I went to my indoor handgun range to try the ARX bullets in two .45 ACP revolvers, my 1917 redo revolver and the 625 Performance Center Smith and Wesson. The 1917 is the one you see at the top of this blog. It’s a beautiful N-frame Smith styled to look like the 1917 US Army revolvers with a 5 1/2-inch barrel and a lanyard ring. Smith also added a nice t0uch: Turnbull color case hardening. It really is a beautiful revolver.
6 ARX rounds in a star clip, ready for shooting in the 1917 Smith.
The 625 is a special number Smith offered about a decade or so ago. It has a custom barrel profile, ostensibly a smoother action, and better sights. It came from the Performance Center with a gold bead front sight, which I didn’t care for, so the revolver went back to Smith for a red ramp front and white outline rear sight. I thought the red ramp and white outline would be like what came on Smiths in the 1970s, but it wasn’t. The red isn’t nearly as vibrant, and the white outline is sort of a dull gray. Live and learn, I guess.
The Smith and Wesson Performance Center Model 625. This one wears custom grips.
I also added custom grips to the 625 (which I refinished myself, as I didn’t care for the red, birch, and blue clown grips that came with the gun). I know this Model 625 Performance Center gun to be an extremely accurate revolver. With 200-grain semi-wadcutters and 6.0 grains of Unique, this is one of the most accurate revolvers I’ve ever shot.
But enough about the revolvers. This blog focuses on how the .45 ACP ARX bullets performed in these two handguns. Everything we’ve written about the ARX bullets has been, up to this blog, about how the bullets performed in semi-auto handguns. I shoot .45 ACP in revolvers, too, and I was naturally curious about how the composite bullets would do in those.
Another 6 ARX rounds in a star clip and the Model 625.
Here’s the bottom line:
The ARX composite bullets are not quite as accurate in my revolvers as they were in the 1911 with two different loads. The groups were good (as you’ll see in the photos below), but they weren’t as good as they had been in the 1911.
Both revolvers shot low at 30 feet. The 625 shot about 3 1/2 inches below the point of aim. The 1917 shot about 5 inches below the point of aim. In the 1911, the .45 ACP ARX load was spot on, putting the shots right where I aimed.
Here’s the relevant load and chrono data:
And here are the targets I shot with each revolver and the two different loads. First, the Model 625 targets:
The aim point on this target was the 6:00 position on the upper orange bullseyes (as it was for all the targets shown here). The bullets hit 3 1/2 inches low. This is the target with the 8.8-grain Power Pistol load. The groups were nothing to write home about.The Model 625 put the 7.0-grain Winchester 231 load in the same spot as the 8.8-grain Power Pistol load. The group sizes were about the same.
The next two photos show the 1917 targets:
The 1917 group with the 8.8-grain Power Pistol load was about 5 inches low. I wasn’t trying for head shots.The 1917 seemed to like the 7.0-grain Winchester 231 load a bit better, but the groups were still the same 5 inches low. As with the above targets, the aim point was at the 6:00 position on the upper bullseye.
As you can see from the above data, velocities from the 1917’s slightly longer 5 1/2-inch barrel were a bit higher than from the 625’s 4-inch barrel. In the revolvers, the Winchester 231 velocities were higher than the Power Pistol loads (but not by much). The opposite was true in the 1911. Group sizes maybe were a bit better with Winchester 231 in both revolvers, but not as good as with the 1911. The 1917 has fixed sights, so my only option there is to hold higher on the target. The 625 had adjustable sights, but I don’t think there’s enough adjustment to make up for the 3 1/2-inch drop.
One more observation: Winchester 231 is a much dirtier powder than Power Pistol. I didn’t notice this with the 1911 comparisons I did earlier, but with a revolver, it’s quite noticeable.
One of the ARX bullets’ principal advantages is they keep the bore clean. There’s no lead or copper fouling. When shooting any kind of bullet with Winchester 231 in a revolver, though, you’ll get plenty dirty.
In my opinion, the 118-grain ARX .45 ACP bullets are much better suited for the 1911 than they are for a .45 ACP revolver. That’s my opinion only; your mileage may vary.
So there you have it. This is our 6th blog on the ARX bullets, and I don’t have any more planned. I think ExhaustNotes has the most comprehensive evaluation of these bullets you’ll find anywhere on the Internet or in any of the print pubs, and I feel good about that. I like these bullets, and I really like them in my 9mm Springfield 1911, my 9mm S&W Shield, and my .45 ACP Springfield 1911. I ordered a bunch of both the 9mm and .45 bullets, and they are what I’ll be shooting for the foreseeable future.
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:
My Dad was a world-class trapshooter and he owned more than a few exotic shotguns when I was a kid. I didn’t know much about them but the names and the quality of those trap guns impressed me even as a little guy. Ljutic, Parker, Winchester, Perazzi, L.C. Smith, and others were stacked in every corner of our little place in New Jersey, and the colors, the wood, and the engraving stuck in my mind. Of particular interest to me were the fine walnut and the exotic colors. Dad explained that the swirling grays, browns, and blues on the receiver were done with an exotic color case hardening process that used bone charcoal laid on the parts at high temperature. It’s magical stuff. I didn’t understand all of it then and I don’t pretend to understand all of it now, but I sure like the way those guns looked.
