Handguns

If you believe the revolver is obsolete, think again. The double-action revolver is now more relevant than ever. Haven't you noticed the trend toward hinged triggers working the action of semi-automatic pistols? Based on developing trigger control, a double-action revolver may now be a more appropriate training device than the typical single-action-only rimfire pistols so often used to introduce beginners to shooting a handgun. The vast majority of double-action revolvers can also be fired single action simply by thumbing back the hammer. This accommodates the arthritic or partially disabled. In addition, you can utilize the same revolver to develop trigger control for single action as well as double action only and double action/single action handguns. Revolvers employ fixed barrels, making them inherently more accurate than semi-automatic pistols wherein the barrel and slide (including the sights) move in and out of position with every shot.

You can leave a revolver loaded for the life of the ammunition and, unlike a magazine-fed pistol, its ability to cycle rounds will not be affected by magazine-spring fatigue. Nor will the outline or shape of the bullets interfere with chambering. You can safely load frangible rounds, such as rat shot or snake-shot, without malfunction and even load a mix of both high-velocity and low-velocity ammunition, again without malfunction.

But our motivation for testing the Ruger GP100 Match Champion and Smith & Wesson Pro Series 686 SSR 357 Magnum revolvers is more exciting than any of the arguments above. These guns were designed to compete in the Stock Service Revolver division of International Defensive Pistol Association or, IDPA. Both revolvers meet the physical requirements to be eligible for SSR competition — a maximum barrel length of 4.2 inches or less and a maximum unloaded weight of 43 ounces or less. Stock Service Revolvers may have the capability to chamber additional rounds, but in competition, no more than six rounds may be loaded at any time.

Whereas these guns are recognized as 357 Magnum revolvers, their versatility allows them to fire 38 Special ammunition as well. And IDPA rules allow for the shooter to choose either caliber for competition. For our tests, we chose two rounds of 38 Special and one variety of 357 Magnum. Our 38 Special rounds were Remington 125-grain +P semi-jacketed hollowpoints and Black Hills 148-grain hollow-based wadcutter rounds. The Remingtons are an intermediate-power defense load, and the lead wadcutters are a popular target load commonly used in competitions that demand accuracy, such as NRA Action Pistol, PPC, and Bullseye. Our choice of magnum rounds was Federal 130-grain Hydra-Shok Personal Defense Low Recoil hollowpoint ammunition. To assess accuracy, we fired a series of five-shot groups single action only from a sandbag rest. Test distance was 25 yards. To determine average velocity, we fired shots from all six chambers across an Oehler Research Model 35P printing chronograph.

Two pistol makers that have knocked heads in police and military competitions for more than 30 years are SIG Sauer and Beretta. The Beretta 92 and the SIG P226 engaged in a hotly contested and much debated U.S. Military trial. After the dust settled, Beretta won that lucrative contract. However, the Navy did not accept the Beretta and instead adopted the SIG. American police agencies have used both in large numbers, with the SIG often hampered by a higher price. Recently, the French Army and police forces gave SIG the largest single peacetime order for handguns in history. Certainly, both makes enjoy enviable reputations. But at Gun Tests, all makers start on the same footing, reputation or not.

The raters were led toward this test by external factors. In one case, a family member was looking for a good, clean SIG P228 as a carry gun. Since the P228 is out of production, replaced by the heavier P229 or M11 A1, the SIG P228 would have to be a used gun. (Occasionally, a new-in-the-box P228 is seen at a premium.) The other instigator was an e-mail from Afghanistan. A young soldier told her father-in-law, I want a Beretta for my own when I get home! After two tours in Iraq and the tour in Afghanistan, this well-trained soldier had great respect for the Beretta. However, she did ask if there were a shorter, lighter version of the pistol.There is a compact version of the 92FS, but it is seldom seen. The question was, would the self-defense shooter be better off with the new Beretta or the used SIG, if each could be found within a few dollars of the other?

This would be a tough contest. Among our raters, one has over 20 years of police experience, including training several agencies on the SIG. Another is a military intelligence officer who has deployed the Beretta from Europe to the Pacific and just returned from 14 months with the Beretta as a daily companion. Other raters had experience with both pistols. So the deck wasnt stacked in favor of either handgun.

Common aspects of the guns include aluminum frames and steel slides. Each features a double-action first-shot trigger. Each features a 13-round magazine. Beyond those areas, lock-up differs. The SIG uses angled camming surfaces to unlock, and the barrel hood butts into the slide. The Beretta locks and unlocks via an oscillating wedge. There are differences in the decockers, and handling feels very different. Heres how our shooters rated them when the pistols were shot head to head:

Having been instrumental in the development of the .357 S & W Magnum, Elmer Keith once again turned the handgun world on it ear by playing a key role in development of the .44 Remington Magnum. His idea for the new cartridge emerged from his experiments with the .44 Smith & Wesson Special, which had been developed in 1907 as a replacement for the then-popular .44 Russian.

