.45 ACP Revolvers – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Diving Deeper: Two More .45 AutoRim Loads

By Joe Berk

This one is going to get a bit complicated and maybe a little bit long. Bear with me. I’ll do my best to make it interesting.

.An empty 45 AutoRim case. I was seeing blowby with both the 4.5-grain and 4.2-graini Bullseye loads. It didn’t seem to affect accuracy.

I tried two loads in this session. Both used the Xtreme plated 230-grain .451 roundnose bullet seated to an overall cartridge length of 1.260 inches, CCI 300 primers, R-P .45 AutoRim brass, and Bullseye powder. One load had 4.2 grains of Bullseye; the other had 4.5 grains. I shot 18 rounds of each flavor at targets 25 yards away, using a two-handed grip. I measured velocity using my Garmin chronograph. Four things were immediately apparent:

- - The 4.5-grain Bullseye load grouped much better than the 4.2-grain load.
  - Both loads were approximately 4.5 inches below the point of aim at 25 yards.
  - Recoil from the 4.5-grain Bullseye load was perceptibly higher than the 4.2-grain load.
  - The 4.5-grain Bullseye load velocities were significantly higher than the 4.2 grain load.

You can see the accuracy difference (and the fact that both groups shot low) in the two targets below:

A two-hand hold, 25-yard target with the 4.2 grain Bullseye load. This load was not too accurate, and it was about 4.5 inches low.

Another 25-yard target, with the 4.5 grain Bullseye load. The extra 0.3 grains of Bullseye tightened the group considerably.

Here’s what the chronograph data looked like:

Chronograph data for this blog. Only the last two rows are relevant; the top row is discussed in an earlier blog.

I wrote about the first data row in the above table in a previous blog (that load used a powder-coated 230-grain bullet loaded with 6.0 grains of Unique powder). The second and third data rows are the ones of interest in this blog. These two rows show the copper-plated roundnose Bullseye loads.

As I fired the loads for the two targets above, I kept an eye on the velocities and I thought I saw a decrease when shooting the first round through the sixth round in each cylinder. I wondered if this was due to bullet pull. That’s when the bullets pull forward in the case due to recoil (the bullet wants to stay put as the gun recoils). In extreme cases, the bullet can pull forward far enough such that it protrudes from the cylinder and interferes with cylinder rotation. I wasn’t seeing that, but I thought that what might be happening is the bullets were pulling forward a little bit with each shot and progressively increasing the case volume behind the bullet base. That would result in lower pressure and reduced velocity.

Bullet pull after firing 5 rounds in the same cylinder with the 4.5-grain Bullseye load. The crimp is a good one, but the Xtreme bullets are both slippery and soft.

I ran a test with each load to identify how much of this was occurring (see the table above). I loaded six rounds, fired five, and then removed the sixth round to measure the increase in cartridge overall length. The cartridge overall length prior to firing was 1.260 inches. After firing five rounds and pulling the sixth, with the 4.2-grain Bullseye load the cartridge length increased to 1.286 inches (the bullet had moved forward 0.026 inch due to recoil from the other five rounds). With the heavier recoil 4.5-grain Bullseye load, the sixth cartridge’s overall length increased to 1.291 inches (its bullet had moved forward 0.031 inch). As expected, the hotter load had resulted in slightly more bullet pull.

To further assess the external ballistic effects, I plotted velocity versus shot number for all 18 shots for both loads. I was expecting to see the velocity decrease as I fired each six round group, but the chronograph data and the x-y plot shown below didn’t show that. I then posted a trendline for each load, and they are essentially flat (actually, the trendline for the 4.5-grain Bullseye load shows the velocity increasing, but the increase is so slight it is probably not meaningful, and another 18-shot string might show the velocity trend to be flat or slightly negative). It was an interesting hypothesis, but the data didn’t support it.

I thought perhaps bullet pull was adversely affecting velocity. Not so; the velocities appear to be independent in each cylinder full of ammunition for both the 4.2-grain and 4.5-grain loads. The dotted lines are trendlines.

You might wonder: Could I increase the crimp a bit more and eliminate all bullet movement? Not with these bullets. The crimp is already pronounced and I’m still getting a bit of bullet pull. These are slippery bullets. I’ll live with what I’m getting, and the velocity data shows the small amount of bullet pull is inconsequential.

The front sight on my 1917 Smith and Wesson repop.

The front sight on an original 1917 Smith and Wesson revolver.

Let’s turn back to the subject of the gun shooting too low. We covered this in an earlier blog shooting lighter bullets. I found that I could hold the front sight higher in the rear sight, use the traditional 6:00 hold, and get decent results on target. I decided to leave the front sight alone. It is a real shark fin, but it is what the original 1917 front sight profile looks like. That got me to wondering: Did those original 1917 revolvers shoot low, too?