Fast forward 50 years or so, and I learned of a company in New York called Turnbull Manufacturing. Doug Turnbull runs it and the focus originally was on firearms restoration. As part of that, Turnbull researched the history and lost art of color case hardening so he could include it as part of the restoration process. Turnbull’s work was stunning, and it didn’t take long until a few firearms manufacturers and gun distributors realized it would make a highly-marketable feature on limited runs of new guns.
The Turnbull 1917 Smith and Wesson
A 1917 Smith and Wesson, part of a limited run offered more than a decade ago with Turnbull color case hardening. The photo doesn’t do the gun justice; it’s beautiful.
15 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 on the frame. I saw one of the Turnbull 1917 revolvers at a local Bass Pro and it sat in the display case for months. Where I live, the rage is all plastic guns that wannabe gangbangers hold sideways like they see in movies released by folks whose entire knowledge of guns could fit on the head of a pin (with room left over for the Gettysburg Address), so the re-release of the Turnbull 1917 Smith stayed in the Bass Pro display case for a long time. It was a thousand dollar handgun that Bass Pro had marked down to $695, and it still hadn’t moved.
A few weeks later I stopped at Bass Pro and the 1917 was still there. 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 whoever the boss was.
“We’ll take 30 off,” Junior said when he returned.
“Is that percent, or dollars?”
He smiled. “Dollars.” It was still a hell of a deal and I pulled the trigger (pardon the pun; some of these almost suggest themselves).
All that, and it shoots, too! The fixed sights are right on the money with 185-grain jacketed hollow points over 7.0 grains of Unique.
I love my 1917 and I love shooting it. It’s accurate. It looks cool, it hits where I want it to hit, and it’s a .45. It makes me feel like Indiana Jones. And there’s one more cool thing…this gun carries well. Indiana Jones has nothing on me. That Cairo guy cloaked in black twirling the big sword? Bring him on.
Turnbull’s 1895 Marlin
Next up? That would be my 1895 Marlin in .45-70. Turnbull did a series of these, too. That Marlin 1895 with Turnbull’s color case hardening hit home for me as soon as I saw photos of it. I had to have one.
One of a limited number of Turnbull finished Marlin 1895 rifles in .45 70 Government. In addition to the color case hardening on the metal bits, Turnbull also refinished the stock and fore end to match the colors on rifles that left the Marlin plant a century ago.
Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, factory Marlin lever guns were color case hardened. I am a big fan of .45 70 Marlins (as a quick review of Tales of the Gun will show you), and an 1895 with the Turnbull treatment was irresistible.
Turnbull did a magnificent job on these. It’s more than just color case hardening on the receiver. Other bits and pieces received the Turnbull treatment, and Turnbull refinished the stocks with a red stain like Marlins had a hundred years ago. The Turnbull Marlins are very limited production items, and Turnbull had photos of each Marlin they offered with this treatment. The photos you see here are the actual rifle I selected.
Color case hardening is like highly-figured exhibition grade walnut. It looks alive, it changes subtly under varying light conditions, and it is mesmerizing.
I’d like to be able to say a got a hell of deal on this one, and in a sense I did: I paid list price for the Turnbull 1895, and that was still a good deal. To make it even better, shortly after I purchased the rifle Turnbull bumped the price significantly. Got in under the wire on that one, I did.
The Turnbull Ruger Super Blackhawk
But wait: There’s more! I’ve been a Ruger fan for years. That particular affliction started with a Super Blackhawk I bought when I was in the Army in the 1970s. I shot it in International Handgun Metallic Silhouette matches back in the day, and I still shoot it. Rugers are great guns and they last forever.
Yours truly on the Fort Bliss Rifle and Pistol Club firing line in 1976. The game was metallic silhouette and the Ruger Super Blackhawk was perfect for it.
You can guess where this story is going: Turnbull teamed with Talo (a Ruger distributor) a couple of years ago to add Turnbull color case hardening to a limited run of Ruger Super Blackhawks. Wow! .44 Magnum, a Super Blackhawk, and Turnbull color case hardening. It’s like these guys knew me personally. I kept an eye on Gunbroker.com and when one of the gun outfits advertised these guns at something like 30% below list…well, you know how that wave crashed on shore. It’s an awesome handgun and I had it on the range out at the West End Gun Club just last week.
A Turnbull-finished Ruger Super Blackhawk. You can still find these brand new on Gunbroker.com, but when they’re gone, they’re gone. This is a gun that will only go up in value.The Turnbull color case hardening treatment just flat out works on a Ruger Super Blackhawk. No two guns are exactly alike.A view of the right side of my Super Blackhawk. I shoot a light .44 Magnum load in mine, as I’m not trying to knock over metallic silhouette rams at 200 meters these days. But if I wanted to, I still could.
If you want to learn more about Turnbull, their guns, and their services, you might want to poke around a bit on the Turnbull site. The photography and the info there make it worth a visit.