Although the earlier offering had a reputation for fine accuracy as a black-powder cartridge, its limited powder capacity was deemed unsuitable for the bulky smokeless powder available then. As a result, the .44 Special was designed with a significantly greater case capacity and stronger cartridge case.

Unfortunately, factory ammo merely duplicated that of the earlier cartridge, so it languished and never achieved much acceptance until it caught Keith's eye. Taking advantage of the larger and stronger case, Keith began stretching the .44 Special's pressure boundaries and achieved impressive results.

Armed with his .44 Special test data, Keith approached Smith & Wesson about offering a commercial version of his high-pressure loads along with revolvers chambered for it. Smith & Wesson eventually was persuaded and collaborated with Remington to develop a new cartridge based on the .44 Special.

As with the earlier .357 Magnum, the new cartridge named .44 Remington Magnum, was designed to be slightly longer than the parent round to prevent it being loaded in revolvers chambered for the .44 Special.

The first Smith & Wesson .44 Remington Magnum revolver was built in December 1955 and publicly announced in January 1956. Meanwhile Sturm, Ruger & Co. was not asleep at the switch. After a Ruger employee had found discarded, fired .44 Mag brass, the company did a bit of research and quickly adapted their Blackhawk revolver to the new round and put it into production. As a result, Ruger Blackhawk .44 Magnum revolvers actually reached dealer shelves a few weeks before Smith & Wesson's new .44.

For the rest of the story of .44 Magnums as well as other hand cannons, purchase Shooter's Bible Guide to Extreme Iron from Gun Tests.

To make an S&W N-Frame revolver into a compact carry gun means reducing the revolvers barrel length and grip. Whats left is still a large frame and cylinder that holds six cartridges. It is big metal, compared to an S&W J-frame, Ruger, or Taurus compact revolver normally used for concealed carry. The N-frame is renowned for its strength and has three safety features built into the mechanism: a hammer block, rebounding hammer, and hammer stop. All three safety features work unseen inside the frame and under the sideplate and make the revolvers very safe, guarding against accidental discharge from being dropped on a hard surface or a hammer slipping out from under a thumb. All of the N-frames tested were derived from the classic S&W Model 29.

The Model 29, along with the 44 Magnum cartridge, debuted in 1955 due to Elmer Keith arm twisting and convincing Smith & Wesson that shooters needed a more powerful revolver cartridge. Keith was a gun writer, outdoorsman, and big-bore revolver aficionado who hand-loaded the 44 Special to its maximum potential. His theory was to push heavy bullets at high velocity. Bullets designed by Keith, often referred to as Keith-style semi-wadcutters, feature a wide nose and convex sides. They also allow more powder to be loaded into the case. These bullets, when loaded properly, are a benchmark in power and penetration. We actually tested some Keith-style bullets loaded by Buffalo Bore for this report.

Keith had tremendous input on developing magnum cartridges for revolvers and also had his hands in the development of the 41 Magnum, which was introduced in 1963 as a cartridge to bridge the gap between the 357 Magnum and 44 Magnum. The 41 Magnum has more power than the 357 and less recoil than the 44 and was designed with law enforcement in mind, though it did not have a big impact on the LE market. Hunters, however, found the cartridge was plenty powerful for medium-size game, including black bear. The 41 Magnum is similar to the 16-gauge shotgun in terms of compromising power and recoil as well as popularity. Both have strong but small followings, and in the 41 Magnum we can see why from our range sessions.

Since its introduction, the Model 29 has gone through numerous design changes that are reflected in the - model names found in these variants model numbers. Stainless-steel models have a 6 prefix in the model number; those built from scandium alloy have a 3 prefix in the model number.

If carrying around a huge revolver for everyday concealed carry literally sounds like a pain in the hip, consider this: For everyday carry, Keith wore a Model 29 with a 4- or 5-inch barrel. He was a man of small stature but great influence. Before Hollywood discovered the Model 29 and made Clint Eastwoods Dirty Harry character synonymous with the big bore, long barrel revolver, Keith lived it. Eastwood played it.