Several different approaches for reprofiling and lowering the original front sight on a 1917. To me, they all look wrong.

I think the answer is yes. I’ve never shot an original Smith and Wesson 1917 with hardball ammo (or any ammo, for that matter). But in poking around a bit on the Internet looking at photos of the original guns, I noted that some owners had modified their front sights to make them shorter (which would raise the point of impact). I suspect this was done for the same reason I considered doing it. Their guns were hitting too low. The modified 1917 front sights, however, don’t look right to my eye. I’m going to leave my front sight alone.

While pondering all this, I had another thought: When the 1917 revolvers were issued to soldiers in World Wars I and II, our soldiers were trained to shoot these handguns with one hand, like bullseye competition shooters still do. The two-handed Weaver hold that we use today didn’t come on the scene until the 1950s. I wondered if shooting one handed would shift the point of impact up. I think the answer is yes, because the muzzle flip would be more pronounced with a single-hand hold.

Because it was late at night when I was writing this blog, I couldn’t get to the range immediately to check this hypothesis. But I could ask Google and see what it had to say. Here’s the question I asked:

How much higher will a .45 ACP revolver shoot at 25 yards using a one-hand hold vs a two-hand hold?

Here’s how Google responded:

There is no single fixed number, as the shift depends on individual hand strength, gun weight, and bullet weight, but a .45 ACP revolver will typically impact 2 to 4 inches higher at 25 yards when fired one-handed versus two-handed. Because a bullet travels relatively slowly through the barrel—especially heavy, low-velocity .45 ACP rounds—the gun begins to recoil upward before the bullet exits the muzzle.

I read that and thought to myself: Duh. Well, yeah. Of course. I was surprised I didn’t tumble to that sooner.

I’m the kind of guy that has to pee on the electric fence to find out for himself, so the next day I went to my indoor range (it’s been too hot to shoot on the West End Gun Club’s outdoor range). I set up a target at the 50-foot line and fired a cylinder full with one hand to test my new-to-me (but obvious to probably everyone else) hypothesis.

I have to tell you: I haven’t shot bullseye pistol competition in decades, and holding the big Smith 1917 up with one arm, at arm’s length, was a challenge. The revolver was sashaying around like an exotic dancer in a room full of big tippers. But I heard Sergeant Major Hickman’s voice from 53 years ago: You’re not going to get it rock steady unless you’re dead. Just do your best, focus on the fundamentals, and let the fundamentals do the work. So that’s what I did, and son of a gun…

Not too shabby for an old guy. Sergeant Major Hickman would be proud.

The revolver still shoots a little low, but it’s close enough for government work. I may start shooting Bullseye-style again. It felt good. I’d like to get better at it.

1917 S&W Kentucky Windage

By Joe Berk

The Model 1917 saga continues. After looking for a variety of ways to replace the front sight with something shorter (the gun shoots low with most every load except the hardball government load, which is probably what these guns were regulated for), I found one in Dawson Sights. But it wouldn’t look authentic, and I wanted this pistol to look like the ones issued to the Army in World War I and II (the color case hardening, highly polished blue, and fancier grips notwithstanding).

My 1917 Smith and Wesson, with star clips, .45 ACP ammo, and 200-grain semi-wadcutters. Did I mention that I love shooting this revolver? It’s my Indiana Jones Special.

I was shooting my standard accuracy load for the 1911 (4.2 grains of Bullseye, and a 200-grain cast semi-wadcutter Missouri bullet). I used the star clips (I was shooting with .45 ACP brass, not AutoRim ammo).

Because the 1917 shot low, I thought about putting a line on the front sight, or painting it. I discarded that idea because paint on a front sight never lasts. Then I went with Elmer Keith’s recommendation: Just hold the front sight higher in the rear sight groove, and keep the target on the top of the front sight. That’s what I did.

A normal sight picture with a 6:00 hold. Note that the front sight is in sharp focus; the target and the rear sight are slightly blurred. Using this sight picture put the bullets from my 1917 several inches low.

My adjusted 1917 sight picture. I found that holding the front sight about 2/3 to 3/4 of its height higher within the rear sight (as you see here), and keeping the top of the front sight at 6:00 on the target (so as to not obscure the target) worked well.

Here’s my first target, shot at 45 feet, to sort of get things dialed in and to determine how much the front sight should exceed the rear sight.

Yep, my shots are all over the paper. I was experimenting with front sight height holdover to find the best sight picture.

The first two shots below the center bullseye (on the target above) made me realize I was subconsciously reverting to my old sight picture. I made a conscious effort to keep the front sight high, and I shot the remainder of my shots on the center bullseye and the red stickies. I took a little while to get used to the new sight picture.

