Smith and Wesson – Page 2 – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Gats and Hats I: The Model 60 S&W

There’s a Facebook group called Snub Noir and I enjoy it. They have a lot of good info there about concealable revolvers, and it projects kind of a ’40s/’50s/’60s vibe having to do with private investigators and police officers (and movies, TV shows, and novels from that era). It’s centered on the Colt and Smith snubbies of the day, and on today’s snubbies, too. If you’re into snub nosed revolvers, you’ll like this place. If you visit it, you’ll understand the Gats and Hats thing.

That beautiful S&W Model 60 you see in the big photo above is my personal carry gun and it’s a sweet piece. It’s been selectively polished, it has Altamont grips, and it has a TJ action job (you can read more about TJ’s work on his website and I’ll give you a few more links on my Model 60 at the end of this blog). I’ve done a fair amount of load testing with the Model 60 and I know the loads it likes from accuracy and shoot-to-point-of-aim perspectives. The best load is the FBI load, which is a 158-grain bullet over 3.5 grains of Winchester 231 propellant.

Five rounds of .38 Special, with a 158-grain flatpoint cast bullet and 3.5 grains of Winchester 231. It’s a great load. You can read about it in the links provided at the end of this blog.

I wanted to try something different, though. I’ve shot the Model 60 at 50 feet, 25 yards, 50 yards, and 100 yards. I know, I know: Those latter two distances are not really what the snub nose revolver designers had in mind when they designed these guns. But I was curious when I did those tests. I know a retired police officer who can hit a clay target at 50 yards (the kind you dust in trap or skeet shooting).

The police sometimes qualify at 7 yards, and I think that’s more in line with what a snubbie is intended to do. And, you know, there’s this zombie apocalypse thing that’s coming down the road. I’ve done my homework, and I know that most zombie hostage incidents (i.e., where a zombie is holding a damsel in distress) occur at 7 yards. I wondered: How would I do firing my Gat double-action as quickly as I could at 7 yards? I want to be prepared, you know.

Five rounds is all the Model 60 holds. It sure is slender and it conceals well.

Fortunately for me, zombie-holding-hostages targets are readily available on Amazon, so I grabbed a couple and headed to the range to test my hostage rescue skills with two different loads. The first was the old bullseye target competition .38 Special standard: A 148-grain wadcutter (in this case, copper-plated wadcutters from Xtreme Bullets) over 2.7 grains of Bullseye propellant. It’s the load I’m set up to produce in large quantities on my Star reloader, and it’s the load you see in the top photo (the Dr. Seussian Gat in the Hat pic). The other is the FBI load mentioned above: A 158-grain bullet and 3.5 grains of Winchester 231 secret sauce.

So how’d I’d do? The short answer is not too bad. Not as good as I thought I would, but good enough and certainly close enough for government zombie work. The first target (the one immediately below) shows the results of six full cylinders (30 rounds, as the Model 60 holds five rounds). The good news is 29 of those shots went directly into the zombie’s noggin and none hit Betty (the hostage).

Betty and her zombie captor. He’s toast. Note the one round that tumbled just above Betty’s head. These were low-velocity wadcutter loads.

The bad news? One of the wadcutter bullets tumbled. Fortunately for Betty it went right over her head. You can see the bullet’s outline in the target above. It might have been that the Star threw a light load on that round, or maybe a case split and let too much pressure escape, or maybe these light target loads are marginal in the Model 60’s short 2-inch barrel. Win some, lose some. Betty’s okay, though…that’s the important thing.

Not surprisingly, the FBI load did much better (old J. Edgar know what he was doing against both zombies and commies, I think). The 30 holes you see in Mr. Zombie below went into a tighter group, none of the bullets tumbled, and most importantly, none of them went into Betty.

Betty liked the FBI load better. So did I. The zombie offered no opinion.

I feel better now. I know if I can keep my wits about me and I have my Model 60, and if I can get the zombie to pose with Betty like you see above at 7 yards, he’s toast and Betty’s going to be just fine. For any zombies who follow the ExNotes blog: You’ve been warned.

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As this blog’s title states, this blog is Gats and Hats I. Will there be a Gats and Hats II? Stay tuned, my friends. Two more days, and we’re calling in the heavy artillery.

More gun stories? Hey, it’s what we live for!

Want to know more about the Model 60 featured in this blog? It’s all in the links below:

Getting hammered, and the effects of incomplete primer seating.

A Model 625 load…

When I first posted about the Model 60 load development plan and the Altamont grips I bought from good buddy Paul, the cover photo showed my recently-acquired Model 60 snubbie and a Smith and Wesson Performance Center Model 625 I’ve owned for years.

