Smith and Wesson – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Texas Rangers Smith and Wessons

By Joe Berk

I think it would be difficult to be a firearms enthusiast and not be a student of history. Firearms are history. And some of that history revolves around the Texas Rangers, the oldest and perhaps most legendary law enforcement group in US history. I’ve always been fascinated with the Texas Rangers, starting with their use of the very first Colt Paterson revolvers in combat, the early Captain Samuel Walker days, and the emergence of the Colt Walker black powder revolver.

When I was a kid, we had a steady diet of Westerns on TV and in the movies, and the Texas Rangers figured prominently in many of those shows. I’m a Lonesome Dove fan, having read Larry McMurtry’s novels and watched the television series numerous times. Go Gus and Woodrow (but especially Gus; he carried a Colt Walker).

Robert Duvall as Gus MacCrae in Lonesome Dove, and his Colt Walker.

You would think with the Texas Rangers’ historical and often romanticized use of Colt revolvers, Colt would be all over the Texas Ranger commemorative gun business. They did so in the early 1970s with a very limited run of Single Action Army revolvers, but that was the only time.

Colt’s Texas Rangers 150th Anniversary Commemorative. These guns don’t come up for sale often, and when they do, the price is stratospheric. It’s the only Texas Rangers Commemorative Colt has ever done.

The Texas Rangers commemorative mantle has been picked up by Smith and Wesson, first in 1973 for the Texas Rangers’ 150th anniversary, and again in 2023 for the 200th anniversary. These are beautiful firearms (they are art, in my opinion).

A Texas Rangers 150th Anniversary Smith and Wesson Model 19.

Another view of the Texas Rangers 150th Anniversary Smith and Wesson Model 19.

Jumping back to 1973, Smith and Wesson offered a cased commemorative Model 19 Smith and Wesson along with a Bowie knife. A standard Model 19 cost about $150 back then (I had one); the Texas Rangers Model 19 with display case and matching Bowie knife was a whopping $250. It seems an almost trivial amount today. A standard Model 19 costs around a thousand bucks today, and the Model 19 of today is not the same gun it was in the 1970s. The older ones, as is true with many things in life, are better.

The 200th Anniversary Texas Rangers Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum revolver.

Fast forward to 2023, and Smith and Wesson did it again, with a Texas Rangers 200^th anniversary revolver. This time it’s a highly polished N-frame, fixed sight version. The N-frame is Smith’s big gun frame used on their original .357 Magnum, the Model 27, the .45 ACP revolvers, and the .44 Magnum revolvers. You know, the Big Boy guns for us full-figured shooters.

A real beauty, these 200th Anniversary Texas Rangers Smith and Wessons are.

I’ve been perusing both of these Texas Ranger guns on the gun auction sites. I can get the 1973 version (which was based on the Model 19) for about $1500, which isn’t a bad deal considering you get a more collectible gun, the knife, and the case for not too much more than what a new Model 19 cost today. I’d shoot it, too, if I bought one. And then there’s the current Texas Rangers 200^th Anniversary revolver, built on the N-frame Those are going for around $2500 or more. That a bit pricey, but maybe in 50 years $2500 will be a trivial amount. I’m a firm believer that you can’t pay too much for a gun; you just maybe bought it too early.

A lot of things are different today, and the price for either of the Smith and Wesson Texas Ranger commemoratives is just a starting point here in California. Compounding the felony on both guns is our outrageous California 11% excise tax on firearms and ammo (that little bit of silliness and government overreach went into effect this month), which gets added onto:

- - Our outrageous California state sales tax
  - The federal government’s $40 background check and ATF Form 4473 (the one that Hunter Biden was convicted of falsifying when his sweetheart deal fell apart)
  - The FFL dealer’s $40 transfer fee
  - A $75 shipping fee to get the gun to me here in left wing Utopia (i.e., the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia)

It all adds up to roughly another $700. And all that’s aggravated by the likelihood I couldn’t even get the 200^th Anniversary Texas Rangers commemorative because our California Attorney General hasn’t seen fit to add it to our roster of approved handguns. Even Gomer Pyle wouldn’t know how to react to all these added government fees, but I’m guessing his reaction would be a heartfelt Gosh, or a Golly, or maybe even a Shazam! It’s almost as if California doesn’t agree with the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

But that earlier Texas Rangers Smith and Wesson…the Model 19 150th Anniversary gun. It’s now over 50 years old, and that makes it an antique in California’s all-seeing and all-knowing firearms book of state regs , and antiques are exempt from the Roster of Approved Handguns limitations. I’d still have to pay all the fees described above. But it’s doable, and I’m thinking about it.

You might wonder: Are the Texas Rangers still around, and what sidearm do they carry? The answer is yes; the Texas Rangers are part of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Texas Rangers are issued a SIG 320 (a 9mm semi-auto), but they are allowed to carry their personal sidearms. Many choose to carry the 1911.

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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.