The above target gave me a pretty good idea of what I needed to do with respect to the sight picture. The upper 2/3 to 3/4 of the front sight needs to be above the top of the rear sight, and the top of the front sight needs to be at 6:00. I moved a new target to 30 feet and shot the next group (with 18 shots). I think 10 yards is a good distance for dialing in a combat handgun.

Yep, that works. Notwithstanding the two shots that went high (my fault entirely), with the new sight picture I could put my shots where I wanted them to go.

All the above were shot single action. I may try shooting some double action on my next outing. This is a big gun, though, and I think double action shooting won’t be too easy.

You might wonder: Why does the gun not shoot to point of aim with a standard sight picture? Keep in mind that this was a gun designed to shoot military hardball ammunition as an expedient during World War I. That’s a 230-grain full metal jacket moving at about 830 feet per second. I found (see my earlier blog) that when shooting a comparable reload (a 230-grain cast roundnose bullet with 5.6 grains of Unique), this revolver shoots just about to point of aim at 10 yards using a standard sight picture. That’s what the gun was designed for. With a different load (such as the one described above), the point of impact will shift (as it did for me).

I’m going to leave the revolver alone (no change to a newer, lower front sight) and shoot it frequently. I like it a lot. Best to leave things as they are. I feel like I know the gun pretty well now. I sure to do love shooting it.

Enjoying these .45 ACP revolver blogs? Join our Facebook .45 ACP Revolvers group!

My First Custom Gun

By Lew Ballard

Editor’s Note: Lew Ballard posted the text of this story on a Facebook page I manage on .45 ACP revolvers. It was so good I asked Lew if I could publish it on ExNotes, and he graciously agreed. Lew apologized for not having kept photos of his custom 1917 (the subject of this story). A Google search turned up a number of custom 1917 revolvers, including Elmer Keith’s personal 1917. It’s the one you see above, which sold at auction in December 2023 (rather appropriately, for over $17K). I love anything about 1917 revolvers, and I’m guessing you do, too.

With that as a backdrop, here’s Lew’s story.

Over the years, now decades, that I’ve been not only shooting, but also interested in guns, I’ve put together a number of custom firearms. Generally, I hire the work out to people who are qualified, although at times I’ve proceeded, through main strength and awkwardness, with some custom modifications on my own.

I still remember the first custom gun I commissioned, and even after all this time, looking back at how young I was, and how little I really understood at the time, I think I did pretty well.

Allow me to set the stage, with a little background. Although I had a little shooting experience growing up, I didn’t have all that much, but when I turned 21 I decided it was time to buy a gun. Particularly, a pistol. In early 1988, shortly after turning 21, I started looking, and I found a pistol that I’d buy again today. It was a 1911 in .45 ACP. More particularly, it was a Colt Mk IV Series 70 Government Model in Colt’s electroless nickel finish. Coltguard?

The Mk IV Series 70 Government Model was, for all intents and purposes, a 1911A1 fitted with a collet bushing instead of the solid bushing John Moses Browning had designed originally. This was intended to enhance accuracy, although I think they reverted to the solid bushing later on, for parts breakage issues.

Now, this was so long ago that gun writers, in gun magazines, only recommended a few places that could do a proper feed job so that a 1911 would cycle any ammunition other than hardball. Man that was a different world, wasn’t it?

I was living in Houston, or at least commuting back to Houston from Sherman TX where I was attending college, and I nervously went to a local retailer, Carter’s Country, right there on the Katy Freeway in Houston, to see if they could do a feed job. They said they could, and for some reasonable sum they did it, and afterwards I shot a bunch of 200 SWC .45 ACP loads through that Colt. Along with a bunch of Blazer 200 grain JHP ammo—the old “flying ashtray.”

And I wore an onion at my belt, which was the style at the time.

I had chosen a 1911 in part for pragmatic reasons, but I am honest enough to admit that there were also “vibe” reasons. I’d been reading Mickey Spillane for five or six years by that point, and Spillane’s characters almost always packed a .45—whether we’re talking Mike Hammer, Tiger Mann, or other one-off protagonists. The Shadow, as drawn by Mike Kaluta, packed TWIN .45s. Robert E. Howard’s El Borak—the Texas gunslinger in Central Asia/Afghanistan, well he packed a big .45 automatic as well, even if he generally ended up doing most of his fighting with cold steel. Should I mention “two world wars” while I’m at it?

In those dim, distant days of yore, I also read gun writers. I read Jack O’Connor and Elmer Keith and Ross Seyfried and “primus inter pares” Jeff Cooper. Jeff Cooper made a profound impression on me. I was, in effect, a Cooper Trooper. Jeff Cooper was a big fan of the .45 ACP. Man, I thought that Colt Government Model was the bee’s knees. But this is all just introduction, because I don’t think a feed job, a polishing of the feed ramp, really qualifies as a custom gun.

