Colt 38 wadcutter tuning

I posted in ammo a few weeks ago about this gun. I put a dot on an old Colt 38 wadcutter. Its no where near functioning with a 30mm Ultradot, 7 lb recoil spring(it ran great without the dot) 2.7 gr WST. Im loading up some HBWC with 2.8 and 2.9 Bullseye tomorrow. My question is should I be considering a lighter hammer spring? I have no clue as to what weight hammer spring is in the gun. Were these usually set up a certain way? I have every reduced weight coming from Wolff, just looking for some more insight. I will be putting a 1" Ultradot on the gun shortly, it's in for repair right now.

Not an answer to your question but be careful on how hot you load HBWCs.  Too hot and the base can separate from the rest of the round.  Next round hits the base and can bulge your barrel very slightly and you may never know it.
- Dave

orpheoet wrote:I posted in ammo a few weeks ago about this gun. I put a dot on an old Colt 38 wadcutter. Its no where near functioning with a 30mm Ultradot, 7 lb recoil spring(it ran great without the dot) 2.7 gr WST. Im loading up some HBWC with 2.8 and 2.9 Bullseye tomorrow. My question is should I be considering a lighter hammer spring? I have no clue as to what weight hammer spring is in the gun. Were these usually set up a certain way? I have every reduced weight coming from Wolff, just looking for some more insight. I will be putting a 1" Ultradot on the gun shortly, it's in for repair right now.

This is the reason I did not put a dot on my Clark .38.  The Marvel mount weighs the same as the Bo-Mar rib.  By adding even a one inch ultradot, it would have added, what I considered, as excessive amount of weight to the slide.  I'm using 2.7 of BE with HBWC's and a 7 pound recoil spring.  If I load them any hotter, accuracy goes out the window and I get leading.  I decided to leave the pistol alone.  I can still shoot cleans with it at 25 yards and in a Ransom rest, it groups at one and a half inches at 50 yards.

Changing out the hammer spring will probably not change anything.

Light hammer spring (19, maybe even 18) and a long, smooth radius on the firing pin stop will lower resistance some.  But slide mounted dots on a 38 special are difficult.  It also depends on how hard you hold.  I think Jon even has a slide mounted dot on a long slide 38 that functions well for him.

Not a 1911 but 3 of us have M52's that we installed UD's L/T reflex sight using BME mount.  Very light reflex sight and mount.  2 guns worked without any issues the 3rd one had feeding problems that took a ton of work to get it to run.
- Dave

Frame mount it