Success
Thanks guys. I put a spring kit into my S&W 317 today and went off to the range. Seems to function ok and the trigger pull is now much, much lighter. The trigger pull from the factory seemed like it was designed by a lawyer :barf:
I purchased this gun because some of my students (particularly some older women) were rather recoil shy when it came to .38 revolvers. I think they will have much less problem with the .22lr revolver. But the trigger pull on the 317 would have been too much for them, so I had to lighten it.
I used the Wilson spring kit and installed the 13 lb rebound spring. Oddly, the Wilson spring was a good 1/4 in. longer than the factory spring. The factory spring had 15 turns, while the Wilson spring had 17 turns. There was just no way I could get the Wilson spring installed as is -- it was long enough that it was just too floppy to compress into the rebound slide, so I cut off two turns. I was then able to get it in place using Brownells rebound slide spring tool and a few choice words.
I lightly polished the bottom, front and back of the rebound slide with a fine stone. I probably could have polished it more, but I figure it is better to take of too little than too much (I suspect rebound slide stretchers don't work any better than lumber stretchers
).
I would have liked to have polished the inside of the frame that the rebound slide moves on, but it was hard to get my stone in there (and a lot cheaper to replace a part than a frame...).
I didn't touch the sear faces at all.
I installed the Wilson reduced power mainspring. The Brownells mainspring compressor tool made that a snap. I can see that I would probably have been cursing without it.
I don't have a spring guage so I don't know how heavy it was before and how much lighter it is now. But it's reasonable now and certainly wasn't before.
1 J-frame down, 2 to go.
Thanks again for the help and advice.
M1911