To live it means to carry it, and that is what we did with the four revolvers in this test. They are all six-shooters, have 2- or 3-inch barrels, small compact grips - except for one model - and are chambered in bone-bashing 44 Magnum or 41 Magnum. Real power, real recoil. Not for the faint of heart nor faint of recoil. If Elmer and Harry can carry around long-barrel variants, we figured these compact versions would be easier and more convenient for concealed carry. After shooting, with hand palms aching and lots of big holes in the targets, the team felt one model would really make your day, offering a good combination of features in a big-bore compact revolver for daily concealed carry.

Prior to testing, we ran Brownells revolver range rods (080-617-044WB, Rod Combo for .44/44 Mag., $40; 080-617-041WB, Rod Combo for .41, $40) down the bore of each revolver to check chamber alignment. We checked the gap between rear of cylinder with Brownells Go/No Go 60/68 Cylinder Gauge (080-633-668WB, $36). We assumed that since these were new or LNIB, they would pass and they did.

Do you want to know the best-kept secret of the professional gunsmith? No deep learning, no years of practice, just one little thing to keep in mind: Ninety percent of the handguns that show up for work simply need a good thorough cleaning and proper lubrication, and their "problems" were solved. And the rest of the problems? Most of them could have been avoided with one good cleaning each year after hunting season. In fact, it was the lack of cleaning on the part of hunters that drove me out of general commercial gunsmithing. It got to the point where I just couldn't stand the thought of another season spent hosing the gunk out of an endless parade of Remington 1100s and 742s. At that time I was working on nearly a thousand firearms a year, and I could count on seeing a couple of hundred 742/7400 and 1100/11-87 Remingtons in each pre-season rush. Yes, the money was good, but not if it drove me to drink. I now clean only my own firearms, and am much happier for it.

Rusted surface that requires re-bluing? Cleaning it after the rainstorm the last day of hunting season should have prevented that.

Broken extractor? Maybe, if the chamber hadn't gotten so crusty that the extractor was stressed, it never would have broken.

Failure to feed in an auto? Groups getting so large that scores are dropping off? Scrub out the pistol, keep the bore clean and these problems won't occur.

For the author's advice and instruction on the best way to clean your pistols and revolvers, purchase Gunsmithing Pistols and Revolvers from Gun Tests.

A neat trick you can do with a mill is to adjust front and non-adjustable rear sights. Say your pistol is hitting low and you want to adjust it. The calculation involves four figures: the amount you need the bullet moved on the target, the distance to the target, the sight radius of your handgun, and the amount of correction of the sight blade. The ratio of the bullet correction to the distance to the target is equal to the ratio of the sight correction to the sight radius. An example: a pistol with a sight radius of 6 inches is hitting two inches low at 25 yards. Convert the yards to inches, and we have 2/900 = C/6, where C is the correction to the front sight. Multiply both sides by 6, and we get 6 X 2/900 = C. Thus we find that our correction will be to mill 0.013 inches off of the top of the front sight.

Another way to the same thing is what a friend of mine does: he checks all handgun sight-in at 28 yards. Why 28 yards? Because it is close enough to 1,000 inches (1008 to be precise) to make the math easy. Simple, any error on the target, in inches, times the weight radius, is his correction on the weights. A one-inch error at 28 yards, on a six-inch sight radius means .006 inch of correction.

How to make the correction: Clamp the slide in your mill vise, level it, and then dust off the top of the front sight by the calculated amount. De-burr, old blue and you are done.

If you are hitting too high, and your fixed rear sight has enough metal, you can do the same thing to the rear sight with one extra step. After you have dusted off the top of the rear sight with your end mill, switch to another end mill the same size as rear sight notch (usually .125 inch) and deepen the notch by the same amount you had just lowered the top of the rear blade. If you didnt do this the notch in your rear sight would be shallower than it was before you stated. When you de-burr the edges of the rear sight, be sure to slightly round the corners on the outside, so you wont cut your hands handling the pistol. Cold blue the exposed steel, and you are done.

You can do the same job with a file, but you must be very careful. Even the slightest tip in your angle of filing will leave the front sight top angled. A visible angle on the top of the sight makes aiming difficult. If you plan to file, file to a depth short of the required depth. Then carefully, and with the finest file you have, file down to the required depth. Check your work regularly, to make sure you are filing evenly.

For more detailed advice on adjusting your pistols and revolvers, purchase Gunsmithing Pistols and Revolvers from Gun Tests.

Just as pencils have erasers to remove excess letters and words, so the pistolsmith must have something to remove excess metal. The bench grinder and mill are your large erasers. Using power tools you can remove large amounts of metal readily, or small amounts quickly. The mill also allows you to remove exactly-known amounts. Files, stones and emery cloth are your small erasers for fitting parts, smoothing engagement surfaces or polishing. They can be found in every gunsmithing shop as well as other machine shops in the country.

