Good revolver article

Yes sir, lots of good info there.
Too bad all of us don't have Jerry Miculek's skill set and work ethic when it comes to mastering a double action revolver.

 

Jerry: Sir; excellent + great teaching for beginners to experts

quote:
And what of the staging, or not staging? Generally, you have to pick one. If you’re going to shoot very small groups in double-action, you will have to learn to stage. If you want to shoot fast and accurately, you have to learn straight-through trigger pressing. To take a more difficult shot, you simply press through more slowly.

In short, just learn to keep the front sight buried in the middle of your target, while you smoothly, cleanly, quickly, press the trigger all the way through

 

Work ethic is exactly correct!

He spent a LOT of time and effort getting that skill. It didn't just happen by accident.

It seems most folks just don't have the personal drive to put out the effort to become masters of anything, anymore.

 

Not the first handgun I shot (semi autos) but the first real actual professional training I got on handguns was with a full sized (albeit medium framed) 6 shot revolver shooting a TON (well over a thousand rounds over several days) of .38 special.

Mainly from 2-3 guys who were all former (one still is to this day) very high ranked NRA revolver competition shooters.

And the only thing I was allowed to shoot was double action the entire time. So no thumb cocking.

Now that im an instrucor myself I really am a proponent that if you can get good with a double action revolver trigger first, you can pretty much shoot anything out there regardless of whether its a SAO 1911 or a striker fired handgun or DA/SA Sig or Beretta etc, a heavy gritty mil spec trigger on an M4, or a long but smoother MP5 trigger or nice two stage sniper rifle trigger...

And it doesnt have to be a revolver... there are semi autos out there with smooth DAO triggers... not the crappy NYPD 10 lb glock triggers that are just absolute crap...

***And/Or Just as importantly

the learning curve to do well with those other types of triggers will be a lot shorter.

Watching people who have gone from only shooting a light striker fired gun to a longer/heavier trigger is always more often than not from an instructors point of view... aggravating and again the overall learning curve to getting good with that trigger; individual natural shooter skill aside is typically longer than vice versa.

Other triggers are shorter and faster than a DA revolver... and when switching to one, if they were already decent on the DA trigger and were smooth with it, its a lot easier to tell people to slow down and keep being smooth (because they already know how that feels but now its easier and quicker) on the lighter trigger than it is to get people who try to still be smooth on a much longer, heavier trigger because as soon as they hit that much stiffer trigger wall then they are used too they want to force it to go and then comes the trigger slapping.



What neophyte said, works too lol.

Im NOT a competition shooter so I cant speak into the finer points of shooting super fast (and still being accurate) from a competition side but from the other side of it, the speed usually comes with experience and getting into good habits of shooting to trigger reset.

Most triggers regardless of type (even some SAO 1911 triggers and single stage rifle triggers) have some measure (even if its really, really small but still tactile enough to feel it) of creep/slack/slop/takeup whatever you want to call it, and then you hit that wall and you know that any more pressure past that will make it go.

So while keeping on your sights, you can take up that slack, stage and smoothly add pressure to make it go, if you have to shoot fast multiple times, you should be shooting to the trigger reset point only with your trigger finger never breaking physical contact with the trigger and after your shot, you are doing all the follow through and only letting the trigger come back to that staged mechanical reset point and smoothly firing again vs letting it go all the back so you have to take up the slack again, get to that wall and then smoothly squeeze again.

But again knowing where those points are come from training and experience and knowing your individual guns trigger.

Good article!

 

I really like to shoot my DA revolvers; even more so now that I'm reloading for them and ammo is scarce. I rarely shoot them in single action mode (even for longer shots).

Stage or not stage (smooth press all the way) ? Depends on you I guess. If I'm breaking a really long shot DA I might even go with the trigger finger to part of the support hand getting over the last portion of the DA stroke which seems to stabilize the trigger and hand when it breaks helping to prevent overtravel as well. But this is fairly slow. In the smiths there's kind of an intuitive stage which I think works well but this doesn't work so much on the Rugers (where there's that last climb portion of the hammer which just feels weird if you've been shooting smiths alot). So to me it comes down to personal technique and preference with the knowledge of the revolvers you shoot. Whichever YOU are more accurate and consistent with given the equipment you shoot.

For some odd reason I sometimes find revolvers shoot to different POIs (on very long shots) when I shoot them SA; this might have something to do with where I'm placing my finger and grip vice firing in DA mode. So I try to keep things consistent.

 

1Tell me.
2Show me.
3Let me try.
4Repeat

Reading and watching are all good but they are no substitute for doing it. I really read and studied like it was a job with Ed McGivern's book, Fast and Fancy..., AND IT IS A JOB to read his wordy writing. Then a couple years ago I really hit it hard on the double action revolvers I have TRYING to just see what he was talking about and could I do this or that.

It don't take long for that Redhawk or the 629 to start feeling more like a job than fun but it is worth it for what you can LEARN you really can do with them. BUT the 38's! Wow, with a little attention they really shine and it is easy to see why he did so much work with them.



That #4 is worth repeating.

 

In the past every lawman carried a Colt or S&W revolver. I have not seen an LEO armed with a revolver in years?

 

Also sort of depends on the trigger.

Even on a DA/SA trigger in DA... even without a defined tactile "wall" mid trigger squeeze, after shooting the gun a bit you as the shooter eventually get the feeling of where the point is where if you squeeze any more its going to go... usually its a little bit past 50% of the trigger squeeze and then you get to a point where you can feel it " pressure stack" which is about the equivalent of the "wall" so to speak on a semi auto trigger.

Which is good to know especially for shooters with weaker finger/hand strength or smaller hands.
If they get finger fatigued real quick... its important they know where that half way point is... because they can short of more quickly power through the first part of the trigger squeeze and then once there just past the half way point slow it down and smooth it out for that last >50% until the shot breaks.

vs trying to us lots of finger/hand strength up on the front end of that long heavy trigger squeeze thats not doing anything.

And then you have the cam trigger like on the Ruger LCR revolvers... those are really long but smooth and light and there really is no trigger stacking or a defined wall... it stays pretty consistent throughout the entire trigger squeeze so you can't stage it and you just have to be consistently smooth the entire time.

 

Thanks interesting read