I like that photo because the two stainless steel Smiths look great on the wild boar skin. That skin is from a pig hunt Paul and I did in Arizona a few years ago.

The earlier blog was about finding an accuracy load for the Model 60, but a few people wrote to ask if I had a favorite load for the Model 625. I do: My usual accuracy load for the 625 is a cast 200-grain cast semiwadcutter bullet (sized to .452 inches) over 4.2 grains of Bullseye.

When I went to the range to run a few rounds through the 625 I picked a box of ammo I had reloaded in 2014. It was different than my usual accuracy load. I used the same bullet (a 200-grain cast semi-wadcutter), but instead of Bullseye I had loaded these over 6.0 grains of Unique. And instead of .45 ACP brass in star clips, I used AutoRim brass. This is the load I fired that 6-shot group you see in the cover photo above for this blog, and it’s a honey. The group, that is…not the photo (it’s hard to get true colors when using an iPhone in the shade). I shot at 50 feet while standing…there’s no rest for the Model 625 or the weary.

.45 ACP cartridges in star clips for the Model 625. These are loaded with 230-grain cast roundnose Missouri bullets.

The .45 ACP cartridge (left) and the .45 AutoRim cartridge (right). The AutoRim cartridge is designed for use in the Model 625 without star clips. The ACP cartridge has a 230-grain roundnose Xtreme bullet; the AutoRim cartridge has Missouri’s 200-grain semi-wadcutter.

The AutoRim brass is in the tumbler as I write this and when I reload it I’m going to go with the same load: The 200-grain cast semi-wadcutter over 6.0 grains of Unique. It seems to be working for me.

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New Shoes for the Model 60

I visited with good buddy Paul up north last week, and while I was there he showed me a set of Altamont grips he had for his Smith and Wesson snubnose handgun. When I saw the grips it was love at first sight, and I had to have them for my TJ-customized Model 60. Paul was happy to oblige (thanks, Paul!), I came home with a new set of Altamont‘s finest, and they promptly went on the Model 60. The Model 60 now looks like a scaled-down version of the big .45 ACP Smith & Wesson Performance Center Model 625, and I had to grab the shot you see above. The 625 wears custom grips, too, but that’s a story for another blog.

There’s no question I’ve gone overboard in getting grips for the Model 60. It came with the stock checkered walnut grips (the original equipment on this handgun), as well as a set of Pachmayr rubber grips. The Pachmayrs would have been better for shooting, but I wanted a set of smooth rosewood grips and I found them on Ebay. They looked great, but they were painful to shoot.

The Model 60’s OEM checkered walnut grips. Photo by TJ of TJ’s Custom Gunworks.

Smith and Wesson J-frame uncheckered rosewood grips. These are the same size as the walnut grips shown above.

The problem with both the OEM walnut grips and the replacement rosewood grips is that they are too small. My pinkie wraps around beneath the frame and takes a pounding with each shot.

The problem with the stock walnut grips and the Ebay rosewood grips is that my little finger gets under the grip. The recoil from the little Model 60 is significant (as we engineers like to say, f = ma), and it would pound my pinkie every time I fired it. Think about putting your pinkie sideways on a table and having someone whack it with a hammer, and you’ll have a pretty good idea what shooting this little snubbie was like.

All that’s changed with the Altamont grips Paul provided. Take a look. They’re beautiful.

Custom Altamont grips for the Model 60. Note the stippling (a crocodile pattern!) and the laser-engraved S&W logo.

The Altamont grips installed on the Model 60.

The new Altamont grips are extended just a bit below the frame and they have finger grooves. It keeps my pinkie from getting underneath the frame, and with the new grips the Model 60 just feels right in my hand.

The Altamont grips provide a much better ergonomic hold. I like them a lot.

These new Altamont grips have a much better feel to them. The wood-to-metal fit is way better than with the stock grips (the grips exactly contour to the Model 60’s frame, unlike the OEM grips). The next obvious question, and the one that really matters is this: How did the Model 60 shoot with the new grips?

In a word, it was amazing. The new Altamont grips completely changed the character of the Model 60. First, a couple of shots of the Model 60 on the range:

The Model 60 became an entirely different animal with the Altamont grips. It’s much easier to shoot now.

Good buddy TJ reworked my Model 60 extensively. It has an action job, selective polishing (ejector rod, cylinder, trigger, hammer, and cylinder release), and a red ramp front sight. TJ’s Custom Gunworks is the place to go if you want a bespoke handgun.