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Lipsey’s Ultimate Carry J-Frame

By Joe Berk

Good buddy Paul sent this very recently released video from Lipsey’s to me last night:

The video is just under 10 minutes long and it’s worth watching. To me, this new J-frame Smith addresses most of the shortcomings I’ve noticed with my concealed carry J-frame revolver. Here are my thoughts:

- I like it.
- The ideal of a .30 caliber 6-shot is intriguing (in addition to the 5-shot .38 Special version Lipsey’s is also offering). I know most concealed carry handgun encounters are settled in less than two shots, but having an extra round (one over the standard 5 shots) makes sense to me.
- I notice the grips don’t go below the bottom of the grip frame, which would be a problem for me. Getting my little finger caught under the grip frame is what makes shooting a J-frame revolver uncomfortable (in fact, it’s downright painful after a shot or two). I do like the G10 material grips, though. I have those on my Sig Scorpion 226 and it is the best grip material ever, in my opinion. I would like a set of G10 grips that extend lower than the bottom of the grip frame, like the Altamont grips I put on my J-frame. These would be very comfortable.
- The sights are a much-needed upgrade. The stock Model 60 and other J-frame sights are a joke.
- The aluminum frame means light weight, which I guess is good for carrying the gun all day, but those little J-frames can have fierce recoil. My stainless steel Model 60 packs a punch; the aluminum version recoil will be worse. I suppose the assumption for most is that the gun will be carried more than it is shot, and that makes sense. But, still, that’s going to be a lot of recoil.
- The J-frame endurance package is sorely needed. I shot the hell out of my Model 60 doing rapid fire at 7 yards and it quickly went seriously out of time. That was an expensive fix. Mine also had excessive headshake. I was able to address it with a shim kit, but it should not have been necessary.

It will be interesting to see what this new Lipsey’s/Smith and Wesson J-frame revolver costs and if it gets approved in California. My prediction is that Lipsey’s will later release a .357 Magnum version (not that anyone would need it, but it would probably sell well). I also predict a 9mm version. 9mm is the most popular centerfire handgun cartridge in the world, and I believe a 9mm version would sell well, too.

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Home on the range…

The stream crossing to the West End Gun Club has been too deep to cross in my Subie Outback since early January. I tried it once back then and I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

My January Meyer Canyon Road mishap. The Subie is not a submarine and I am not a U-boat commander, although we both came close that morning.

I’ve been going to the Magnum Range in Ontario (an indoor pistol range), watching the West End website for updates and occasionally driving out to check the stream. The Magnum Range is a good place to shoot, but I missed shooting my rifles. Then a good thing happened earlier this week: Good buddy Duane offered to pick me up and attempt a stream crossing in his Toyota 4×4. I was in.

Duane’s Toyota 4×4. It’s an impressive vehicle.

I’ve known Duane for years, going back to my work with CSC Motorcycles in their early days of the replica Mustangs and the RX3 250cc adventure bike. Duane and I both owned the CSC bikes and we traveled extensively on them.

The Meyer Canyon Road stream crossing was still deep and the water was moving swiftly, but Duane’s Toyota had no problem crossing it.

I knew which rifle I wanted to shoot when I received Duane’s email invitation: My Mosin-Nagant 91/30. It’s the one you see at the top of this blog. The Mosin is a favorite. It’s accurate, I reload 7.62x54R ammo, and it is fun to shoot.

My Mosin-Nagant 91/30. The Russians built 17 million of these rifles. They are becoming hard to get and prices have risen substantially. These rifles are surprisingly accurate.

I’ve owned this Mosin rifle for maybe 10 years now. It came about almost as an afterthought. To me, the Mosins appeared to be cheap pieces of junk. Then one day after a class about engineering creativity, a student asked about the cover photo on a book I wrote. He told me he and his father owned a Mosin and enjoyed shooting the rifle. I saw a Mosin on the rack at a sporting goods store a short while later for $139. It looked crude, but for $139, I thought I’d take a chance. The guy who sold it to me did not know there was a bayonet in the Mosin’s cardboard box, and when he put the rifle back in its box, the bayonet scratched the stock. Neither of us knew this until 10 days later (after California’s silly waiting period). The store offered to sell me a different Mosin, but that meant starting the 10-day waiting period all over again. I viewed the scratch as an opportunity, and indeed it was. I refinished the stock (10 coats of TruOil worked nicely). Then I glass bedded the action, reworked the trigger, polished the bolt, and worked up a load. It was fun and I learned much about the rifle. Mine has matching numbers on the receiver, the butt plate, and the bolt. I know it’s weird: I own some really nice rifles, but the Mosin is one of the ones I love the most.

Serial Number 2339, built in 1940. Production rates ramped up sharply in 1940, but this rifle was built before that occurred. Fit and finish nosedived that year; mine is one of the good ones.

When Duane and I arrived at the range, I set up a target at 50 yards. Like always, shooting the Mosin felt good. It had been too long.

Duane is a milsurp rifle enthusiast, too. He has a beautiful 8mm Mauser K98 that his uncle took home from Germany after World War II. I keep trying to buy it from him. He keeps saying no.

Nazi markings on the Mauser’s barrel and receiver.

Like me, Duane is a reloader. He had reloaded reduced loads for our outing. A reduced load is one loaded for lower velocity, which means the rifle has significantly less recoil. One of Duane’s loads had cast bullets. The other had jacketed 150-grain bullets. Both were loaded with Trail Boss powder, and both shot well.

8mm Mauser reloaded ammunition. The upper rounds have 150-grain jacketed soft point bullets, the lower rounds have 150-grain cast bullets.

As soon as Duane fired his first shots, I knew he had reduced-load ammo. Check it out in the video below.

