1917 Smith and Wesson – The ExhaustNotes Blog

The revolver you see in the blog today is a rare animal, one of 650 customized by New York City’s John Jovino Gun Shop. I guess the best way to start this post is with the John Jovino story. The Jovino Gun Shop is no longer in business, having fallen victim to the Covid 19 pandemic, but until then it was the oldest gun shop continuously in business in the entire country. John Jovino opened the store in 1911; he sold it to the Imperato family in the 1920s (the Imperatos are the folks who started and now operate Henry Firearms). Jovino’s was famous and it’s been in more than a few movies (and even in my favorite TV show, Law and Order).

The John Jovino Gun Shop in Manhattan, said to be the oldest gun shop in both New York City and the United States. Unfortunately, it is no longer in business.

Back in the 1980’s, Jovino’s built custom guns. Their primary clients were the NYPD and other police departments, as well as individual police officers, so many of the Jovino customs tended to be duty-oriented carry weapons. The one you see here is no exception. Jovino’s started with 6.5-inch-barreled Model 25 Smiths chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge and they turned them into 2.5-inch snubnosed revolvers. The conversion from a stock Smith and Wesson Model 25 to a Jovino snubbie, though, was not just a simple chop job. Here’s what the wizards at Jovino did to these guns:

- - Shortened the factory barrel to 2.5 inches.
  - Installed a crane lock to replace the ejector rod lock.
  - Relocated the red ramp front sight.
  - Rounded the butt to the S&W K frame round butt configuration.
  - Tuned the double and single action trigger.
  - Radiused the hammer spur (you can see it in the photos).
  - Polished the trigger face (you can see that in the big photo at the top of this blog).
  - Fitted Pachmayr rubber grips.
  - Reblued the cut barrel (the new bluing is actually a bit darker and more polished than the stock bluing).

As you probably already know (and you certainly know if you follow the ExhaustNotes blog), the 1917 platform Smith and Wesson and Colt revolvers can fire .45 ACP ammo if the cartridges are mounted in clips, or they can fire .45 AutoRim ammo. .45 AutoRim ammo is essentially the .45 ACP cartridge with a rim. For this test series, I used reloaded .45 AutoRim ammo. It’s the ammo you see in the photo below.

A gat and a hat, with six rounds of reloaded .45 AutoRim ammunition.

The original grips that came with the Jovino Model 25 snubbie were Pachmayrs, and they probably make more sense (more on that at the end of this blog). I didn’t care for the appearance and for reasons it would take a therapist to explain, I wanted ivory grips (I think it has something to do with watching Patton too many times). I settled for fake ivory, which provided the look I wanted without the cost. Don’t tell the General.

The Pachmayr grips that originally came on the Jovino Model 25 snubbie.

When Jovino cut the Model 25 barrels down to 2.5 inches, there wasn’t enough room left in the ejector shroud for the front cylinder lock, so Jovino incorporated the ball-detent cylinder lock you see in this photo.

When the new grips arrived, I liked the S&W escutcheons and I liked the look, but I didn’t like the fit. I didn’t realize what I had in the Jovino and the extent of the customization that went into these guns. I ordered grips for an N-frame round butt Smith and Wesson, but they stood a bit proud on the revolver’s grip frame (the back strap). That’s because the Jovino customs reworked the frame from a square N-frame grip profile to a Smith and Wesson round butt K-frame profile, but I’m told the K-frame grips won’t match exactly, either. I bought the larger N-frame grips figuring I could take grip material off, but I couldn’t put it back on. I didn’t dare attempt to sand the grips on the gun, so I very gently went to work on them with sandpaper off the gun, repeatedly installing and removing the grips to take off just enough material to get a good grip-to-frame match. When I was just about there, I found that by stepping down to 400, then 600, and then 800 grit sandpaper, I could match the polished look on the rest of the grip. I was pleased with the result.

The grips look good. So does the revolver. One of the Jovino custom touches was to round the hammer spur profile. I like what they did.

I tested three .45 AutoRim loads:

- - A 200-grain Speer swaged semi-wadcutter bullet loaded with 4.2 grains of Bullseye.
  - A 200-grain Precision Cast semi-wadcutter bullet loaded with 6.0 grains of Unique.
  - A 233-grain Missouri K-Ball cast roundnose bullet loaded with 5.6 grains of Unique.

.45 AutoRim ammunitiion. Note the rim on the brass cartridge case. The case is identical to .45 ACP ammo in all other dimensions. From left to right, you see the 200-grain swaged Speer semi-wadcutter bullet, the 200-grain Precision Cast cast semi-wadcutter bullet, and the 233-grain Missouri Bullet cast roundnose K-Ball bullet.

