I have been a handgun hunter for over 10 years now. One thing that I always wanted was the ability to rest my revolver without changing the point of impact. If you take your factory revolver and rest the barrel, frame, or whatever differently than how you zeroed it the point of impact will be different most of the time.
Well one day brain storming and a lot of sketch work later along with a touch of R&D I came up with the Franken-Ruger.
The Franken-Ruger started life as a factory GP-100. The barrel was removed and a new 10” barrel was fitted along with an aluminum free float shroud. Yes that’s right, a free float shroud on a revolver. Not like a Dan Wesson where the barrel is strung tight through a shroud and connected to both ends. Truly free floating.
A half inch of the rear of the shroud is connected to the barrel and the rest has about 1/16” of clearance. We also fitted a Mac’s Gunworks muzzle brake.
The barrel chosen was a Green Mountian 357 pistol caliber barrel with a 1/20 twist. I have never used one of their blanks and thought it was worth a try.
And of course trigger work, cylinder timing, throats, and so on were worked.
A factory GP-100 with 6” barrel weighs in at 2.8 pounds. The Franken-Ruger is just 3 pounds with a 10” barrel, shroud, scope mount, and brake!
During initial testing grouping at 50 yards was right around an inch with factory Remington Golden Saber 135 grain 357 magnum loads. The gun has shot to the same point of impact off bags, free hand, and shooting sticks. I had just a handful of 158 and 160 grain lead bullets and they were showing great promise and I just got more in so more to come on the groupings and how this Green Mountian barrel does!
All grouping has been done firing all 6 chambers. We are not picking just one!