And here are two targets I shot at 15 yards (45 feet). One has 10 shots on it; the other has 12 (each had two cylinders of 5 cartridges, and I had a couple left over to finish the box).

Two targets on the 15-yard line. That little Model 60 has near-target grade accuracy with the Altamont grips. If you have a snubbie, you need these grips!

Several things are amazing about the above targets. The first is that it was windy as hell out on the range this morning, and even though I was shooting with both hands from a bench, I could see the sights swimming around as the wind gusted. The second is that the groups are dramatically tighter than they had ever been before with this handgun. And the third is that the revolver shot almost exactly to point of aim. I was holding at 6:00 on the 50-foot slow-fire NRA targets you see above. My load was the tried and true .38 Special target load: 2.7 grains of Bullseye propellant with the 148-grain Hornady hollow base wadcutter. Before, with the OEM and rosewood grips shown above, this same load shot a good 12 inches to the right of the point of aim, and the groups were huge. Evidently, as the revolver discharged, it was rotating to the right in my hands with those much smaller grips (and beating the hell out of me in the process). The Altamont grips brought the point of impact essentially in line with the point of aim and just a bit high, which is what I want in a handgun.

You may recall from a recent blog that I have a load development test planned for the Model 60, and I’ll be firing the cartridges I loaded for it within the week. I was up north on a secret mission last week and I didn’t get to shoot during that time. I recently read that if you go 72 hours without firing a handgun your skills deteriorate. I believe that, and I wanted to get in a little shooting before I shoot for group size. Hopefully, the Santa Ana winds through the Cajon Pass will die down, conditions will be right, and I’ll get to do some real accuracy testing in the next few days. You’ll get the full report right here. Stay tuned, my friends.

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The Model 52 Smith and Wesson

I’m a lucky guy. One of the Holy Grail pieces in my collection is a Model 52 Smith and Wesson. These guns were discontinued nearly 30 years ago and a lot of folks (myself included) consider them to be the finest handguns ever manufactured. I had always wanted one, and finally, after pestering a good friend relentlessly, he agreed to sell me his.

An impressive target handgun: The Smith and Wesson Model 52-2. It has one of the best triggers I’ve ever experienced.

The Model 52 was built as a no-compromise bullseye target handgun chambered for mid-range .38 Special wadcutter ammunition. What that means is that it’s not a duty weapon or a concealed carry weapon. It’s a full-sized, 5-inch-barreled, adjustable sights, tightly-clearanced handgun with but one objective in mind: Shooting tiny groups with wadcutter ammo.

The .38 Special cartridge has been around forever, and the target variant uses a wadcutter bullet. One of my friends saw these and commented that it was odd-looking ammo, and I guess if you’re not a gun nut it probably is. The bullets fit flush with the case mouth, and because of the sharp shoulder at the front of the bullet, they cut a clean hole in the target (hence the “wadcutter” designation).

.38 Special wadcutter ammo, reloaded on a Star reloading machine. The secret sauce (not so secret, actually) is a 148 grain wadcutter bullet seated flush and 2.7 grains of Bullseye propellant.

I love reloading .38 Special wadcutter ammo, especially now that I am doing so on my resurrected Star reloader. You can read about that here.

You can see the clean holes cut by the wadcutter bullets in the target below, and that’s a typical target for me when I’m on the range with the Model 52. What you see below is a target with 25 shots at 25 yards shot from the standing position.

25 rounds at 25 yards from the Model 52, all in the bullseye. I’m a ham-and-eggs pistolero; guys who are good can shoot much tighter groups.

Yeah, I know, 2 of the 25 shots were a bit low in the orange bullseye. A gnat landed on my front sight twice during the string of 25. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

That’s a Hornady hollow-base wadcutter on the left, and the Missouri Bullets cast double-ended wadcutter on the right. The HBWC is orientation sensitive; the DEWC is not.

Reloaded HBWC and DEWC cartridges, with two of the double-ended wadcutter bullets that show the wadcutter end (which faces forward in the cartridge) and the hollow base end. These HBWC projectiles are Hornady bullets.

Next question: Which is more accurate in the Model 52, the hollow-base wadcutters or the double-ended wadcutters? The two I tried are the Missouri cast double-ended wadcutter, and the Hornady swaged hollow-base wadcutter. Here’s what they look liked (with me behind the gun) on a set of 50-ft targets:

50-ft targets used for comparing DEWC bullets versus HBWC bullets. These targets are about one-fourth the size of the silhouette target shown above.

