Excellent diagnosis and correction on the venerable old Smith. Those are great revolvers and the proof is on the target. You done good. Kudos Win Mag.
You’re correct on the use of ‘aftermarket’ grips on the Smith N Frame, well most Smiths. I found a old pair of Pac Presentation grips for a N-frame I’ve kept around for shooting the odd old Smiths I’ve had a chance to shoot. Very effective.
Back from the BP range, warm day that means snapping caps and burning powder. The ROAs were present and active.
I learned a few other things during this project. I don't know if they can be put to use, but I cherish hard-won knowledge, even if others consider it trivia.
The parts of that revolver were machined from steel, and hardened somewhere along the way. Then they were fitted by hand just well-enough to provide the performance called for in the design specs. But while I had all the pieces out, I decided to refine the fit-and-finish of the parts that nobody will ever see, except for a gunsmith who opens it up.
As the parts were fitted together more finely, the sound of them functioning changed. Improved sear surfaces made for shorter, crisper engagement time. Less time for one part to drag along another, transferring unneeded forces back and forth. "Smoosh, clack" became "click, click" with less force imparted by me. Expensive mechanical watches are made with micron tolerances in some designs because the complexity leaves no margin for tolerating slop or drag. The parts are so tiny, and the mass so small that even the wrong viscosity of lubricant is like filling it up with maple syrup.
Factory tolerances are, by design, acceptable. To go beyond that, to approximate something like the first hand-built prototype, takes you into different territory. The sounds and forces are crisper, shorter, and have their own independent resonances once engagement is broken with the other part. Each part behaves like a tiny tuning fork in those situations. None of this means anything when you're in a firefight, but if you like to ponder the imponderable, it's a worthy effort.
A reasonably-talented designer could take a modern weapon, and grasp all the operating principles in less than an hour. Hand him the drawings and list of materials, he'd say "how the hell do I build this, and what are some of these materials listed? This must take tools that are beyond my imagining."
The same thing would happen if you could send the M1917 back in time to 1817. A brilliant gunsmith could grasp the final product, but have no idea of the scientific or mechanical principles needed to make one, or millions. The same applies to everything we make that has more moving parts than a rock.
I saw this first-hand when I put a super-frictionless finish on the cylinder stop, an oddly-shaped part in the very front of the frame. Normally, cycling the action just "makes it work", but by tuning it, I was able to operate the action much more slowly, and watch the odd dance the part does, as the single blur of motion resolved itself into about a dozen discrete steps that I could "freeze" and study any step along the way. There was no "power" inertia that requires one to put a large amount of mechanical effort just to start the system, and leave it with enough remaining power to get all the way through its cycle. And then you get the excess thrown back at you in the form of unwanted vibration, noise, and other wasteful stuff.
I put the M1917 up against my ear as I worked the action, and hear a tiny minuet played by a chamber orchestra. Something out-of-the-box, regardless of quality, sounded like a mosh-pit band, complete with three seconds of reverb after the mainspring had completed it's work. Of course, different tools are designed for different tasks, although there can be some overlap. But I wouldn't use a fresh surgical scalpel to split firewood, and would hope nobody asks to borrow my pocket knife for some ad-lib brain surgery. :)