Duane and I both brought handguns, and to my surprise, we both decided to bring our Smith and Wesson 9mm Shields. I’ve written about the Shield before, as well as the custom work TJ (of TJs Custom Gunworks) did on my Shield. I shot my Shield at 50 yards. Using a short-barreled 9mm concealed carry handgun at 50 yards is not a formula for accuracy, but I managed to keep all of my shots on the target. The group was large, but at least they were on the paper.

My Shield in flat dark earth. I shot my reloaded ammo with Gardner powder-coated bullets.

My Sheild and Duane’s. Duane’s has a Crimson Trace laser just forward of the trigger guard. The laser is actuated by a pushbutton below the trigger.

One of the things I like about my Shield is its bright sights. Duane’s Shield has white dot sights and a green Crimson Trace laser mounted beneath the slide. The laser is a cool touch for close in work. My Shield has high visibility fiber optic sights (they catch light from the side and light up green and red dots). They’re good if there’s any light at all. If there’s no light, the sights don’t light, but if there’s no light, it’s not likely you’d be shooting.

A comparison of the sights on both Shields. My pistol’s Hi Viz sights are the best I’ve ever used on a handgun.

Before we called it a day, Duane let me try a couple of shots with his Mauser. I shot at the same 50-yard target I’d been using with my Shield and the Mosin-Nagant.

The proof is on the paper. The upper red circle surrounds the shots I fired with my Mosin-Nagant (with one exception, all are in the 10 ring…that one exception was the first shot I fired). The circle around the two shots below were mine, fired with Duane’s 8mm Mauser and his reduced-load ammo. All the other shots were with the Smith and Wesson 9mm Shield.

After the West End Gun Club visit, we stopped at our local Mexican restaurant. I had albondigas soup and a chile relleno. As always, both were outstanding.

A toasted chile relleno. It was excellent.

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Shield Savvy

By Joe Berk

I promised an update on my Smith and Wesson 9mm Shield, and this is it. I’ve put 2,500+ rounds through the Shield (all reloads with different bullets and powders). Until I recently took my Shield to good buddy TJ, I was growing increasingly dissatisfied with the pistol’s frequent failures to extract, and I wasn’t alone. If you Google “failure to extract” and “Smith and Wesson Shield” you’ll find a lot of people are having this issue. My problem is in the rearview mirror, though, and my Shield is 100% reliable now. That’s because of TJ. I’ll get to that in a minute.

That target above? It’s 50 rounds at 30 feet through my Shield, shooting offhand. If you’re a reloader, here are the load specifics:

- - Jim Gardner 125 grain powder coated roundnose bullets (Jim sized these to 0.356 inch, which is his standard bullet).
  - Cartridge overall length 1.145 inches.
  - 5.4 grains of Accurate No. 5 propellant.
  - Lee factory taper crimp (light crimp; see below).
  - Ammo loaded on Lee Classic 4-Turret press.
  - Mixed brass.

Ordinarily, I tailor a load to the handgun, and I thought I would be able to do that relatively easily with the Shield. I found that not to be the case. The Shield seemed accurate enough with nearly every load I tried, but nearly all had reliability issues. On the low end, the lighter loads didn’t have enough energy to cycle the action (a common enough problem on compact semi-autos). Light, mid range, and hot loads all gave the Shield extraction issues. The Shield experienced a failure to extract about every other magazine. It was very frustrating. I scoured the Internet forums for this issue and the opinions were all over the map. Here’s a smattering of the drivel I found:

- - Don’t use Winchester ammo because the rims are smaller (I measured them; that was baloney).
  - Don’t use cast bullets because they hang up (I knew that was baloney).
  - Don’t shoot aluminum ammo (which I never do, anyway).
  - Don’t shoot 115-grain bullets.
  - Don’t shoot 125-grain bullets.
  - Don’t shoot 147-grain bullets.
  - Clean your gun after every round (seriously?).
  - Don’t limp wrist your gun (again, seriously?).
  - Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t do this other thing…
  - Do this, do that, do this other thing…

It was all written by people who apparently love the sound of their keyboards clacking. None of it was useful information. I felt stupid for wasting my time reading it.

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What I found was that the extraction problem occurred more with powder coated bullets than either plated or jacketed bullets. Other than that, there wasn’t a lot of correlation between any of the load variables I could play with and the gun’s failure to extract propensity. Then, during one range visit when I had a failure to extract, I fell back on my failure analysis background. I put the loaded gun down on the bench (being careful to keep it pointed downrange) and took a photo with my iPhone.

A cartridge case caught during extraction on the mouth of the case immediately below it.

Wow. How about that? It was apparent that the case being extracted was hanging up on the case mouth of the round still in the magazine, and it was a strong enough obstacle to pull the extractor off the rim. This brought up a lot of questions in my mind centered on the crimp and the bullet. The Gardner bullets have a slight ramped step just north of the crimp. And when I crimp a bullet for a semi-auto, I put a slight taper crimp on it with the Lee taper crimp die. I want enough of a crimp to remove the case mouth flare (part of the reloading process to assure the bullet will enter the case mouth without shaving lead or copper), and enough to assure the cartridge will chamber easily. Maybe I didn’t have enough crimp, I thought, and that was causing the case being extracted to hang up.

One of my reloaded 9mm rounds with a taper crimp and a Gardner powder-coated bullet.