And here’s the group size data from the 16 five-shot groups I fired a couple of days ago (all dimensions are in inches). It was all focused on answering the question: Which is more accurate? Hollow-base wadcutters, or double-ended wadcutters?

The load was 2.7 grains of Bullseye, a CCI 500 primer, and mixed brass for all of the above groups. They were all shot at 50 feet. So, to answer the accuracy question, to me the difference is trivial (it’s less than a 1% difference when comparing hollow-base to double-ended wadcutter average groups). The standard deviation (a measure of the variability in the group size) was a little bigger for the hollow-base wadcutters, but the difference was probably a statistcal anomaly and it was more due to me, I think, than anything else.

Folks often wonder how the Smith and Wesson wizards managed to get a semi-auto to feed wadcutter ammo. It’s partly in the magazine design and partly in the ramping (but mostly in the magazine). The Model 52 magazine is designed to only hold 5 rounds, and if the bullet protrudes beyond the case mouth, it won’t fit into the magazine. The magazine holds the the top cartridge nearly perfectly in alignment with the chamber, and when the slide pushes the round forward, it glides right in. It will even do so with an empty case, as the video below shows.

The Model 52 was first introduced by Smith and Wesson in 1961. It was based on Smith’s 9mm Model 39, but it had a steel frame (instead of an aluminum frame, although Smith also made a small number of Model 39s with steel frames), a 5-inch barrel (instead of the 39’s 4-inch barrel), and target-grade sights adjustable for windage and elevation (instead of the 39’s windage-adjustable-only sights). The original Model 52 had the Model 39’s double action first shot capability, although I’ve never seen a no-dash Model 52. In 1963 Smith incorporated a better single-action-only trigger and the 52 became the 52-1, and then in 1970 it became the 52-2 when Smith incorporated a better extractor. Mine is the 52-2.

I was lucky…when my friend sold the Model 52 to me, he had the complete package: The original blue Smith and Wesson box, the paperwork that came with the new gun, and all of the tools and accessories (including the barrel bushing wrench).

You might be wondering: Which is more accurate? The Model 52 Smith and Wesson, or the new Colt Python? They are both fine and accurate handguns, but in my hands and after coming back from good buddy TJ and TJ’s Custom Gunworks with a crisp single-action trigger, the Python gets top billing in the accuracy department. You can read about the Python’s accuracy with wadcutter .38 Special ammo here.

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The Rimfire Series: A .22 Colt Trooper Mk III

Take a look at this: A Colt Trooper Mk III chambered in .22 Long Rifle, an interesting and extremely accurate revolver. I picked it up maybe 30 years ago in a local gun store. The revolver was in their display case on the lower shelf and I almost didn’t see it. I wasn’t in the market, but when I saw the Trooper it grabbed my attention. It was marked $225, I offered $200, the guy on the other side of the counter said okay, and the Trooper was mine.

Deep bluing, crisp lockwork, and color case hardening on the hammer. It makes for a good-looking revolver. This one wears custom handgrips.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but the little Trooper is a phenomenally accurate handgun, maybe one of the most accurate I’ve ever shot. It groups as well as a Model 41 Smith and Wesson, a target handgun with maybe twice the sight radius.

The Trooper is based on a Colt that was originally a .38 Special, then it was chambered for the .357 Magnum, then it was redesigned as the Trooper Mk III, and then it was offered in .22. That was a thing back in the ’60s and ’70s, you know, offering full-sized revolvers but in .22, and it was a good thing. These are awesome target guns, relatively inexpensive to shoot, and just plain fun. And heavy. The Trooper kept the same external envelope (i.e., the exterior dimensions) as the far-more-powerful .357 Magnum Trooper, and that means there’s a lot more steel in the barrel and the cylinder.

I bought my Trooper used, but it is in as new condition. It came with the original lighter colored (and checkered) walnut grips, but I saw the grips you see the revolver wearing in these photos about 15 years ago and I had to have them. The smooth grips look good and the medallions imply the gun went throught the Colt Custom Shop (it did not), but truth be told, the original grips offer a better hold and they fit the revolver better.

The grips say Colt Custom, but my Trooper was a regular production gun. The build standards were way higher back in the day.

One of these days I’ll get around to hogging out the interior of the custom grips and fitting them to the Trooper with AcraGlas, but that’s a project for the future. Or, I may put the original grips back on the gun (they’re around here somewhere).