Essentially, around this time, I got interested in revolvers. Sigh, looking back, I can remember going to gun shows with tables positively groaning with service .38 Specials and .357 Magnums that were being surplused out by police departments, during the drive towards the wondernine. Is “wondernine” even a term, anymore? Probably not. A “wondernine” was a double stack, double action 9mm. In my mind, the term came about with the US military trials to adopt a new service pistol, which turned out to be the Beretta 92, as the M9. At this point in time, I just thought the whole idea was silly.

I needed a big bore revolver.

I’ve never really been a big Magnum cartridge fan. I’ve always liked moderate cartridges. I have shot and enjoyed .44 Magnums, but I always kept coming back to the mild, sedate, staid ballistics of “230 grains, at 850 fps.”

I still feel that way. When we talk about revolver cartridges, whether it’s a .44 Special, or a .45 Colt, or a .45 ACP, or a .41 Special, I tend to think “200 to 250 grains, between 850 and 1000 fps” as a sweet spot. Plenty of power, not too much recoil, not too much blast and flash. Easy to shoot quickly—certainly compared to “hotter” loads.

So I thought I needed a big bore revolver, and at this point I was thinking of a double action revolver—and this was a good time for big bore double action revolvers. I considered the .44 Special and .45 Colt, but I kept coming back to the .45 ACP, especially once I discovered the Smith and Wesson model of 1917.

Historical sidenote: during WW1, the US realized that 1911 production was limited, and so contracted with both Colt and Smith and Wesson to produce revolvers chambering the .45 ACP, using half moon clips to adapt the rimless .45 ACP design to a traditional revolver. I really have no experience with any Colt New Service revolvers, as they felt awkward in my hand. Ah, but the Smith N-frame, now that was a different matter!

The Smith and Wesson 1917 was a fixed sight N frame revolver, with a tapered 5 ½” barrel, chambered in .45 ACP. It had a square butt and a lanyard loop.

And about that time, several American companies started to reimport Brazilian contract S&W 1917s. Hazy memory says they were sold to the Brazilian Navy in 1937. I don’t remember which company imported the two I bought. Navy Arms? Century International Arms? International Arms Company? If I had to guess, I’d say it was Navy Arms.

I went to a gun shop in Sherman, TX and offered them a deal. I’d trade my Colt to them if they’d order two of the S&W Brazilian contract 1917s for me. They agreed, and a couple of weeks later, I did the swap.

I shot them as they were, for a while. I don’t think I ever used the half moon clips, which held three rounds, since the full moon clips had come out, holding six rounds. They were . . . very nice. They were also surprisingly light and handy! At that time, the trend was towards untapered barrels in production revolvers, and full underlugs. We could call that the Python influence? Let’s just put it this way. Compared to a 6” 29 with a heavy barrel, the 5.5” 1917 felt super light. I’m not sure I’d want to launch any Elmer Keith memorial .44 Magnum loads through a sixgun of that weight, but then again, I wanted the mild, sedate ballistics of the .45 ACP.

Then I got to thinking, “Gosh, a little long, when one ponders on it, aren’t they?” And I ran across an article by Masaad Ayoob, in one of the many gun magazines that were out at the time. Combat Handguns, maybe? I don’t know. Mas had had a 1917 customized: barrel chopped, somewhat refined. Well, that gave me an itch I just had to scratch. I wasn’t even sure if it was possible, in my area, to have something similar done.

A little investigation, however, revealed that Briley Manufacturing was in the Houston neighborhood I lived in, when I lived in Houston. I photocopied the Mas Ayoob article and headed that way, together with one of the 1917s.

I explained what I wanted to have done, and they thought about it and said, “Sure, we can do that.”

This is what they did for me. They bobbed the barrel. I remember I wanted something less than 4”, but only a little less. They cut it just far enough ahead of the ejector rod lug to look right. Three and a half inches? Three and three quarters? Something like that. Recrowned the barrel. Fitted a ball detent in the crane, for an improvised “triple lock” thing. Manufactured a new half moon front sight, serrated “like it was a silver dime” and widened the rear sight notch a bit. Action job. A general “go through it and make everything right” approach. They bobbed the hammer spur but then serrated the top of the hammer for easier thumb cocking. (Yes, I retained the single action capability.) Then they refinished the whole thing with Parkerizing.

I ran it with the service stocks, and kept the lanyard loop in place, and put a black finished aluminum Tyler T-grip on it.

Whee doggies!

I was as happy as a fellow could be. It was light, it was handy, it had a great trigger, it was as accurate as I was (if not more). The new front sight and the opened up rear notch gave it a really good sight picture. It had aura and drip and rizz, to use modern terms. I kept it in an Uncle Mike’s nylon holster that I’d originally got for a 3” Ruger GP100 until shame got the better of me and I bought an El Paso Saddlery 1920 Austin holster for it.

