Colt Trooper vs S&W K38 Masterpiece

Mike, that's what I've read when I looked for ways to work on the trigger. A coil spring always gets harder to compress as it's compressed, needing more pressure as it goes, tight?

I've always felt that leaf springs, sort of like the accordion like magazine springs avoided that stacking. The compression should be smoother. If that's not your experience, ill keep that in mind.
 
Kilimanjaro, it's possible to do it with one hand, but doing it with just one hand is absolutely the hardest thing I've ever tried under stress. I'm all thumbs.

God help the guy in a fire fight with an empty colt, plenty of speed loaders, and broken fingers.
 
"Mike, that's what I've read when I looked for ways to work on the trigger. A coil spring always gets harder to compress as it's compressed, needing more pressure as it goes, tight?

I've always felt that leaf springs, sort of like the accordion like magazine springs avoided that stacking. The compression should be smoother. If that's not your experience, ill keep that in mind."


I'm pretty sure that just about any spring type used in handguns will, to a degree, stack as it nears the limit of its movement range.

I've never heard of firearms spring makers worrying about whether their springs are linear rate vs progressive rates. The demands just really aren't there to make those kinds of design considerations.

But, apparent stacking is more than just the springs, the mechanical design also comes into play, and once again, S&W's design apparently does a better job at either masking that, or negating it.
 
As an actual Python shooter, I can tell you for sure that a stock Colt V spring revolver "stacks" like mad. In the era before plastic automatics and the retirement of Colt assemblers, some shooters considered this an advantage.

At one time Colt led in target revolvers because the spring stack put the greatest effort of SA cocking at the end of the hammer travel, where your thumb has the most leverage on it.
There were also DA shooters who used the stack as a timing mechanism, they could stroke through the easy pull, then slow down and squeeze the stack for accuracy approaching SA.

On the other hand, most of the old line Colt Customizers like Dan Tedford at Colt Custom, Reeves Jungkind, Jerry Moran, and Fred Sadowski put a lot of work into minimizing the stacking. My Colt Custom PPC gun has almost none and the Jungkind revolver much less than stock.
 
As I've noted, I've never really minded the Colt action stacking. It's different, that's for sure, but I've never found it to be objectionable because it's usually smooth.
 
I am late into this thread but I would recommend a K38 masterpiece. Very accurate, great single/double action trigger and a person can find a gunsmith to work on them. With any Colt very few gunsmiths will work on them.

Good luck,
Howard
 
You know, thinking back on the post I made, magazine springs were not a good analogy. Close but not. Get them packed tight at the bottom of the travel, and they lock up as badly as a coil spring. otherwise, they actually act like a number of torsion bars, but even that may not make a difference in how they work.

Myself, I have never gotten past the stacking of the colt. I can put rounds through in bursts and get a reasonable target by just bulling through that stop, and honestly, I can do that with better accuracy some days than slow fire da.

my masterpiece is so smooth and light, with a clean progressive pull, that I can shoot just as well, sometimes better, doing DA.

The last few years, I've not been able to do as well with a single actrion trigger firing.
 
I"ll add to my prevous post that I do not like the Colt's stacking DA pull on my .22lr Diamondback. Albeit that gun has never had a gunsmith work with it, but Smith's of my experience come from the factory with a DA pull that's better than any Colt I've tried. YMMV Rod
 
My experience with Colt and Smith & Wesson revolvers are, for the most part, in conjunction with Bullseye competition. "Back in the day", Smith and Colt were making revolvers to accommodate Bullseye shooters. I still compete with a Smith Model 14 and a Colt Officer Model Special (both having typical 6" barrels) and, to be honest, shoot just as well with either revolver. Both were fine examples of fine, accurate, target-oriented revolvers that could win any match on a given day. Bullseye shooters pretty much shot their guns in a single-action mode, be it slow fire, timed fire or rapid fire, and both revolvers had/have superb sa trigger pulls.

I also have a Colt Trooper MK III with a 4" barrel and it is a robust, accurate revolver, if not a "match" configuration. I like it but not nearly as well as its Officer Model Special/Match counterparts. In my experience, Colt and Smith revolvers were equally reliable and durable but, as others have noted, finding a gunsmith competent in repairing/servicing Colts is, unfortunately, becoming harder and harder to come by.
 
You know folks taking down the V spring Colts ain't rocket surgery. If you buy a used Colt revolver and don't disassemble completely and clean you may be doing yourself a diservice. I had a Colt Marshal that had hardened lube on all internal parts that was cleaned up and had the best DA pull on any Colt I've owned. I've worked on a number of Colts successfully and am no gunsmith. I hear after market V springs are available so may try and lighten trigger pull on a 1931 vintage 32/20.

Oh yeah, I'd go with the Smith.
 
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