red dot up onto a piece of glass in the optics which then appears to be over the point of impact, or something like that (sort of like a Telrad finder that's used on astronomy telescopes)? Is that the right idea? My experiece with scopes so far is a basic $60 scope on my Ruger 10/22 (it helped a lot), plus I have a $40 Crossman pellet gun that came with one.
 
Tiktock said:
That was my gun!

Build is as follows:
Ruger MKIII "Hunter" in stainless with fluted barrel
Volquartsen Target grips
Volquartsen Target sear (about 1.8# pull)
Volquartsen VQ compensator
Volquartsen EDM extractor

I had so much fun shooting it today! I went through 500 rounds in about 1.5 hours! It shoots like a pellet gun!
Click to expand...

If it weren't for forums like this, I would never know such modifications were even possible. This is great! Grips I can understand, but that compensator thing is new to me. I checked their web site... so this thing actually reduces recoil? How well does it work? As for the sear, how strong is the pull now prior to modification? 1.8lbs might mean more to me if I knew how much it improved from the original.
 
Prepper said:
Nope, it's not my first gun... I have a few. I'm still relatively new on the learning curve though, since I started getting interested back in 2001 but haven't spent a whole lot of time at the range until recently. I'm hoping to greatly increase my skills and experience with them.

The built-in sights are hard to see the dark-red piece of plastic; it just sort of blends in with the rest of the sight and all looks "black", especially with the range not being all that brightly lighted. I gotta figure out how to swap it with the green one, that might help some. I've had guns with easier to see sights than this one.

I haven't looked at those red dot optics up close in person. How do they work that's different than a regular scope? Do they reflect a red dot up onto a piece of glass in the optics which then appears to be over the point of impact, or something like that (sort of like a Telrad finder that's used on astronomy telescopes)? Is that the right idea? My experiece with scopes so far is a basic $60 scope on my Ruger 10/22 (it helped a lot), plus I have a $40 Crossman pellet gun that came with one.
Click to expand...

If you are using the dot to aim, that may be your problem. The dot is there to help with quick target acquisition, not "aiming" per se. you want to use the outline of the front sight and center it with the top edge aligned with the top of the rear blade.

If you are punching paper, i.e. bullseye, then typically people will sight for a 6 O'Clock hold. If you try to get your sight picture on the black, there is not enough contrast to see well. Holding at the 6 O'Clock position remedies this (so you have the black sights on white paper).

You've got the right idea with the red dot. There is usually no magnification on bullseye sights. I use the Utradot Matchdot sight. It is excellent and can handle the recoil of being mounted to a .45 slide. It is also expensive. There are others less expensive. I used a $30 for a while. It was OK, but it would loose zero at inopportune times (like during a match!).
 
Prepper said:
If it weren't for forums like this, I would never know such modifications were even possible. This is great! Grips I can understand, but that compensator thing is new to me. I checked their web site... so this thing actually reduces recoil? How well does it work? As for the sear, how strong is the pull now prior to modification? 1.8lbs might mean more to me if I knew how much it improved from the original.
Click to expand...

It doesnt really reduce the recoil, just directs it upwards which supposedly keeps the barrel down some....i can feel it, but its not earth shattering...looks cool tho!

The sear is like night and day...i swear mine had a 5# trigger and afterwards, its very light and crisp. At least half the trigger pull and much sharper. Doing the job yourself is possible if youre comfortable with completely stripping the gun down, it was a 30 minute job and more frustrating than difficult because of the order that things need to be done in. Theres a forum with 100% complete directions on how to do everything:
http://www.guntalk-online.com/detailstrip.htm

Heres a pic without the compensator:
5.jpg


Heres the comp, but mine has no front sight:
V-comp.jpg


I got all the stuff at:
www.rimfiresports.com
 
Last edited:
That looks very nice! What's that scope you have on it, is that a red dot scope? I've never disassembled a gun beyond what the manual says to do for cleaning, so replacing the sear myself could be a challenge. On the one hand, I could learn more by doing it myself. On the other hand, I could screw it up and say lots of bad things while struggling with it. So, this is the type of thing that I could pay a gunsmith to do for me?
 
Prepper said:
That looks very nice! What's that scope you have on it, is that a red dot scope? I've never disassembled a gun beyond what the manual says to do for cleaning, so replacing the sear myself could be a challenge. On the one hand, I could learn more by doing it myself. On the other hand, I could screw it up and say lots of bad things while struggling with it. So, this is the type of thing that I could pay a gunsmith to do for me?
Click to expand...

I personally think it would be overkill to ask a gunsmith since its literally a drop-in swap and doesnt require any tweaking whatsoever. If you field strip to clean it, its only about 5 more minutes work to swap the sear.

Check this link...if you feel like you can follow the detailed stripping instructions, you will have zero trouble.
http://www.guntalk-online.com/detailstrip.htm
 
OK maybe I'll try replacing the sear myself then; it'll hopefully be a good learning experience. As for the compensator, I don't see where it'd screw onto as there is nothing at the end of the barrel that I can unscrew to replace with this compensator. I don't see anything that resembles threads. Maybe only some models can have one of those?
 
Prepper said:
OK maybe I'll try replacing the sear myself then; it'll hopefully be a good learning experience. As for the compensator, I don't see where it'd screw onto as there is nothing at the end of the barrel that I can unscrew to replace with this compensator. I don't see anything that resembles threads. Maybe only some models can have one of those?
Click to expand...

I think you remove the front sight and use the screw that secures it in place.
 
It's a great gun. I got a Mk III 22/45 Hunter last week and went shooting with it over the weekend. Really fun to fire.

The only issue I have is that I got some dummy 22LR rounds so I could dry fire. These tend to fail to feed from the magazine into the barrel when I cock the gun (about 50% of the time). Real cartriges work fine, but these dummy ones tend to jam at an angle. .... Maybe I got cheap dummies?
 
I would start with a trigger job. The Volquartsen stuff is nice but it doesn't really compare to a professional job. What really needs replacement is the trigger and pins to get the pretravel, overtravel, and mush out of the trigger. The factory hammer/sear/disconnector are fine once they are cleaned up.
 
OK, I haven't ordered anything yet, so it's not too late to get the trigger job. What'd that typically run, like $40 or something?
 
pipmaster1971 said:
It's a great gun. I got a Mk III 22/45 Hunter last week and went shooting with it over the weekend. Really fun to fire.

The only issue I have is that I got some dummy 22LR rounds so I could dry fire. These tend to fail to feed from the magazine into the barrel when I cock the gun (about 50% of the time). Real cartriges work fine, but these dummy ones tend to jam at an angle. .... Maybe I got cheap dummies?
Click to expand...

22 cal plastic dummies are typically 22 shorts or 22 long, not 22 long rifle, and
that might be part of the problem. I remember when I had some they
certainly weren't the same length.

-Mike
 

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