I had already tested my Jovino revolver for accuracy at longer distances a few years ago; this test was to be different. Like the .38 Special Model 60 accuracy tests we wrote about a couple of days ago, I set up a few “Betty and the Zombie” targets at 7 yards and I fired double action as quickly as I could. I’m told the typical hostage rescue zombie gunfight occurs at 7 yards, so I wanted to get a feel how I would do in these encounters. You know, so I’d be ready.

What was surprising to me was just how incredibly smooth the double action trigger was on the Jovino. In a word, it’s amazing. Shooting double action was fun. The slick trigger and the Model 25 Jovino’s red ramp and white outline sights seem to glue the front sight to the zombie’s left eye, until that part of the zombie disappeared and I was shooting at a hole. These guns are impressive.

The 200-grain semiwadcutter with 4.2 grains of Bulleye was a very pleasant load (for me, not the zombie) with modest recoil. The 233-grain K-Ball Missouri load was a much more emphatic load. That one pounded me around a bit more, but it still hung in there on the zombie. All of the loads shot essentially to point of aim. Each of the targets below were hit by five full cylinders of .45 ammunition, or 30 rounds apiece. There was not a single miss among all 90 rounds.

Zombie versus .45 AutoRim ammo loaded with 200-grain Precision Cast bullets and 4.2 grains of Bullseye.

200-grain Speer bullets and 6.0 grains of Unique. Sometimes zombies don’t go down with the first shot, so I lobbed in another 29.

Betty was plenty nervous, but she held still. The zombie did, too. He took 30 rounds of 233-grain K-Ball Missouri bullets propelled by 5.6 grains of Unique.

So what’s the bottom line to all of this? The Jovino .45 ACP revolver is accurate, it has a superb trigger, and it is just plain fun to shoot. That last load was a bit much. The 233-grain K-Ball Missouri looks pretty much like their 230-grain roundnose, but the difference in recoil is both perceptible and significant. You can go quite a bit hotter with this load, but I won’t. When I finished shooting, I was surprised to see I had done a bit of damage to my thumb. I think it happened on the last round or two because there’s no powder residue where the skin tore away, and it happened because the faux ivory grips have a bit of a corner to them. The rubber Pachmayr grips wouldn’t have done this, but they don’t look as cool as the grips the Jovino wears in these photos. The gun doesn’t do this firing single action, but I guess my hand rode up a bit firing double action. Sometimes these things happen when you take on the odd zombie or two.

Zombie combat. It’s a tough job. Somebody’s got to do it, though.

The Jovino Model 25 is probably the finest and smoothest revolver I’ve ever shot. It’s a keeper.

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Reloading .45 ACP for 1917-style revolvers.

The Model 625 with a box of my reloaded ammunition. The ammo in this photo had Xtreme 230-grain roundnose bullets. I found the Missouri cast roundnose bullets to be more accurate in my revolver.

Good buddy Rick C., one of the world’s great philosophers, once told me that every time he reloads he learns something new. I think he was right. This story focuses on reloading .45 ACP ammo for the Model 625 Smith and Wesson revolver, and what I learned during a recent reloading session.

The Model 625 is a beautiful revolver. It’s a direct descendant of the Model 1917 that Smith made for the US Army in World War I. The only thing I sometimes find annoying about the 625 is that sometimes reloaded 45 ACP that chambers easily in a 1911 auto won’t chamber in the revolver. This blog focuses on that issue.

The 625 and a box of ammo. This is a sweet-shooting and accurate handgun.

A typical 6-shot, 50-ft Model 625 group with my favorite load. That ain’t bad from a 4-inch revolver.

There are two kinds of ammo for these revolvers. The first is standard .45 ACP, firing the same cartridge as the 1911. The other is .45 AutoRim. Firing .45 ACP ammo in a revolver like the Smith and Wesson 625 requires the use of either star or moon clips (the star clips hold six rounds; each moon clip holds three rounds). Individual cartridges clip into these. The clips provide proper headspace by holding the cartridges in place in the cylinder, and they allow the extractor to push the rounds out of the cylinder. They also work as speed clips because you can insert six rounds into the cylinder simultaneously. Theoretically, you could fire .45 ACP ammo in a Smith and Wesson revolver without the clips, but then you would need a probe to knock each case out of the cylinder. The .45 AutoRim cartridge is very similar to the .45 ACP round, but it has a rim. That eliminates the need for the clips.

.45 ACP ammo in 6-round star clips. The clips allow chambering .45 ACP ammunition in 1917-type revolvers. They are necessary because the .45 ACP cartridges don’t have a protruding rim to allow extraction.