I shot a bunch of Remington hardball through it. I shot a fair amount of Blazer 200 grain through it, although I remember the aluminum cases being a bear to bust loose from the moon clips. Then one day I found a closeout deal on a case of Remington AutoRim ammunition. The AutoRim was a .45 ACP case, fitted with a very thick rim so it would work without moon clips, loaded with a 230 grain lead round nose bullet. I think I got that case of ammunition for under half the price I was paying for new commercial hardball.

Such vibes! Much rizz! So drip!

It’s gone now. I didn’t sell it. I’d like to think I’d never have sold it, although I can’t swear I wouldn’t have. When I joined the USMC, I handed my guns over to a friend to look after while I was away, and when I got them back, this custom revolver wasn’t there. Story I got was that John had been out boating at Lake Houston, and it, umm, fell into the water.

Oh well. It was just a thing, even though it was a very nice thing. Also, that was pretty much the end of me and John hanging out and doing things. As I look back, though, from this vast span of time, I still think that my first custom gun was a dang nice custom gun. It felt like I was carrying or shooting a chunk of Americana while I had it. And I miss it to this day.

“It looked mostly like this, if you moved the front sight behind the collar of this one. Just a bit shorter,” Lew wrote.

Four .45 ACP Revolvers

By Joe Berk

When most folks think of the .45 ACP cartridge, they think of the 1911 and other semi-auto handguns. The big .45 also makes an ideal wheelgun cartridge, especially in N-frame Smith and Wessons. I own four (the ones you see above) and I shoot them all.

The .45 ACP Revolver Story

Smith and Wesson forayed into the .45 ACP revolver business when Colt couldn’t keep up with the demand for its 1911 semi-auto in World War I. The Army asked both Smith and Colt to make .45 ACP versions of their large-frame double action handguns, both manufacturers did, and the Army designated both revolvers as the Model 1917.

After the World War I, the 1917 revolvers became available to civilians. Colt left the .45 ACP revolver business, but Smith and Wesson soldiered on, and to this day Smith still offers several different models.

Shooting .45 ACP ammo in a revolver requires a clip. You have to snap the rounds into the clip so they will fire and extract in a revolver. At one point, the 1917 revolvers were popular enough that Remington introduced the .45 AutoRim cartridge, which is a rimmed version of the .45 ACP that allows use of the cartridge in a revolver without the clip.

.45 ACP rounds in a star clip. I have a tool that makes it easy to insert cartridges in the clips and remove the empty cases after shooting. In World War I, clips held only three rounds (you needed two to load six rounds in a 1917 revolver).

A .45 ACP round (left) and a .45 AutoRim cartridge (right). Note the difference in rim configuration at the base of each cartridge. I’ve experimented with both ACP and AutoRim brass in my .45 ACP revolvers; both deliver comparable accuracy.

Over the years Smith and Wesson has manufactured several .45 ACP revolver models. I’d like to own them all, but there’s only so much room in the safe and Susie’s willingness to indulge my gun collecting. The four this blog addresses are:

- - The Model of 1955
  - A Jovino snubnose
  - Smith’s reincarnated and Turnbull-finished Model 1917
  - The Performance Center Model 625.

Info on each follows.

The Model of 1955

Smith introduced the Model of 1955 as an alternative to the 1911 semi-auto for bullseye target competition. Mine was made in the 1970s. I bought it from Rutgers Guns in Highland Park, New Jersey shortly after I left the Army (Rutgers Guns had no connection to Rutgers University other than geography). I paid around $200 for it new.

A typical Model of 1955 three-shot 50-foot group. This gun shoots everything well.

The Model of 1955 has Smith and Wesson’s target trigger and target hammer, and it has target sights (with a Patridge style sight in front). It originally had checkered grips, but shortly after I bought it I put a set of smooth grips on it. I think the smooth grips both look and feel better. Back in the day, you could purchase those grips new for around $25. Today, a set from that era (like the ones you see above) would fetch $300 to $400. The Model of 1955 has the highly polished and deep blue finish that is the hallmark of earlier Smith and Wesson revolvers. It is a beautiful handgun.

I never tried a load in the Model of 1955 that didn’t do well; every powder and every bullet combination I loaded grouped well. In the nearly 50-years that I’ve owned this revolver, I’ve only seen one other guy on the range with the same gun. I asked him what load he used and he told me the gun likes everything; every load he ever tried shot well, too. That said, the load I use is typically 4.2 grains of Bullseye and a 200-grain semi-wadcutter bullet. I use Lee’s Deluxe 4-die set and I crimp the bullets with their factory taper crimp die to assure easy chambering and to prevent bullet pull under recoil (although recoil with this load is light).

The Jovino Snubbie

The Jovino snubnose revolver is a rare animal, one of 650 customized by New York City’s John Jovino Gun Shop (which no longer exists; when it closed, Jovino was the oldest gun shop in the country).