The Troopers were available with a 4-inch barrel (like mine), a 6-inch barrel, or an 8-inch barrel, and they could be had with a high polish blue (like mine), a high-polish nickel, or a brushed nickel finish. If I knew then what I know now I would have purchased a matching blue steel Trooper Mk III in .357 Magnum. They were around $200 back in the day, and like my .22, the .357 would have been a sound investment. These guns go for five to eight times that amount today. You could argue that they make for a good investment, but that implies flipping the gun to realize the profit, and that’s not going to happen. I’ll keep this one forever.

You know, it’s hard to find new guns built to these same standards as regular service guns were 30 or more years ago. When I look at the deep bluing on my Trooper, that’s pretty obvious. The new Colt Python is one that rivals the Trooper for build quality, but it’s the exception.

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9mm Jacketed Bullet Comparo

Back in January I tested a bunch of 9mm cast bullet loads in the three handguns you see above: A SIG P226 Scorpion, a Smith and Wesson Model 659, and the Springfield Armory 1911 Target. For that test series (you can read it here), all the loads used the Missouri 125-grain cast roundnose bullet with different powders and different charge weights. My cast bullet testing showed the SIG to be the most accurate, followed by the Springfield and then the Smith and Wesson Model 659.

I promised an update with jacketed bullets to assess accuracy and functionality of all three handguns (and to find favored accuracy loads for each). It took a while, but I finally got around to making good on that promise this past week. The six different loads I tested for the jacketed 9mm test series are summarized below:

Actually, the term “jacketed” doesn’t really apply to the Xtreme bullets (they are copper plated, not copper jacketed). The Armscor bullets are brass jacketed. Both the Winchester and Speer bullets are copper jacketed bullets. As you can see from the table above and the photos below, the Xtreme, Armscor, and Winchester bullets were of the roundnose configuration. The Speer 147-grain bullets were jacketed flatnosed bullets. I didn’t try any hollow points in this test series; I prefer roundnose bullets in my 9mm handguns. They are reliable.

All groups were 5 shot groups. I shot a total of 360 rounds in the two test series (both the jacketed and cast bullet accuracy tests).

While I was shooting last week, I was a little disappointed. I thought I had done a lot better with the cast bullets back in January. I thought my jacketed groups were larger when I eyeballed the targets, but you never really know until you measure the groups.

9mm jacketed bullets on an Alco target. I like using the Alco target that has four mini-silhouettes on a single target. All testing was at 50 feet.

When I returned home, measured the group sizes, and tabulated the results, I was surprised. The results of the jacketed and plated bullets were not too different from what I had achieved with the cast bullets almost a year ago. Take a look:

The most surprising finding, for me, was that the average results with the jacketed bullets (versus the cast bullets) were almost identical. Here’s that data extracted from the above, shown in a table that makes it a little easier to make the comparison:

My testing showed essentially the same results for the three handguns I tested whether I used cast bullets or jacketed bullets: The SIG P226 Scorpion is the most accurate (it is a magnificent handgun), followed by the Springfield Armory 1911, followed by the Smith and Wesson 659. It doesn’t matter whether it’s with cast or jacketed bullets: The averages are eerily similar for each gun, with a very slight accuracy advantage going to the cast bullets for the SIG and the 1911, and a very slight accuracy advantage going to the jacketed bullets for the Smith 659. But the differences between jacketed and cast bullets are so small they can be ignored. Cast bullets are usually a lot less expensive than jacketed bullets, so this is good knowledge.

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A TJ tune for my Model 60

I had trouble selecting a title for this blog. The other contender was 50 Shades of Gray to go with the big photo you see above. I wish I could say I took that photo, but the credit goes to good buddy and master gunsmith TJ. TJ is the best pistolsmith there is, and one of the things that makes working with him so enjoyable is his photography. When TJ works a custom gun project, he photodocuments it to keep you appraised of what’s going on, and a couple of the photos you see here are the ones he sent to me on my Model 60 project. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up a bit.

If you follow the blog (and you all do, right?), you’ve been watching the Star reloader resurrection project I’m working. That’s coming along nicely, and I’m already making .38 Special ammo on my resurrected reloader. This story started with my noticing an ad in my gun club newsletter for a Model 60 at a killer price. I’m normally not a snubnose kind of guy, but hey, a deal’s a deal and I like the idea of a snubnose .38. Maybe I watched too many cop shows in the ’50s and ’60s. You know. Cannon, Kojak, Hawaii 5-0, 77 Sunset Strip, Dragnet…you get the idea. All those guys carried snubbies.