Over the years, I’ve found that .45 AutoRim always chambers easily in a .45 ACP revolver. With .45 ACP reloads, however, that’s not always the case. That’s not good, as it sometimes prevents closing the cylinder. Even if you can close the cylinder with difficult-to-chamber .45 ACP reloads, the loaded cylinder will often drag on the frame, making cocking or double action fire difficult.

I recently loaded a batch of .45 ACP ammo that I intended to fire in my Model 625, and as is my normal practice when loading for the 1911, I put just enough of a flare on the empty cases to allow the bullet base to start into the case. After priming the cases, charging with propellant, and seating the bullets, I adjusted the seating die such that the brass just kissed the crimping ring in the seating die. At this point, I thought it would be a good idea to check the first 10 rounds in the 625 to see if they chambered fully, and you can probably guess where this story is going. A couple of rounds only went about two-thirds of the way into the chamber. I put a little more crimp on the cartridge; of the two that would not chamber, now one would and the other wouldn’t.

In examining the loaded rounds, I could see where the case had expanded circumferentially slightly after the bullet had been seated (it had a slight bulge at the base of the bullet. I wondered if perhaps the Missouri 230-grain roundnose bullets I was loading were just too big, so I measured them. The box told me the bullets had been sized to 0.452 inches, and that’s exactly where they were. Then I measured the case outside diameter for the loaded rounds just below the case mouth. They measured 0.475 to 0.476 inch. Then I went online to see what that dimension should be. Here’s what I found:

The drawing above is misleadingly dimensioned. The dimension we’re interested in is the 0.473 case outside diameter at the case mouth (it looks like an inside diameter on the drawing, but it’s the outside diameter. My reloaded ammo was 0.002 to 0.003 inch above this. I played around with the crimp a bit, but I couldn’t get that number to come down via crimping with my RCBS bullet seating die.

Then I had an idea. I removed the decapping pin and threaded shaft from the resizing die, and adjusted it to just kiss the loaded round a little to square up the bullet in the case and decrease the diameter at the case mouth a bit. I adjusted the depth of the seating die in the press such that I obtained a 0.473 outside case diameter result at the case mouth. The first case chambered. I then repeated the partial resize on 10 cartridges; all but one sucked right into the chamber with no circumferential play. I still had that one, though, so I played with the resizing die adjustment again until the dimension was right at 0.472, and that did the trick. It removed the flare completely, and every subsequent cartridge I loaded using this technique chambered perfectly. Basically, I was using the resizing die as a crimping tool.

It bothered me that I had to go .001 below the 0.473 inch spec to get the ammo to chamber 100% of the time in my revolver, and I was a little worried about what this might be doing to the bullet diameter. I wondered what factory ammo measures, and then I realized I had some. So I pulled it out of the ammo locker and measured it. The factory ammo measured 0.470 inch at that dimension (0.003 under the 0.473 specification), which explains why factory .45 ACP ammo always chambers so easily in this revolver. I also checked the drawing for the .45 AutoRim cartridge. It shows the case outside diameter at the business end to be 0.472, which is coincidentally exactly what I found to work perfectly for my reloaded .45 ACP ammo in the revolver.

I was a little bit worried that in running the cartridges part way into the resizing die I might be swaging the bullets to something below .451 inch (the minimum bullet diameter for this cartridge). To check on this, I measured the case wall thickness. On my Winchester .45 ACP brass (which has a wall thickness perceptibly greater than other brass I sometimes use) the wall thickness is exactly 0.010. Since my ammo measured 0.472 at the mouth after my post-load resizing/crimping operation, that should leave the bullet at exactly 0.452 inch (or 0.472 – 2*0.010). That’s exactly where it should be. The cases hold that wall thickness for some distance into the case, too. I think what the operation is doing is aligning and straightening the bullet in the case.

I’m not using any lube for my secondary resizing operation. I have carbide dies, and they do not require it.

The proof on all of this was how the rounds grouped, and folks, they grouped well. It was a little windy when I fired these groups at the West End Gun Club, but the gun and the ammo did what they are supposed to do.

Four groups of 6 shots each with the Model 625. 5.6 grains of Unique with a 230 cast roundnose bullet has always performed well for me in both revolvers and 1911 semi-automatics.

I like this modified approach (resize/decap, clean, prime, bellmouth, charge, seat, remove the FLRS decapper, and then crimp the ammo to 0.472 with the resizing die). It works well, it produces an accurate load, and every round chambers easily in the Model 625.

My shooting buddies Rick and Robby tell me that the Lee factory crimp die does the same thing as what I’ve described above. I ordered one for the .45 ACP and I’ll reload ammo using it, but that’s a topic for a subsequent blog.

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