I examined my ammo and I thought it looked good (actually, I thought it looked great; like most reloaders, I enjoy looking at my finished ammo). But, to make sure, I loaded another box with as much taper crimp as I could get out of the Lee die. Lee is right when they say their taper crimp die makes it impossible to deform a case: I put a very pronounced crimp on all the cartridges in the next box of ammo. But that wasn’t the answer, and it created a new problem. With a semi-auto like the 9mm or the .45 Auto, the cartridge headspaces on the case mouth. When I used a more pronounced crimp, I started getting misfires. The rounds were going too far into the chamber, and the firing pin wasn’t igniting the primers reliably. Nope, more crimp wasn’t the answer.

At this point, I was getting a little frustrated. All these problems aside, I wanted to like my Shield. I wanted to use it as my concealed carry weapon, so I needed the thing to be reliable. Faced with this issue, I knew it was time for what works every time: A visit to TJ’s Custom Gunworks.

TJ examined the Shield. He observed that the magazine positions the first cartridge in the magazine unusually high in the gun, and that was probably aggravating the failures to extract. But there’s not really anything you can do about that. It’s the gun’s design. It is what it is.

The Shield’s magazine sits relatively high.

A loaded round waiting to chamber when the Shield’s slide returns to battery.

TJ then took a look at the extractor. It was pretty dirty with combustion residue, but he felt it should work. TJ, honest as always, told me he could polish the ramp and the chamber (they come from the factory pretty rough), but he didn’t know if that would fix the failures to extract. I asked TJ to proceed.

A photo from TJ showing how dirty my extractor was. Even though it was funky (shame on me), TJ felt it would not have caused the extractor to slip off the case rim.

Here are a couple of photos of the chamber and the ramp as they come from the Smith and Wesson factory. The Shield always fed and chambered reliably; it was only the extraction that was an issue. TJ explained that if the chamber is rough, it can hang on to the fired case as it is being extracted. I’ve experienced that on other guns. The Shield’s chamber and its ramp looked about like I’d expect them to look on a mass-produced pistol, which is to say not very good. I asked TJ to work his magic on both the ramp and the chamber.

The Shield’s feed ramp and chamber as delivered from the factory. Rough, but not ready.

Another view of the factory Shield feed ramp. It looks like it might have been cut by hand with a dull chisel.

TJ did his usual excellent job, and here’s what things look like now.

What a good ramp looks like. Slick. Smooth. Shiny.

TJ told me he also put a slight undercut on the extractor to allow it to get a better grasp on the case rim.

The Shield’s extractor, as seen from the bottom. This is the piece that pulls the fired case out of the chamber. TJ undercut the area indicated by the arrow to give the extractor a better grip on the case.

I picked up my Shield a few days later and went to the range that afternoon. The Shield is now what it is supposed to be. You saw the target at the top of this blog. I fired 50 rounds without a single failure to extract and eject. The gun just feels a lot smoother and slicker now. My Gardner bullet and Accurate No. 5 load is perfect. And the recut extractor drops the cartridges in one nice small pile on the floor behind me. Wow. I’m impressed. Then, just to make sure (and because I was having so much fun) I fired another box of 50 rounds (again, with ammo loaded on the Lee Classic Turret press using the load at the top of this page).

Another target, another 50 rounds. Reliable as death and taxes, and accurate. Now, the Shield is as it should have been from the factory (thanks to TJ).

The Lee Classic Turret press does a magnificent job, and now, so does my Smith and Wesson Shield. It’s the way the pistol should have come from the factory.

It’s bothersome that most of my recent gun purchases have required additional work to get them to perform the way they should. In my former life as an aerospace manufacturing guy, I used to manage organizations with machine shops. I know it would cost a little more for the gun companies to do the kind of things TJ did to my Shield (and several other guns, for that matter). I wish the gun companies would do that; they ought to just hire TJ as a consultant (he knows what they need to do). The bottom line here? If you have a Smith and Wesson Shield and you want it to be what it is supposed to be, get in touch with TJ.

There are a lot of things I like about the Shield. Accuracy and illuminated sights are at the top of the list. You can get a feel for its accuracy from the targets shown here. None of this was bench rested; it was all shooting offhand on an indoor range with banging and clanging and brass flying all around me.

I found that after firing a a box of ammo, gunshot residue tends to occlude the sides, front, and rear of the front sight, and that causes the red to glow a lot less. But that’s a minor point. The Shield’s high visibility sights are great.

Holstered, the S&W Shield is about the same size as the Rock Island Compact 1911.

Another Shield-to-Compact-1911 comparison: The holstered Shield on top of the holstered 1911. Length and height are about the same.

The Shield is narrower than the 1911, and much lighter. It should be easier to carry concealed.

I bought a Bianchi leather holster for the Shield. It’s similar to the Bianchi I use with my Compact 1911. When I put the Shield in its holster I was surprised: It’s really not any smaller than my Compact 1911. It’s a bit narrower, but by the time both guns are holstered, the overall width is about the same. Where the Shield has a clear advantage, though, is weight. And even though the Shield with its polymer frame is much lighter than the Compact 1911, the recoil is quite a bit less than the .45. Now that the Shield has been made more reliable by TJ, it will make a good concealed carry gun. Incidentally, TJ worked his magic on my 1911, too. It’s one of the most reliable handguns I’ve ever owned.

Ten rounds from the Compact 1911, ten from the Model 60, and ten from the Shield. All are in the 10 ring, 28 of the 30 are in the X-ring.