The Jovino snubnose .45 ACP revolver. It’s a real rarity.

Back in the 1980s, Jovino’s built custom guns. Their main clients were the NYPD and other police departments, so many of the Jovino customs tended to be duty-oriented carry weapons. Jovino bought 6 1/2-inch barreled Smiths like the one you see above and turned them into 2 1/2-inch snubnose revolvers. The conversion was not just a simple chop job, though. Here’s what Jovino did to these guns:

- - Shortened the factory barrel to 2 1/2 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.
  - Polished the trigger face.
  - Fitted Pachmayr rubber grips.
  - Reblued the cut barrel (the new bluing is actually a bit darker and more polished than the stock bluing).

The original grips that came with the Jovino snubbie were rubber Pachmayrs, but I wanted the look of ivory grips. That’s when I found out that the Jovino guns did not have a standard N-frame rounded grip profile. It took a lot of patient sanding and polishing to get the fake ivory grips to fit. I like the look.

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.

The double action trigger on the Jovino is incredibly smooth. The slick trigger and the red ramp and white outline sights work together well, and the gun is very accurate. I’ve never seen another one of these guns on the range, so the exclusivity factor is there, too.

Smith and Wesson’s Reincarnated 1917

Smith’s resurrected Model 1917 .45 ACP revolver, shown here with AutoRim ammo.

About 20 years ago Smith and Wesson introduced a reissue of its World War I Model 1917 for a very short time, and as part of that deal, the new Smith included Turnbull color case hardening. I saw one of the Turnbull 1917 revolvers at a local Bass Pro and it sat in the display case for months. Bass Pro had it marked down to $695 and it still hadn’t moved. I asked the kid behind the counter what they would take for it; he read the price tag and told me $695. Would you consider less, I asked. I’d have to ask the manager, he said, looking at me and not moving. Why don’t you do that, I answered. He finally realized his job was to sell stuff and I was a real live customer, so he took off in search of the boss.

“We’ll take 30 off,” Junior said when he returned.

“Is that percent, or dollars?” I asked.

He smiled. “Dollars.” It was still a hell of a deal, so I pulled the trigger. Today if I wanted to sell this gun I could probably get $1500 for it. But I don’t want to sell it, and I never will.

Another view of the 1917, its glorious Turnbull color case hardening, and .45 ACP ammo loaded in clips.

I don’t shoot my Turnbull 1917 all that often; my preference is the Model 625 described below. The 1917 groups well, but its small checkered grips are punishing. This is another cool gun. I’ve never seen another one on the range.

Smith’s Performance Center Model 625

The Performance Center is Smith’s marketing shtick for guns that have been slicked up a bit, which is Smith and Wesson’s way of saying they build Performance Center guns with the attention to detail that used to be standard on all Smith and Wessons. This one has a good trigger, a different barrel contour, blended edges on the front of the cylinder, and probably a few other niceties I can’t remember right now.

This revolver originally had clown-like, awkward, red-white-and-blue grips. I quickly swapped the goofy factory grips for what were advertised as rosewood grips from a third-party vendor (they weren’t rosewood at all; they were instead fabricated of cheap laminated and dyed wood, as I found out when I refinished them). But my custom grips fit my hands much better, and this is an extremely accurate revolver. I also installed a red ramp front sight and a white outline rear site. The white outline rear sight Smith sells today has barely-visible gray lines and the red is not as bright as it used to be, but they are better than the gold dot front sight and plain black rear sight that came on the gun (I don’t like gold dot front sights).

Six rounds at 50 feet, standing, from the Performance Center .45 ACP Model 625. This revolver has grips I refinished and a red ramp and white outline set of sights. The target shown here was shot with the 200-grain semi-wadcutter bullet and 6.0 grains of Unique.

My usual accuracy load for the 625 is a cast 200-grain semiwadcutter bullet (sized to .452 inches) over 4.2 grains of Bullseye. Another load that works well is the same bullet with 6.0 grains of Unique (it’s the load I used on the target above).

After reading about the above Smith and Wesson .45 ACP revolvers, you might have two questions:

- - Which is my favorite?
  - Which do I prefer: A .45 ACP revolver or a 1911?

The answer to both questions is: Yes.

Never miss an ExNotes blog:

Keep us in components!

A Tale of Two More .45s

A couple of weeks ago I tested three .45 ACP loads in a Model 625 Smith and Wesson and my Rock Island Armory Compact 1911 using Winchester’s 231 powder and Jim Gardner’s 230-grain cast roundnose bullets. We’ve done a bunch of accuracy testing in both .45 ACP revolvers and autos with other loads (and you can find those stories here). This blog focuses specifically on Jim’s 230-grain roundnose bullets with Winchester 231 propellant.