Anyway, the Model 60 was a good deal, but swinging the cylinder out to the side was a bit dicey…sometimes it wanted to stick. The seller told me about that but I didn’t see it as a problem. I saw it as an opportunity to do another project with good buddy TJ, and that’s what I’m doing. TJ is doing his Level 1 action job for me (polishing all the internals and lightening both the double and single action trigger pulls), and I’m having him also put a mirror finish on the cylinder, the ejector rod, the cylinder release, the trigger, and the hammer. It will make for a nice, subtle contrast with the brushed stainless finish on the rest of the gun. That leaves only the grips, and I’m doing something about those, too. TJ put into words what I was thinking, and that was that the stock grips (the ones you see above) are butt ugly (pardon the gun pun).

Back in the day Smith used to offer uncheckered rosewood grips, and that’s what I really wanted. They don’t sell those any more, though, and I mentioned to TJ that I should have bought a set back in the ’70s. You know, just in case. “Try E-Bay,” TJ said, and I did. I hit paydirt almost immediately, and the grips you see below are on their way to me now. Rosewood. Smooth. Just what I wanted.

The finish on my inbound grips may be a little funky, but that’s another opportunity, too. It’s TruOil time, folks. TruOil and a little patience will have these grips looking literally better than they did when they left the S&W factory in Springfield.

The Star reloader is operational now (I’ll show you more on the Star resurrection in upcoming blogs, and I’ll include a video that shows it making finished ammo). I’ll have the Model 60 back in a few days, so I went ahead and loaded a box of ammo with the outstandingly accurate 158-grain cast bullets I get from my good buddy Roy. It took only a few minutes on the Star (it would take closer to an hour on a single-stage press). For a machine that’s probably older than I am, the Star sure does a good job.

When I take my custom snubbie .38 to the range, I’ll grab a few photos and share a range report with you here on the ExNotes blog. Stay tuned, my friends, and keep your powder dry.

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Another 1917 S&W Record!

It had to happen, I guess. We recently blogged about a Smith and Wesson 1917 .45 ACP revolver that sold for what, to me, was the incredibly high price of $2,525. A couple of days ago, I saw another one that grabbed my attention. It’s a Gunbroker.com auction for an N-frame Smith, but not just any N-frame: This one is the original that Indiana Jones used in his first movie (Raiders of the Lost Ark). I know, strictly speaking, it’s not a 1917. But it’s built on the N-frame and chambered for a close-relative, the British .455 Webley. This revolver played a key role in several Raiders scenes, including the Cairo swordsman and many others.

If you’re interested in bidding, the Indiana Jones revolver is on Gunbroker.com. The good news is the minimum bid is the same as the Buy Now price. The bad news? That price is a cool $5,000,000.

A cherry ’06…

About 40 years ago, I bought a Howa 30 06 barreled action and a Bishop semi-inletted stock. It was to be the first rifle I had stocked and I wanted something different. In perusing the Bishop catalog, I selected cherry instead of walnut (not cherry as in cool, but cherry as in the kind of tree George Washington cut down). When I ordered it on the phone (this was way before the Internet came along), I asked the Bishop people if they could run the forearm out to the muzzle, because my concept was to make it like a Mannlicher rifle. I thought that would be cool (and I was right). As I recall, the semi-inletted stock was $57 plus postage (and postage wasn’t very much). Ah, times change.

Semi-inletted stocks were advertised as 95% complete. All you had to do, the ads said, was some minor finishing work to get a perfect fit (sanding and maybe a little filing in the stock’s inletted areas so the barreled action would drop in). But it took a ton of labor to make that happen. Maybe I just didn’t know what I was doing, but if what I put into the stock’s final inletting was 5%, Bishop must have spent a million hours doing the first 95%. But all’s well that ends well and this project ended well.

I finished the stock with what would become my preferred finish on all future gun projects, and that’s TruOil. After sanding with 320, then 400, and then 600 grit paper, and then buffing the wood with denim to get any remaining grain whiskers, the drill was to apply a coat of TruOil, wait a day for it to dry, beat it down with 0000 steel wool, and repeat the process the following day. You’re looking at 10 days of that on this stock. It deepened the color of the cherry nicely. It’s different, and it always causes folks who see it at the range to strike up a conversation.

I floated the barrel (that means sanding the barrel channel so the barrel doesn’t touch the stock at all) and glass-bedded the action (that means pouring an epoxy and fiberglass mix into the stock and allowing it to cure around the receiver, creating a perfect bed for the action). Glass bedding creates a stable platform. Free floating the barrel eliminates asymmetric loads on the barrel due to temperature and humidity changes, and temperature changes in the barrel that occur when a rifle is fired. Those two steps improve accuracy tremendously. It works.