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The last Betty…

Some days at the range I don’t feel like punishing myself with heavy recoil or trying to shoot the tightest possible groups with loads that have been tuned to perfection. Nope, shooting is fun, and sometimes blasting through a box of ammo is just what the doctor ordered.

A few years ago when we were organizing military surplus rifle fun matches, good buddy Paul showed up with a bunch of zombie targets. Paul called the zombie Boris and the hostage Betty, and the names stuck. We had targets left after the match, and yesterday I shot the very last one.

I had my trusty Model 60 Smith and Wesson and a box of 100 .38 Specials I had loaded on my Star progressive reloader. They were Gardner Cache powder-coated 148-grain wadcutters with 2.7 grains of Bullseye (the go to accuracy load in .38 Special). I set ol’ Boris and Betty up on the 7-yard line and proceeded to double-action my way through 20 cylinders’ worth of ammo (the cylinder in a Model 60 holds 5 rounds). There was not a single misfire in the entire 100 rounds, and more importantly, not a single one of them hit Betty. Boris…he didn’t fare so well.

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Two Bodacious Belly Guns

Not too long ago, I posted the Model 60 handjob blog, which was a story about fitting a new hand to the revolver to correct an out-of-time situation. When I took the reworked Model 60 to the West End Gun Club to check its performance, I brought along my Rock Island Compact 1911. Both guns are on my concealed carry permit and I thought it might be cool to rapid fire on the police qualification target at 7 yards.

As you can see from the photo above, the guns appear to be comparably sized, but that photo is a bit misleading. I don’t feel like I’m printing with the Compact 1911 (you know, allowing the gun’s outline to standout against my shirt), but the 1911 does hang heavier and it presents a bigger shape under an untucked shirt. I’ll get to the specs of both guns in a minute, but first let’s take a look at how they compare on target. The first target is the Model 60; the second is the Rock Island Compact 1911.

50 rounds, rapid fire, at 7 yards from the Smith and Wesson Model 60 (all fired double action).

50 rounds, rapid fire, at 7 yards from the .45 ACP Rock Island Compact 1911.

I shot both targets using a two-hand hold from the standing position. Both are accurate and close enough, as they say, for government work.

The loads were fairly stiff. I used a cast 158-grain truncated cone bullet with 4.4 grains of Unique propellant for my .38 Special ammo, and a 185-grain cast semiwadcutter bullet with 5.0 grains of Bullseye for the .45 ACP. Given the choice, I wouldn’t want to be hit by either one. But I’m betting that the 1911 hits harder.

.38 Special and .45 ACP reloads. Both were fairly stout. The 158-grain truncated conical bullet .38 Special loads are potent. The .45 ACP semiwadcutters come from Jim Gardner’s casting operation, and they are accurate and hard hitting.

The Model 60 Smith and Wesson weighs 19 ounces empty and it carries 5 rounds (which adds another 1.8 ounces, for a total of just under 21 ounces). The 1911 weighs 34.6 ounces empty and it carries 7 rounds in its 7-round mags (that adds another 3 ounces, for a total of 37.6 ounces). The loaded 1911 weighs almost twice as much as the loaded Smith and Wesson revolver. Anything you measure in ounces may not seem like a lot, but trust me, when you carry it all day, it is. From a weight perspective, the Model 60 has an advantage.

I know all you keyboard commandos want to tell me I could carry 8 rounds in the 1911, but I won’t carry with a loaded chamber in a semi-auto. Save your breath if you think I should. The Israelis don’t carry with a round chambered and they seem to know what they’re doing, we didn’t carry with a round chambered when I was in the Army, and I’ve seen more than a few accidental discharges from folks who carried with a round chambered in a semi-auto handgun. Nope, it’s an empty chamber for me. Your mileage may vary.

From an accuracy perspective, you can see from the targets above that I shoot the 1911 better. I don’t think the 1911 is inherently more accurate than the Model 60. But in my hands, and with my old eyes, I can hold a tighter group with a 1911. Most of that has to do with my 1911’s sights. I have a red ramp/white outline set of Millet sights that good buddy TJ (of TJ’s Custom Guns) installed on my 1911, and those things are the best handgun sights I’ve ever used. The Model 60’s sights…well, let’s just say it’s a game of hide and seek with them. The 1911 gets the nod from an accuracy perspective.

You might think 7 versus 5 rounds is a tremendous advantage. On paper, maybe. In real life, the average number of rounds fired by a concealed carry permit holder in a confrontation is less than 2 rounds. It’s kind of a draw from a capacity perspective, at least from my perspective. If you’re a keyboard commando, you may feel differently. Go post your opinions on Facebook; they need folks like you.

So what’s my preference? Most of the time, it’s the 1911, but I love both of these handguns.

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A Model 60 Hand Job

You know, you can have a lot of fun dreaming up titles for blogs. When I told good buddy Mike about this one, he’s the guy who suggested the above. Yeah, it’s racy, but it’s not what you think. This blog is about timing. Life, success, good comedy, and a host of other things are all about timing.

Take revolvers, for instance. Timing is critically important. For a revolver, timing refers to having the chamber precisely aligned with the barrel when the hammer drops. If it’s not, the barrel becomes a salami slicer, which is good if you’re a mohel but bad if you’re a shooter (or another shooter on the firing line).