Reloaded .45 ACP ammo with Gardner 230-grain cast roundnose bullets. The 230 cast roundnose bullets replicate GI hardball ammo and this bullet feeds in just about any .45 auto.

To get to the point quickly, the Gardner 230-grain cast roundnose bullets did well (as you’ll see below). My testing consisted of three .45 loads with 4.5, 5.0, and 5.6 grains of WW 231 powder:

I was checking for accuracy and functionality in both guns. Here’s what I found:

- The Compact 1911 likes 5.0 grains of 231, and that load functioned best with this powder in the automatic. The slide locked back after the last round the way it is supposed to; it would not do so with 5.6 grains of 231. Getting a short-barreled 1911 to function well is a bit tougher than a full-sized 1911. With 5.0 grains of 231 and the 230-grain cast bullets, my Compact 1911 functions reliably. Your mileage may vary.
- 4.5 grains of 231 functioned okay in the 1911, too, but it is the least accurate load in both the 1911 and the Model 625 (of the three loads that I tested).
- The Model 625 likes both 5.0 and 5.6 grains of 231, with a slight accuracy edge going to the 5.0-grain load (although what you see here is probably more a result of my skills than anything else). The 625 is not as accurate with the lighter 4.5-grain 231 load.

Lyman’s reloading manual has 5.8 grains of 231 as the accuracy load with this bullet, but I didn’t go that high (it was a max load). Like I said, it doesn’t function reliably in the Compact 1911, and my testing showed 5.0 grains to be the Model 625’s sweet spot from an accuracy perspective.

All shots were at 50 feet, and all loads used the Lee factory crimp die (which assures easy chambering in 1917-style revolvers). The loads would do better from a machine rest or a steadier shooter. It was hot out on the range the morning I fired these targets and that probably adversely affected accuracy, too.

Here are the Compact 1911 targets that I shot using the 5.0-grain 231 load:

Compact 1911 results: Close enough for government work. I use Alco targets for this kind of testing; these have four silhouettes per sheet.

The Compact 1911 is not a target gun, but it is accurate enough for its intended purpose. The Rock Compact 1911 is very concealable and it’s the handgun I carry most often. They are surprisingly inexpensive and surprisingly accurate with the right loads.

These are the targets with the Model 625 and 5.6 grains of 231:

The big Smith and Wesson Model 625 worked well with 231 and Jim’s 230-grain roundnose bullets. This is the 5.6-grain target; 5.0 grains of 231 were even more accurate for me.

The Model 625 Smith and Wesson is more accurate than the Compact 1911 (hey, no surprises there). They are both fun guns to shoot.

I usually load .45 ACP ammo with either Unique or Bullseye powder, but I thought I would try 231 just because I had some on hand and I wanted to see how it would do. I have an accuracy load for the Compact 1911 with Bullseye and a 185-grain bullet that we wrote about earlier. Other guys tell me 231 is their preferred .45 ACP propellant and I still had a can of it that I had purchased for the 9mm cast bullet comparo some time ago, so I thought I would give it a try in the two guns featured here. With the sketchy availability of reloading components during these uncertain times, it’s good to know that this powder works well in .45 ACP. But after this test, I’m going to stick with the other two propellants (Unique and Bullseye), assuming I can get them. What I didn’t like about 231 is that it is a sooty powder…I found it to be significantly worse in that regard than Unique.

WW 231 propellant is accurate, but it sure is a dirty powder. My left hand was covered in powder soot after just a few rounds.

I’ve been real happy with Gardner’s bullets. They are less expensive than other cast bullets, the accuracy is good, and I observed no leading in either handgun. I’ll be purchasing Gardner bullets again. If you haven’t tried Jim’s bullets, you might give them a try.

More Tales of the Gun, 1911, 1917, bolt action sporter, milsurp, load data, and other good shooting and reloading posts are here!

Join our Facebook ExNotes group!

Never miss an ExNotes blog…get a free subscription here:

101 years old, and counting…

By Joe Berk

It was one of the ones that got away, that Colt 1917 was, and I regretted it for years. I like to describe some of the firearms I’ve let get away as ones I’ve stupidly sold but I don’t like being redundant, so let’s just say I sold it. It was stupid to sell any of them, and having been on a quest for a decade or so to replace the ones I’ve stupidly sold (oops, there I go again), I can tell you that I’m not selling any of my guns. You might be wondering where I’m going with this story, but wonder no more. It’s all about a magnificent score, in this case, a US Army Colt Model 1917 .45 ACP revolver. To jump ahead for just a second, this is the one that is on its way to being mine…

A magnificent original finish Model 1917 Colt revolver. Those are genuine elk antler grips. What appears to be an unblued area near the front sight is not…read on for more information.

The 1917s are interesting handguns, and yeah, that’s plural. There were two of them: A Colt, and a Smith and Wesson. In a very real sense, they are handguns that were never meant to be. The 1911 Automatic came on the scene in 1911, and the plan was to ultimately incorporate it throughout our Armed Forces. But life is what happens when you’re making plans, and the US Government generally moves slowly. When we entered World War I in 1917, there weren’t enough 1911s to go around, so the US Army turned on Smith and Colt to make their large frame revolvers in .45 ACP, and that’s how the 1917s came to be. It was an emergency measure to make up for what we didn’t have yet, and that was enough 1911s to go around.

Major General James E. Rudder, who carried a Colt 1917 when ascending Normandy’s Pointe du Hoc cliffs on D-Day.

When World War II happened, the US military had plenty of 1911s, but there was at least one soldier who preferred the 1917. Interestingly, I recently read an account in American Rifleman magazine (yeah, I’m a strong NRA supporter and I watch Fox News, too) about 34-year-old Lieutenant Colonel James E. Rudder, who led the U.S. Army Rangers when they scaled the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc in Normandy on D-Day. Colonel Rudder carried a 1917 Colt instead of a 1911 auto (presumably, a 1917 that had been through the arsenal refurb and wore a Parkerized finish). Rudder was an interesting man. He held numerous awards for valor, he retired from the Army as a Major General, and he then went on to become president of Texas A&M University. The American Rifleman article was about Rudder’s 1917 Colt, which he preferred to the 1911 auto because of its greater reliability. Ah, if these guns could talk…

Help us keep the lights on…please click on the popup ads!

In the 1970s, when I was in the US Army stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, I bought a 1917 Colt revolver at the El Paso gun show. I didn’t know too much about these guns then, except that they were large frame revolvers and they didn’t cost too much. I think I paid something like $125 for mine. It was cool. Big, heavy, Parkerized, and it shot the .45 ACP cartridge, a round I had already recognized as the ultimate handgun chambering. I had a .45 auto (a Government Model 1911), and having a revolver chambered for the same round felt like it was the right thing to do. My 1917 had interesting markings…it said US Army, United States Property, and all kinds of cool stuff. I liked it. I shot that revolver for a while, I had fun with it, and then I sold it to someone who wanted it more than I did. I think I got $200 for it, and in those days I fancied myself a Texas wheeler dealer gun guy.

But that 1917 danced around in my head for decades. I liked it and I missed it, and I wished I had kept it. Finally, a few years ago I started hunting for a replacement. The problem is, living here in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia, I couldn’t look outside the left-leaning anti-gun liberal looney bin we call home, as the Model 1917 isn’t on our roster of handguns approved for sale here. If I was to find one, it would have to be one already here in LeftyLand, and that cut my options considerably. I kept an eye on the local gun shops (it’s okay if the gun is already in California, but the way the law is written I couldn’t bring in a 1917 from out of state). I checked Gunbroker.com (the premier site for gun sales) every few weeks. And I watched a California-specific site, Calguns.net. I kept looking, but none of the 1917s I saw looked nice enough for my tastes, or they were out ot state, or they were priced in the stratosphere.

Then I hit paydirt. Big time. I saw the 1917 you see in the photo above in a post on the Calguns.net site a couple of weeks ago. It looked to me like it had been reblued (because my earlier 1917 had been Parkerized and I’d never seen one that wasn’t) and the genuine stag grips were appealing (the 1917s originally wore uncheckered walnut grips). Those genuine stag grips all by themselves are a big ticket item and to me they look like they belong on a 1917. Unoriginal, yeah, but they sure looked good. The reblue (I thought) and the elk grips took away from the gun’s authenticity, but I liked the look. In fact, I liked it a lot.

I sent a message to the advertiser (who became my new good buddy Jim), and I learned that the gun had not been reblued. It wore its original brushed blue finish, and the direction of the brushing was an indication of its originality. The 1917s went through an arsenal refinish between the wars, Jim explained, and that’s when they were Parkerized. The original finish is the one you see in the photos here. I researched what Jim told me, and yup, he had it right. That made the gun even more appealing. (That brushed blue original finish and the brushing direction is what made the area on either side of the front sight look unblued when the camera’s flash hit it, but it is, in fact, blued). This particular 1917 is unfired other than proof rounds at the Colt factory, and this particular handgun was manufactured in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1918. Yep, it is 101 years old. And it’s essentially a new gun.

All right, I decided, I’d most likely never get an opportunity like this again. Jim and I met at Imbert and Smithers in Redwood City to legally transfer ownership, and I was blown away when I saw the revolver in person. It is stunning. The guy behind the counter, a dude about my age, was similarly impressed. “I’ve never seen one in this condition,” he said, and he called the gunsmith over to look at it. I’ll admit it: I like having a gun that’s the center of attention in a circle of folks who know guns. It’s a cool feeling.

Okay, enough bragging with words. Let me do so with a few photos I shot yesterday at the start of my 10-day cooling off period…