A lot has changed since I bought this Smith & Wesson 629-1 over twenty years ago.
For starters, at the time four hundred and fifty clams seemed like a crazy lot of money for a used Smith revolver. These days an early Lew Horton snub like this one will bring multiples of that tariff...three or four times that sticker, maybe more if it's a pristine safe queen, which this one obviously isn't anymore. I've put honest holster wear on it in that time.
Back then, if you wanted to carry reloads, you were limited to pretty much the HKS 29-M speedloader. In those days, speed strips for anything other than .38/.357 were pretty much unknown. Not anymore, though; now you can get them for the .44 also.
Nowadays I'm more likely to carry the QuickStrips with just the outboard pairs of rounds filled and the center two holes empty. Both Claude Werner and Grant Cunningham have me pretty well convinced that the ability to rapidly and positively load a pair of rounds is of more practical value than having every last hole in the strip filled with a cartridge.
The holster was bought about the same time as the revolver. It's an ancient Comp-Tac. I haven't carried it a ton over the years, but it's seen several months of actual day-to-day use, all told, over the last couple decades.
You'll notice it's set up for IWB carry at about the 3:30-4:00 position, just behind the point of the strong-side hip. It's set up to ride high, with the bulk of that big N-frame cylinder riding above the belt line. The forward rake assists access and an easier draw, and the length of the holster that extends below the belt line helps keep things stable. I've used it with an assortment of three- and four-inch N-frames over the years.
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