Take a look at that lead shaving in the photo above. It’s what squeaked out of my Model 60 and went sideways at high velocity between the cylinder and the barrel. It did that because the revolver went out of time. Primers can be another indication of incorrect revolver timing, as shown in the photo below. When the firing pin’s primer indentations are offset like you see here it means you’ve got trouble in River City (or anyplace else you’re firing the revolver).

This blog explains how to correct an incorrectly timed revolver. We’ll start, as always, by making damn sure the gun is unloaded. Once we’re satisfied it is unloaded, the next steps are to remove the revolver’s grips and sideplate. The grips detach with a single screw. Three screws secure the sideplate, and each of them is different. The one at the rear of the sideplate is easy to distinguish because it has a flathead to fit under grips. The other two have domed heads, but they are not identical. The screw at the front of the sideplate is dimensioned such that it locks the yoke in position fore and aft, but it allows it to rotate. If you switch the two domed screws when you reassemble the revolver, the cylinder will not swing out of the frame freely.

Once the grips and sideplate screws are out, don’t try to pry the sideplate off the revolver frame. Hold the revolver over your workbench with the sideplate facing down, and give the left side of the grip frame a few sharp whacks with a plastic mallet or a screwdriver handle. The sideplate will drop out, and the transfer bar will drop with it.

After the grips and the sideplate are off, here’s what the guts of a Model 60 look like. The transfer bar is the piece denoted by the left arrow. It will probably have already fallen off the gun when you removed the sideplate. Our focus in this blog will be on the hand, which is the piece noted by the red arrow on the right in the photo below. The hand will pivot counterclockwise in the photo below. Rotate the hand counterclockwise and you can lift it out.

The hand is what moves upward as you pull the trigger or cock the hammer. It fits through a slot in the revolver’s frame to engage the little nubs on the cylinder’s ejector.

Here’s what the hand looks like after you have taken it out of the revolver. The hand on the left (in the photo below) is the one that was in the revolver and Model 60 to go out of time; the one on the right is a brand new one.

You can see there’s a big difference in length between the old and the new hands. I bought my new hand from MidwayUSA.com. It was about $25.

The next steps involve removing most of the revolver’s internal pieces. You don’t have to do this to get the hand out of the gun, but you will have to remove and reinstall several internal components several times to properly fit the hand. This involves checking both single and double action function testing, disassembling, removing very small amounts of material from the upper part of the hand, reassembling, and repeating the process several times until the revolver is functioning satisfactorily.

We’re going to remove the hammer spring and yoke using the same paper clip custom tool we used for installing the lighter hammer spring (denoted by the left arrow). Those other two arrows denote where the hand’s two bottom pins fit into the trigger. We’ll come back to that later.

This next two photos show the hand’s bottom pins. The third pin is a stop. We’ll come back to that later, too.

At this point, push the revolver’s cylinder release forward, lower the cylinder out of the frame, and slide the yoke and the cylinder off the revolver.

We’ll next remove the revolver’s hammer. It lifts out to the right. Then we get to the trigger spring and rebound slide. It’s tricky. It’s the piece just below the hammer in the photo below. Note that it has a spring acting against a post at the rear. After you have removed the hand and the hammer, you can pry the rebound slide away from the revolver’s frame, but make sure you cover that spring. If you don’t, it will go flying. Don’t ask me how I know.

Here’s the trigger spring and rebound slide after removal from the revolver.

At this point, you can lift the trigger out of the revolver.

This is where things get even more tricky. We’ll fit the new hand to the revolver. Doing so will require installing it as delivered to get a rough feel for how much material we need to remove from the hand, reassembling the revolver to check functionality, disassembling again to remove the hand, stoning the upper surface down a little, reassembling, and repeating the process. It took me three assembly/disassembly/reassembly cycles to get it where it needed to be. Slow and gentle is the approach here. You can take material off the hand; you can’t put it back on. Take too much off, and you’ll ruin the new hand.

The first thing we need to do during the reassembly step is install the new hand in the trigger, and that’s tricky, too. There’s a tiny torsion spring in the trigger, and its purpose is to keep the hand pressed forward against the extractor. You can see the red arrows pointing to the spring in the photo below.

That little spring needs to be on top of the hand’s smaller lower post, and in order to get it there, the easiest way is to push it up from beneath the trigger before you attempt to install the hand, rest the spring on the side of the trigger, install the hand, and then push the spring back into the trigger. Here’s what it looks like with the spring pushed on the side of the trigger.

After you have inserted the hand into the trigger (as you see above), you can then push the spring back into the trigger’s slot.

We are now ready to start the fitting process. Put everything back together again except the transfer bar, the sideplate, and the grips. When you reinstall the rebound bar, make sure the little shaft that extends from the rear of the trigger engages the cavity in the front of the rebound bar. You can see that cavity in the photo below.

When you look at the revolver from the rear, you’ll see the hand inside the revolver frame slot, and how it moves up and down when the hammer is cocked (if you are firing single action) or when the trigger is pulled all the way to the rear (if you are firing double action). The hand acts against the little nubs on the extractor to rotate the cylinder. You can see one of the extractor nubs in the photo below.

On a new hand, the hand will most likely be too long. The revolver may or may not rotate the cylinder when you actuate the trigger in a double action mode, and the hand probably will not actuate the cylinder when you cock the hammer as if you were firing in the single action mode. That is because the hand is so long it slides along the rear of the extractor nubs without dropping in between them, which it needs to do to ratchet the cylinder so the next round comes into battery. In the photo above, you can see a little bright witness mark at the bottom of the upper red arrowhead where this occurred.

We next disassemble the revolver’s guts as described above to fit the hand to the revolver. We’ll remove a bit of hand material from its top portion using a stone. I angled the top edge of the hand. Here’s what that looks like.

The lower arrow in the photo immediately above shows where I removed hand material. The upper arrow shows the hand’s angled surface that completes the cylinder’s advance. Leave this area alone.

The photo above presents another look at the same angled portion of the hand as it is delivered. The red arrow points to the area where I removed material to fit the hand to the revolver. The larger angled area is how the hand came from the factory. It looks rough as hell, like it is begging to be polished, but I left that part alone and my revolver is silky smooth.

After we’ve done the above assemble/check/disassemble/remove hand material a few times, you’ll get to where the revolver looks the cylinder in place right where it is supposed to be (you’ll need to reinstall the cylinder and yoke to do this). What we want to do is put your finger on the cylinder so that it has a little drag while cocking the hammer. When the hammer is fully to the rear, the bolt at the bottom of the cylinder should click into place. Then we want to do the same thing (put your finger on the cylinder to impart a little drag) and pull the trigger to the rear double action style. The bolt should snick into the cylinder just before the hammer falls.

When you think you’re there based on the above checks, it’s time to fully reassemble the revolver. Lay the revolver on its left side and place the transfer bar on top of the hammer as you see in the photo below. You have to have the transfer bar all the way up so the pin in engages is at the bottom of the transfer bar slot. If you don’t have it positioned as you see below, the sideplate will not fit back on the revolver.

After doing the above, good buddy Paul suggests loading dummy rounds in your Model 60 to make sure it cycles correctly. Before you go to the range after doing this kind of work, it’s a good idea to take some fired cases and cycle them through the gun in both single action and double action modes. If you have some with the primer indentations off center (as shown in the photo at the start of this blog), check to make sure that the new indentations are now more centered (they were on my Model 60). DO NOT put live primers in an otherwise empty case for this test; they can back out of the cartridge case and lock the gun. You also want to make sure that there’s no interference between the new hand and the case rims. I haven’t encountered this on a Smith and Wesson revolver; Paul has on a Taurus revolver.

I used the fired empty cases you see in the photo near the top of this blog (the ones with the off-center primer strikes) and cycled five through single action, and another five through double action. The gun cycled flawlessly, and the previously fired cases now had primer indentations in the center of the primers. Things were looking good, but the real test would be on the range.

I set up a police qualification target at 7 yards and pumped a box of ammo (5o rounds) through the Model 60 shooting double action rapid fire. Wow, was I pleased with the on-target results.

After the first few cylinders of ammo, I looked at the forcing cone around the frame. Unlike earlier, when there was a heavy lead spatter pattern on the right side of the frame only, the spatter was now evenly distributed around the forcing cone. That’s another indication that the cylinder was centered in the forcing cone (i.e., aligned with the barrel). Things were looking good.

I then examined the primer indentations in fired cases. They were smack dab in the center of the primer, right where they should be.

And folks, that’s it. This revolver is between 50 and 60 years old, and it’s now as good as new. It’s a favored handgun and it does good work, as that target above attests.

Watch the blog, as the Model 60 will continue to appear here. It’s just too good and too much fun to relegate to the safe.

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Whole lotta end shakin’ going on…

I love my S&W Model 60 and I shoot it a lot. It’s particularly cool after I had TJ (of TJ’s Custom Gunworks) do an action job on it. Not content to leave well enough alone, I convinced myself that (after tracing the occasional double action misfire to not-fully-seated primers) that what I really needed was a lighter hammer spring (in addition to the lighter trigger spring I had already installed). Wolff Springs sells a lighter hammer spring kit, and I went for the lightest hammer spring I could get.

The Wolff Springs hammer spring kit. I went with the lightest spring.

The lighter trigger spring affects single action trigger pull after you have already cocked the gun and it has nothing to do with the occasional double action misfiring I had experienced in the past. Double action trigger pull is affected by both the trigger spring and the hammer spring, but the hammer spring is a much beefier spring and it drives most of the resistance when firing double action. The hammer spring, if too light, can induce misfires.

The Wolff hammer spring kit includes a standard strength spring (an 8 1/2-pound spring), a heavier spring (a 9-pound spring), and a lighter spring (an 8-pound spring). I wanted a lighter double action pull, so I used the 8-pound spring. The tradeoff is this puts less force on the hammer, which means it has lower velocity when it hits home, and that ups the likelihood of a misfire.

The hammer spring is easy to change, and if necessary, I can go for either of the two heavier springs at the range. All it takes is a small screwdriver to remove the grips, and the same exotic custom tool used for disassembling the Rock Island Compact 1911 (a bent paper clip). The photos below show how this is done.

The Model 60’s hammer spring, with the hammer in the uncocked position.

The Model 60’s hammer spring, with the hammer cocked. Note that the hammer yoke (the rod running through the center of the hammer spring) has been pushed back, exposing a hole in the rod.

A high tech, German tool steel special assembly/disassembly aid? Nah, it’s a bent paper clip and it works gang busters.

To remove the hammer spring yoke and the hammer spring, insert the paper clip into the yoke and gently release the hammer by pulling the trigger and lowering the hammer.

With the hammer dropped, the spring is captured in a compressed mode and the hammer spring and the yoke can be removed from the gun. Once this subassembly is removed, you can manually push the spring cap to further compress the spring, remove the paper clip, remove the spring cap and spring, and install the lighter hammer spring. Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.

While installing the new hammer spring, I noticed that my normal gun cleaning routine just wasn’t cutting it on the Model 60. There was still a bit of lead in the barrel, and the powder residue was building up around the yoke. I selected a bronze bristled toothbrush and went to work on the cylinder, the yoke, and the frame, and a bronze bore bush for the bore. When the remnants of gunfights past were gone (you know, my encounters with zombies, as previously described), I spritzed the gun with the universal cleaner (WD40) and then I wiped it down before applying gun oil.

That’s when I noticed that the barrel-to-cylinder gap was nonexistent. Zip. Nada. Zero. The front of the cylinder was touching the rear of the barrel. Uh oh. That’s no good. There’s supposed to be a gap there (like you see in the photo below), because if there’s no gap the cylinder will drag on the barrel. That will degrade the double action trigger pull and, in a worst-case scenario, it can drive the revolver out of time (the chamber won’t be aligned with the barrel). The technical term for the fore-and-aft cylinder movement that assures a minimum clearance when the cylinder is fully forward is called end shake. There needs to be some, and there needs to be a gap. Ideally, that should be 0.004 to 0.008 inches. Any less, and powder and lead residue will bind the cylinder, any more and too much gas escapes (and velocity suffers).

The barrel-to-cylinder gap. This is about .004-inch with the cylinder pushed forward, and that’s the gap I want. This was after I installed the TriggerShims.com cylinder shim.

You measure the barrel-to-cylinder gap with a feeler gage, just like you would when setting the valves on a motorcycle. I’ve done that (as you know from reading this blog and any of the CSC shop manuals), and I already had the feeler gages I needed.

My feeler gage. I’ve probably owned this tool for 40 years. It still works. I use it for adjusting valves on my Royal Enfield, too.

After a bit of internet research, I learned that the way to address inadequate gap is by shimming the cylinder and its fit on the yoke. That’s when I first learned there’s a business that specializes in making shims for this exact purpose. In short order I was communicating with Lance Shively, who heads TriggerShims.com.

The cylinder shims from TriggerShims.com. They were well packaged and sent in a standard business envelope.

The cylinder shims out of the pack. I ordered the four-piece set because I had not worked with these before, I didn’t know what I would need, and they were inexpensive. They are color coded by size.

Lance and his wife, Tammy, run a real Mom and Pop operation that manufactures gun specific shims for a living. Lance has an extensive background in small engine repair and tool and die making, and he and Tammy parlayed that into TriggerShims, which has been doing well for more than 14 years now. Lance told me his primary concern is customer satisfaction, and I can tell you my perception in working with TriggerShims is they have mastered it. I had the Model 60 custom end shake shims in three days, there was no postage charge, and the price was more than reasonable for custom gun parts. Lance runs a Christian business, he believes in God and country, and he’s not bashful about letting people know that. He and Tammy also sell select items from other vendors when he finds a company he likes and believes in, but that is a very select group. The two biggest ones are Wolff and Volquartsen.

I received the shims I ordered from Lance in just a few days, and installation was trivially easy. I had to remove the yoke, disassemble the ejector rod from the extractor, install the shim I wanted to use (I went with a single .003-inch shim to give the clearance I wanted), and then reassemble everything. It only took a few minutes, and the only tricky part was remembering that the ejector rod had a left-hand thread.

This screw has to be removed to allow removal of the yoke and cylinder from the revolver. You don’t need to remove the revolver’s side plate.

With the yoke removed, you unscrew the ejector rod (the knurled piece you push on to eject empty brass from the cylinder) and everything comes apart. Hold on to the ejector rod as you unscrew it so parts won’t fly away, and remember that it is a left-hand thread.

The cylinder shim(s) fit beneath the extractor spring. They are pushed into the cylinder by the extractor spring as the cylinder and yoke subassembly are reassembled. The shim(s) position the cylinder further to the rear, increasing the barrel-to-cylinder gap.

TriggerShims.com manufactures over 100 firearm-specific shims with thicknesses from .002-inch to .007-inch, with some specialty items as thick as .010-inch and as thin as .0015-inch. Lance sends shims worldwide, with Australia and Canada being the biggest international customers (he also ships to more than 100 other countries).

Lance and I had a good conversation, during which he told me he enjoyed exploring the ExhaustNotes site and our blog. One thing led to another, and TriggerShims.com is our newest advertiser. You’ll see the TriggerShims.com logo on the ExNotes blog and all ExNotes pages, and Lance asked if he could post links to some of our Tales of the Gun stories on the TriggerShims.com site. Hey, you bet, Lance, and welcome aboard.

I had the Model 60 on the range yesterday morning, and it is a much smoother running revolver. I confirmed another issue I’ve experienced on this revolver before, and that’s a slightly out-of-time situation when firing double action (probably induced by the cylinder drag described above). That’s going to take a new hand to correct (“hand” is the nomenclature used for the part that advances the cylinder). The replacement hand is on order, and there will be another Model 60 blog coming up in a couple of weeks on it. As always, stay tuned.

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Gats and Hats II: A Jovino Model 25

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.

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.