I wanted something different for the forearm tip on this rifle, and I didn’t want to screw around with trying to fit a metal cap (what you typically see on a Mannlicher stock) because that would bring the barrel back into contact with the wood. I thought it would be cool to give it an Alex Henry forearm treatment (like the Ruger No. 1 style), and I carved it freehand with a Dremel. That turned out surprisingly well, too.

I didn’t checker the stock. There are two reasons for that…I can’t checker worth a damn, and I actually prefer the look of a rifle without checkering.

Three handloads I developed for use in other 30 06 rifles work well. The first is a near-max load of IMR 4320 with the Hornady 130-grain jacketed soft point bullet (that one shoots 1-inch groups all day long in a Ruger No. 1), the second is a couple of grains under max of IMR 4064 with either the Winchester or Hornady 150-grain jacketed soft point (both bullets work equally well, and this load is a tack driver in my Model 70), and the third is a max IMR 4064 load with the Remington 180-grain jacketed soft point (that’s the accuracy load in my Browning B-78).

Every rifle has a load it prefers, though, and this custom Howa is no exception. Here’s the secret sauce:

The load shown in the photos above is not a hunting load (the Sierra Matchkings would sail right through an animal without much expansion), but it sure is accurate and it doesn’t take much to kill a paper target. I like to think my marksmanship has improved with age; I probably ought to find some 760 powder and load a few more to see if I could better the groups you see above.

In the 1960s and 1970s (and on into the 1980s), there used to be several companies offering semi-inletted rifle stocks, but that business has largely gone away. There’s still Richard’s Microfit in the Valley; I used them for a .375 Ruger project I did about 5 years ago (and I could go there and personally select the wood I wanted).

Some of the gunstock companies were mismanaged and took shortcuts that bankrupted them, but I think the real reasons they folded fall into two categories. The first is that not many people want to expend the effort it takes to create a custom rifle like the one you see here, and most folks don’t have the skills to do so. Shop courses disappeared in the US a long time ago, and most people today are more adept at things like at operating a cell phone and posting on Facebook.

Another reason is that very few people want a rifle with real wood. Black plastic is all the rage. I was on the range last week, it was fairly busy, and I was literally the only guy shooting a rifle that didn’t have a Tupperware stock (everyone fancies themselves an operator; few have ever worn a uniform). Not that there’s anything wrong with that if a modern military rifle is what floats your boat, and there are some fine custom builds (as outlined in Jake Lawson’s blog last week).

Hell, even if you wanted to build a custom rifle like the one you see here, it’s hard to find a barreled action. In the 1970s it was not unusual for rifle companies to sell barreled actions; today, the only outfit I know of that does so is Howa and you don’t see them too often. If you come across one, let me know. I could go for another project.

Do you feel lucky?

The year was 1971 and I was 20 years old. Those were the good old days. Movies were wildly entertaining, it was real easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys, movie stars kept their political opinions to themselves, and being politically correct hadn’t been invented yet. And the movies were better for it. To me, there’s one movie in particular that stands out: Dirty Harry.

Dirty Harry was an exceptional movie for its time and it was an iconic role for Eastwood: Inspector Harry Callahan of the San Francisco Police Department. Eastwood went on to make several Dirty Harry movies. The Callahan role propelled Eastwood’s career enormously. But Callahan was only one of two stars in Dirty Harry. The other was Smith and Wesson’s Model 29 .44 Magnum revolver. Much as I like Clint Eastwood, I liked the Model 29 better, and yep, I bought a Model 29 after seeing Dirty Harry. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Susie and I were flipping through movies on Netflix a few nights ago and Dirty Harry was on the menu. “Put it on,” Sue said, with some resignation. “You know you want to watch it.” She was right. I did. Before I get into the Model 29 and all that, watch the video clip below. It’s a classic bit of tough guyism, and it’s a scene a lot of guys like me burned into our mental firmware.

So…back to the Model 29. Before Dirty Harry, Smith and Wesson didn’t quite know what to do with their Model 29. The police didn’t want it (the .44 Magnum is wildly overpowered as a police cartridge), nearly everyone who tried the cartridge back then took a pass, and the gun just kind of languished at the dealers. Oh, I know you read Elmer Keith and you’re a keyboard commando and all that, but let me tell you…in the ’50s (when the .44 Magnum was introduced) and on into the ’60s, nobody was buying them. The guns retailed in the mid-$150 range in those early years, but they just weren’t moving. Then Dirty Harry hit the big screen, and everything changed. Whaddaya know, everyone wanted a Model 29. I know. I was one of them. I was there.