If you already have these had tools at home, they are likely to be of the common household variety. The file is coarse and usually rusty. The sandpaper is rough and made for sanding wood. Most stones I have seen around friends houses are worn, uneven and clogged with gunk. Suitable perhaps for sharpening a hunting knife (but often not even that) and entirely unsuited to the task of stoning a firearms part.

Files for your handgun must be much finer than the files intended for sharpening the lawnmower blade. Pistolsmithing files are precision tools. As such, you should treat them kindly, and never loan them. You will find that files and rasps intended for cabinet making, stock making and other woodworking tasks are too coarse. The finest-cut common wood file is too coarse for mch use on metal. However, if you buy files that are too fine, youll have to do more work (each pass will remove less metal than a coarser file would) but on the plus side you will be hard-pressed to file too much metal. At a bare minimum you will need two large files, one minimum file and a set of small ones. First, purchase an extra narrow pillar file in the Swiss #2 cut. This file, 8 inches long and just over -inch wide, is narrow enough to maneuver into and around your work, large enough to hold comfortably, and cuts smoothly enough that with the right touch will produce a near-finished or finished surface. If you cannot find them at a tool store in your hometown, Brownells carries them. I have used so many and been so pleased with each of them that I refer to it as the perfect file. It does have a drawback, and that is its flexibility. It will bend while you work with it and you have to watch out for unwanted rounding of your cut surface because of this flex.

For more detailed advice on files and other tools and techniques for smithing your pistols and revolvers,purchase Gunsmithing Pistols and Revolvers from Gun Tests.

A Buntline is commonly known as a Single Action Army (SAA) revolver with a barrel of 12 inches or more. They are mostly associated with Wyatt Earp of the gunfight at O.K. Corral fame and Ned Buntline, where the revolver gets its name. Buntline was a dime novelist who penned Western sagas about cowboys, outlaws, and other gunfighters. It is agreed that much of Buntlines writing was more fiction than fact, so if Ned could take some poetic license, so did we calling these long-barrel rimfires Buntlines. The Heritage Manufacturing Rough Rider and Ruger New Model Single-Six Convertible are scaled down Buntlines with 9-inch barrels - the Ruger actually has a 9.5-inch barrel. After the team stopped yukking it up about the odd-looking long-barreled revolvers and saying things like: You need to tie a red warning flag to the end of the barrel or You need to move the target out a few more yards, the muzzle keeps hitting it or Were going to need a longer range rod, we all got back to our senses and found a lot to like in these long-barreled rimfires.

Both revolvers are blued, single action and came with two cylinders, one for 22 LR and one for 22 WMR. One thing to be aware of with a 22 rimfire convertible revolver is that the bore diameter for a 22 LR and a 22 WMR are different. Nominal dimensions are .220 for the 22 WMR, and .217 for 22 LR. Generally speaking, the 22 LR is more accurate than the 22 WMR, and there tends to be more consistent velocity and pressure on the LR rounds.

The 357 Magnum is an excellent defensive cartridge. Pair it with a lightweight, compact revolver, and that is what we would call an excellent choice as a conceal-carry handgun. Our team has tested variants of the Ruger SP101 and S&W Model 60, but the S&W Model 60 Pro Series in 357 Magnum is a variant we have wanted to get our hands on for a while. We also wanted to see if the caliber choice would sway our recommendation on the established Ruger SP101 model.

The second Ruger SP101 we tested was chambered in 327 Federal Magnum, which was cataloged by Ruger from 2007 to 2011. As we noted in our first look at the gun in the April 2008 issue, Ruger and Federal teamed up to produce a cartridge/handgun combination that provided the power of the 357 Magnum but with less recoil and in a compact revolver that holds six shots rather than five shots. As a bonus, the 327 Fed Mag-chambered Ruger also accepts 32 H&R Mag, 32 S&W, and 32 S&W Long ammo. The footprint of the Ruger SP101 in 327 Fed Mag is basically same as the Ruger SP101 in 357 Mag, with a few exceptions.

All three double-action revolvers are built from stainless steel with similar barrel lengths, give or take three-quarters of an inch. All had exposed hammers, so single-action firing is possible. A transfer bar was built into the revolvers for safety. All three were built to last, even under a steady diet of hot loads. The lock up was tight on all three, and the chambers were all aligned with the bore, which we assumed but also verified. Fit and finish was very good on all three revolvers and that was exactly what we expected. The workmanship in these guns make them worth the cost.

The road in life isnt always straight and narrow. It can be winding and even out of control. Some changes are unwelcome, even fearful. Among the significant changes as we age is a loss of muscle mass. Shooters who once handled hard-kicking handguns now find them ever more difficult to handle. Arthritis and a culmination of old injuries make firing the big-bore pistol difficult. These individuals, along with young shooters who have adopted a lightweight pistol such as a Colt Commander, and slightly-built female shooters interested in a low-recoil load, are faced with difficult decisions. Once the decision is made to take advantage of the big-bore 45 ACP handgun, shooters are seldom willing to back down to the 9mm.

A knowledgeable reader asked for help in choosing a good factory load for his Commander 45 ACP, and this report is an answer. He had solved the problem of practice loads well. It isnt difficult to find a good lead-bullet load for practice. The Oregon Trail 200-grain semiwadcutter bullet and a modest charge of WW 231 powder will break 800 fps and function in most 1911s. But for personal-defense handguns, expansion is desirable, so that calls for a jacketed hollowpoint bullet to prevent over penetration and ricochet.

In our Gun Tests ammunition evaluations, we have stressed that when the power factor of a load reaches 200, then the handgun becomes more difficult to use effectively in personal defense. As an example, the standard 230-grain 45 ACP hardball load at 850 fps breaks 195 in power factor. The 185-grain JHP at 1000 fps hits 185. Few hardball loads actually clock 850 fps, but most of the 230-grain JHP loads do.

Are there load choices that will diminish the recoil of full-strength 45 ACPs and still produce acceptable performance - not exactly -P loads, but ones that are easier to handle than most and give a shooter with tired muscles a fighting chance at handling a big-bore handgun with accuracy and speed?

We went looking for some loads that produce reasonable recoil coupled with good downrange ballistic effect while functioning with standard recoil springs. Our test guns were a 4-inch-barrel Kimber CDP, the personal-defense pistol of one of our raters and a SIG Sauer P250 45-caliber compact. For comparing the recoil of +P loads to our controlled-recoil samples, larger pistols, including the FNH 45, were used. Here are our recommendations.

If you have between $1500 and $2000 to put into a good 45 auto, which one will you get? There are many candidates, and choosing between them is often more a test of which brand name sounds the best — Wilson, Baer, Nighthawk, Guncrafter to name just a few — rather than which gun is the best for an individual shooter. Frankly, guns in this price range are very hard to separate because they're all pretty darned good.

For this test, we looked at two names that aren't top of mind, even though one of them has a historical provenance that is hard to match. The test guns were full-size 1911s in 45 ACP, one being the Ithaca Gun Co. M1911-N #1911-C45G10 45 ACP, $1799. Between 1942 and 1945, Ithaca Gun Company made 382,000 of the 45-caliber Model 1911-A1 pistols for the military, and according to company documents, Ithaca received a "certificate of appreciation" from the federal government for improving a manufacturing procedure for the triggers. The original Ithaca Gun Company was located in Ithaca, New York, and was probably best known for its M37 shotgun. When Ithaca restarted several years ago in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, new management invested in CNC machining to make its older guns cost-competitive with more modern designs. Those techniques were also applied to a very modern pistol product pitched as a semi-custom 1911 for carry or duty use. The Ithaca comes in a hard plastic case with foam inserts and a 1-year limited warranty.

Our second pistol was a Roberts Defense Super Grade Pro 45 ACP, $1549, made by the firm in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Unlike Ithaca, which makes just two full-size pistol variants, Roberts makes six pistols in the Super Grade line alone (all $1549), including our full-size two-tone test gun, a full-size stainless model, two 4.25-inch barrel Custom models, and two of the firm's Carry models with 3.5-inch barrels. The company's Operator lineup includes four pistols (all $1649) and the Recon line has three versions (all $1499). Roberts Defense was founded in 2011, and the company says each firearm is hand-built using 100% American-made components. Each firearm comes in a tactical soft case with an accompanying gun lock. Impressively, Roberts Defense offers a lifetime transferable warranty.

Rob Unger, president of Roberts Defense said, "All of our parts are hand-fitted with the utmost attention to detail. We purposely build a limited amount of firearms to fit and function flawlessly, while never compromising, and making our high-quality product available at a reasonable price."

We shot the guns for accuracy and function, and evaluated them for more than a year in self-defense training and general use. These were both outstanding pistols, yet we found some anomalies that might help you pick and choose.

Metro Arms Classic Compact Commander 1911 pistols are now available in the United States for the first time. MSRPs range between $714 and $812, and the pistols come with lifetime warranties. The American Classic Compact Commander single-action 1911 is built on the compact Officer frame with a full-size Commander slide. This combination provides a smaller carry profile without sacrificing the firepower of a traditionally full-sized 1911. …