You couldn’t find a Model 29 anywhere after Dirty Harry. It was product placement before anyone knew what product placement was, and all those N-frame Smiths gathering dust in dealer showcases vanished. In 1971 the MSRP for a new Model 29 was $183, but all that changed after Dirty Harry. They were going for $500 when you could find one on the used gun market, and that wasn’t very often. Everyone wanted to be Dirty Harry Callahan, including me. But I had an “in.” I had people. My father was an Olympic-class competitive trap shooter and he had contacts in the gun world. Dad put the word out and one of his buddies (a firearms wholesaler in south Jersey) had a brand new Model 29 (if I wanted it, he said) at the discounted price of $150. If I wanted it. Like I could say no. It’s good to know people, and I was in. Inspector Callahan, move over.

My Model 29. It’s a beautiful handgun and it’s a good shooter. I bought the custom grips at a gun show in Dallas back in the 1970s.

I shot the hell out of that Model 29 in New Jersey and then in Texas when I went in the Army, until it loosened up so much I didn’t want to shoot it any more. I put a notice up on a bulletin board at Fort Bliss and the next day an artillery captain bought it from me for, you guessed it, $500. I no longer owned a Model 29, but that was only a temporary situation. I reached out to my peeps back in New Jersey (it was my home of record and I was still a legal resident) and a week later I had another new Model 29. It’s the one I have today and the one you see in these photos.

The early Model 29s were of impeccable quality. Note the rollmarking and how it is free of any distortion or metal upset around the letters. Check out the deep blue. These are amazing handguns.

So when Sue and I watched Dirty Harry the other night, I realized it had been more than a few years since I shot my Model 29. I checked the ammo locker and I had some .44 Magnum ammo I had reloaded back in 2012. I dug the Model 29 out of the safe that evening, and the next day I was on the range. You know what? I still do a pretty good Dirty Harry. Inspector Callahan has nothing on me.

Five-shot groups at 50 feet on an Alco target. I shot the upper left target first and scored a decent group that was high right. The rear sight was way to the right, so I centered it and shot a second group at the same target. I moved over to the target on the right, then down to the left target on the bottom row. Ah, one went high on that one, but I was getting familiar with the Model 29 again. My last group was the lower right target, and that’s how you do it. The load was the 240-grain Speer swaged semi-wadcutter over 5.6 grains of Bullseye (light for a .44 Magnum, but still enough to get your attention). Even Dirty Harry didn’t shoot full-bore .44 Magnum loads!

So back to that opening Dirty Harry scene…you know, the “Do you feel lucky, punk?” bit. It is classic Hollywood tough guy babble, but I had no idea of its reach until we had a bunch of Chinese guys come over from Zongshen to ride across the United States (you can and should read about that in 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM). We had a couple of days to kill before starting our epic journey, and when we asked the Chinese what they wanted to do, their answer was immediate: We want to shoot a gun. You know. ‘Murica, and all that. Hey, I was only too happy to oblige and we were off to the gun club. After sending a lot of lead downrange with a Ruger Mini 14, our Chinese guests then wanted to visit a gun store (the full American experience, you know), so we rolled over to Bass Pro.

I was a little nervous because the Chinese like to take pictures (and guys like me don’t like anyone, especially foreigners, taking our pictures in gun stores). Our Chinese guests were cool when I told them to put their cameras away, but I need not have worried. The Bass Pro folks were intrigued by all of this when we walked in. They invited our Chinese guests to take all the photos they wanted, and then they allowed them to handle the guns. That was really cool. One of the Bass Pro sales dudes gave Hugo, the young Zongshen rep, a monstrous .500 Smith and Wesson revolver. The Chinese guys had their cameras on Hugo in a heartbeat as he handled that massive hand cannon. Hugo knew what to do. With a slight Chinese accent (but otherwise perfect English) he was transformed. Hugo became Dirty Harry:

I know what you guys are thinking. Did I fire six shots, or only five? Tell the truth, in all this excitement, I kind of lost track myself. What you need to ask yourself is: Do I feel lucky?

Well, do ya, punk?

Hugo was amazing and we all (me, the Chinese guys, and the Bass Pro staff) had a good laugh. Hugo was born on the other side of the world a good 30 years after Dirty Harry hit the big screen, but he knew that line perfectly. And he knew it was part of the whole Smith and Wesson schtick. I guess it’s no small wonder. It was both the opening and closing scenes of Dirty Harry. Take a look: