Ballistic Testing...

At the range yesterday doing ballistic gel shooting with a few loads in two different chamberings, one of which was .327 Federal Magnum. The test gun was this Taurus 327 TORO with a Gideon Judge optic.

As a control round, I used a .32 H&R Magnum Hornady 80gr FTX Critical Defense. The Critical Defense did not expand through 4LD, and I didn't expect that ti would. It came to rest backwards in the gel block, 13" in.

The .327 Federal Hydra-Shok 85gr projectile, normally an iffy expander in 4LD, proved that even an iffy projectile can expand if you put enough ass behind it. It mushroomed nicely and came to rest, also base-first, at the 14" mark, just beyond the Hornady bullet.

The 100gr .327 Fed Gold Dot worked exactly as predicted: It expanded like a catalog photo and was found tangled in the denim on the far side of the 16" gel block. This is pretty much identical to what you get from 9mm 124gr +P GDHP and HST, which are pretty much the current gold standards, and it's what the load was designed to emulate.

That's the load I'm going to sight the dot in with.

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BOOM

I've got a box of .327 Federal Magnum 85gr Hydra-Shok that I ordered from Lucky Gunner a while back that I keep meaning to chrono and do some terminal ballistic testing on.

The Hydra-Shok is generally a dated design and not a projectile I'd normally recommend as a first choice, but the claimed muzzle velocity for these things is 1400fps and I have a working theory that even Hydra-Shoks'll do okay if you put enough ass behind them, and the 45,000psi .327 Fed cartridge has plenty of ass.

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Space Cowboy

One of the silliest lines I've heard regarding the Taurus TORO revolvers is "A red dot on a revolver? Isn't that like putting a spoiler on a horse-drawn wagon?"

No, it is not.

It is like putting a GPS in a horse-drawn wagon. A wagon may be slower than a car, sure, but it still needs to know how to get to its destination.

On that note, here are some thoughts of mine on life with the Taurus 856 TORO...

Tab Clearing...

• A look at the retro-styled Heritage Roscoe, to tide you over until the next issue of RECOIL: Concealment hits newsstands this month with my feature-length review.


• The Day the US Conquered the British Empire: June 6th, 1944


• Tightening Your Accuracy and Performance Standards

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Dots Don't Go Everywhere...Yet

I'm on record as mentioning I'm not a huge fan of the 3" J-frame, and that steel J-frames in general don't have a ton of applicability in my world.

Small revolvers fall into one of two categories in my world. Either they're a pocket/ankle gun, or they're a belt gun. For me, a 3" J-frame is too long for a pocket, and a steel-framed one is too heavy for a pocket. I've pocket-carried a S&W 432 (and a 442 before it) for almost 25 years now, but a steel gun would make my winter coat hang funny.

"But you could carry a 3" J-frame in a belt holster!" you say. Well, sure. But I could also carry a Detective Special, a Taurus 856/327, or a 3" Smith & Wesson K-frame in a belt holster with no more real difficulty and get a 20% ammunition capacity boost. In fact I have been carrying an 856 TORO for a year now.

This is what makes the new R.O.C. J-frame red dot mount from Shield Arms a real head-scratcher for me. It mounts to a Smith J-frame using the sideplate screws, but all the photos show it on a Model 442. That effectively makes the gun too big for a pocket and anyone who's actually carried an ankle gun should get a good belly laugh out of the idea of sticking an MRDS in the most dirt-and-lint collecting spot where it's possible to tote a blaster. (Even IWB, the 507k on my TORO needs blowing clean every few days.)

I guess you could use it to mount a dot on a belt-carried 3" 640 or something, but all the J-frame revolvers in Smith & Wesson's current catalog lineup that could really benefit from a small red dot... think the 3" Model 60, Model 63, or Model 317 ...all have adjustable rear sights, which means that they're already compatible with an Allchin-type scope mount.

I mean, I get that red dots are awesome, but we're a ways off from a functional MRDS solution for pocket guns.

(H/T to Gorillafritz.)

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Is Novelty a Necessity?

In a post about the Heritage Roscoe on social media, a reader asked what the new offering from Heritage would do that a double-action revolver hadn't already done, or if maybe it would do it in a different or better way.

That got me to thinking on how a segment of the market demands novelty as the justification for a new model.

In the case of the Roscoe, you only have to look at the name of the manufacturer, "Heritage", to realize that cutting edge novelty isn't exactly their milieu. After all, their bread and butter offerings are inexpensive plinkers that are functional and cosmetic clones of a 151-year-old revolver design.

Sometimes the retro is the point. Colt has done reissues of their WWI and WWII era M1911 and M1911A1. Springfield Armory sold bunches of their "Milspec" model, so much so that they brought the GI, or as we called it in the shop back then, the Even Milspeccer Milspec.

In the case of the Roscoe, what it does is bring the basic blued-steel 5-shot snub-nosed revolver back to market at a reasonable price. Smith & Wesson still offers the Model 36 Classic, but the MSRP on that thing is better than double that of the Roscoe. 

Of course, fifteen or twenty years ago there would have been no call for a gat like this because its main competition would have been the ocean of used Model 36's, but these days even J-frames aren't immune to price pressures from collectibles. A Chiefs Special that's priced like the Roscoe is gonna be a beater, and one that looks like all shiny and new is going to present the owner with that classic quandary: How much do you want to shoot a gun when a turn ring on the cylinder can knock a Benjamin off the value?

You could do like a lot of collectors: Put the pristine Chiefs Special in the safe and buy a beater 36 to shoot. Or you could buy a shiny Roscoe and shoot it.

New revolver from Heritage Mfg...

Fifty rounds of 130gr FMJ, seven yards, double action

Just announced at NRAAM: The Heritage Roscoe. It's a classic 5-shot .38 Special snubby, in carbon steel with checkered wood grips. (Basically, it's the return of the Taurus 85 in a retro format.) Suggested retail is well under four hundo, so street prices should be quite reasonable.

Look for a review in the next issue of Concealment magazine. 

The stocks are pretty, but you'll want to swap them out for carry use.

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Hey, look!

Speedloaders are the most popular and have been for decades now. It’s important, however, to distinguish between competition- and carry-oriented loaders. HKS speedloaders, for instance, are sometimes derided for not being very speedy, but they hold on to cartridges like grim death. I once had a five-shot .44 Spl. HKS loader—the Model 44CA, intended for the Charter Arms Bulldog—roll around forgotten and neglected in the bottom of a purse for years before I fished it out, all five rounds still firmly clamped. Sure, with the HKS you need to insert the rounds and then twist a knob to release them into the cylinder, while the fastest compe-tition speedloaders literally launch the cartridges when inserted, but they can also launch the cartridges in the pouch, pocket or purse where the speedloader is carried. Save the gamer carriers for the games, where they excel.

Remember, it’s fairly unlikely that you’ll have to reload your wheelgun in a defensive scenario, but if you do, the most important thing is that the cartridges be there in your carrier. Otherwise, you’re that guy with the loose rounds in your pocket. Don’t be that guy.

A Model 19-5 with two types of speedloaders: the classic HKS 10A and an all-rubber MaxFire.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #253...

Hotel room nightstand shot from TacCon: Taurus 856 T.O.R.O. with a Holosun 507k in a PHLster City Special, six rounds of Hornady Critical Defense 110gr +P in an eight round Tuff Strip, my trusty POM spicy treats dispenser, 500 lumen Surefire EDCL1-T, and a waved Spyderco Dragonfly.

Click the links to steal this look!

(Do I think the Hornady 110gr +P Critical Defense is the bestest load for the .38? Probably not, but it's easy to get the dot sighted in with, and reloads are speedy with those pointy bullets. Its performance is certainly adequate, especially if you're not particularly worried about needing to defeat vehicular barriers.)

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Finding the Dot

Gideon Optics sent one of their Judge mini red dots to mount on the Taurus 327 Defender TORO, so we'll see how it does when screwed to the topstrap only an inch or so away from the 40,000 psi detonations of full house .327 Federal Magnum loads.

Of course, revolver duty is actually a lot kinder than the whiplash these optics experience when mounted on the reciprocating slide of a self-loading pistol.

I've been using a dot-sighted revolver for about a year now, and I had to learn a different technique of finding the dot than the one I have used for years with semiautos, but that's gonna take a whole post of its own...

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Git Gud Scrub

Narrow Focus Cartridge

Taurus 327 Defender TORO

When the .357SIG cartridge was still in fairly common law enforcement use, just the mention of it was a red flag for a certain sort of old-timer on the gun forums.

Someone would refer to it as "Designed to be the equivalent of .357 Magnum, but in a semiautomatic pistol" and they'd be buried under an avalanche of replies from posters with user names like "WheelgunFan" and "SixFerShur" and "Cowboy Bart" pointing out that the revolver load could fire 158gr and 180gr and even 200gr bullets at velocities that were simply not possible with the bottlenecked pistol cartridge.

Which was fine and good, but the .357SIG was intended to duplicate one specific .357 Magnum loading for one specific purpose: The 125gr JHP load that had such a good reputation with some law enforcement departments, and especially Highway Patrols.

Similarly, the .327 Federal Magnum is not designed to be a "do everything" cartridge. It's designed to do one thing, and that's offer pretty much identical terminal ballistics to the 9x19mm 124gr +P loads that are pretty much the benchmark loads for law enforcement today.

.38 Special doesn't do that. People tend to equate .38 Special and 9mm, but the fact of the matter is that 9mm... especially in +P form ...is a lot closer to .357 Magnum than it is to the old .38 Special.

Witness the following maximum pressures:

• .38 Special: 17,000psi
• .38 Spl +P: 20,000psi
• 9x19mm:  35,000psi
• 9mm +P:  38,500psi
• .357 Mag: 35,000psi

The problem is that .357 Magnum is limited to five shots in small frame revolvers. So the .327 Federal Magnum was designed to offer six shots in a Ruger SP-101 (or the newer Taurus 327) that gave terminal performance equivalent to the common medium-velocity 125gr .357 loads... and, by extension, the 9mm +P 124gr. It does this by virtue of operating at higher pressures (40k psi) and the 100gr .312" bullets having slightly greater sectional density than the 125gr .357" ones.

I suppose if you really wanted to hunt rabbits or target shoot with a .327 Fed revolver, you could load it with .32 S&W Long or .32 H&R Mag, but the .327 Federal Magnum cartridge itself is really only intended to do one thing.

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Differently Triggered

We live and we learn... Well, hopefully we do. I know people who haven't changed an opinion in years, or even decades. In my most recent column at Shooting Illustrated, I talk about triggers...

"This is going to be another in an intermittent series of columns examining the various topics on which I’ve changed my mind over the last 20 years or so as a result of being hip-deep in the defensive-pistol world.

This particular column is going to be all about triggering people by discussing what I’ve learned about triggers over that time—and why what I thought I knew about triggers before then was wrong, possibly even counterproductive..."

I really wish I'd gotten the Model 19-5 onto Denny Reichard's bench before he passed. I suppose I can just swap factory springs back in myself, but it ain't the same.

Less-Than-Special Sauce

The .44 Special cartridge debuted with the large frame Hand Ejector revolvers at the start of the previous century.

It was a hot-rodded version of the existing .44 Russian cartridge, and used a longer cartridge case so to avoid being chambered in the old top-break No.3 Smiths, in much the same way that .32 S&W Long had been stretched so as not to be used in older .32 top-breaks.

The natural home for the new round was a big N-frame with a 6.5" barrel, like the one at the top in the photo above. In those hoglegs, it lobbed a fairly heavy 246gr lead round-nosed projectile at velocities on the north side of 750 feet per second.

With the coming of the .44 Magnum, though, the old Special largely fell out of favor and is now mostly found in one of two settings. The first is cowboy action shooters who just gotta be different from the .45 Colt majority and are perfectly happy shooting 246gr LRN bullets in their single action sixguns.

The other setting is big-bore snubbies on medium frames, a fad that started with the Charter Arms Bulldog, but has since been riffed on by Rossi, Taurus, and Smith & Wesson.

Shooting heavy, unjacketed projectiles in these smaller pieces tends to turn them into kinetic bullet pullers, especially the lightweight models. In fact, the aluminum-framed and titanium-cylindered Smith & Wesson Model 296Ti, bottom center in the above photo, goes so far as to mark "MAX. BULLET 200 GRAIN" right there on the side of the barrel.

There are a few 200gr loads I'd carry without much in the way of worry: Speer's 200gr Gold Dot would be my first choice, but I wouldn't lose sleep if all I had was 200gr Federal LSWC-HP or 200gr Winchester Silvertips.

I dunno about the Hornady Critical Defense, though. It uses a 165gr version of their FTX Flex-Tip hollow point, and clocks over 900fps out of my Model 296. Thing is, Hornady's own ad copy says it'll only penetrate ten inches of ordnance gel after defeating 4LD. And against bare gel? Well, it expands beautifully but bleeds off a lot of penetration in the process, barely making it eight inches into the gel block. That's pretty underwhelming performance for a big-bore revolver cartridge.

Remember, bullet placement is three dimensional!

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King of the K-frame Carry Magnums

One of the most sought-after postwar K-frame variants, from back in the earliest days of the Smith & Wesson Performance Center: 

"In the early ’90s, Smith & Wesson introduced their Performance Center, and back then it was much more of a custom gun shop than it is now. With the pistol half of the Performance Center helmed by Paul Liebenberg and the revolver side of the house under the supervision of John French, the shop turned out small numbers of essentially hand-built variations on the standard production models found in the Smith & Wesson catalog.

In 1995, the Performance Center took standard round-butt Model 13 frames and fitted 3-inch heavy barrels, but with a full underlug. The cylinder latch was cut away on the bottom to make sure it would clear speedloaders, which wasn’t the standard practice on S&W revolvers at the time. With the action converted to double-action only, the hammer spur was bobbed and the trigger had a non-adjustable overtravel stop fitted in its backside.

The action was slicked up, the cylinder charge holes were chamfered, and the barrel was treated to quad Mag-Na-Ports to tame recoil. Finally, the whole thing was finished in a bead-blasted matte blue, fitted with abbreviated Eagle Secret Service grips for maximum concealability without compromising grippiness, and the finished product was etched with the Performance Center logo."

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There's a reason for that...

Blogger Comrade Misfit writes, regarding the just-announced Taurus 327 Defender TORO:

"If a K-frame-sized .32 is an offering, a seven-shot gun would be a better idea."

The answer, of course, is that the 856/327 revolvers from Taurus are not exactly K-frame sized, although they're a hair fatter than a J-frame. There's not enough meat in the cylinder for seven .32 charge holes. In fact, that's the reason that they still catalog the 5-shot 605 in .357 Magnum with the older, smaller diameter cylinder and there isn't a .357 Mag version of the 856.

She can be "meh" all she wants. As for me, that extra inch of barrel and the factory Hogue neoprene banana, plus the night sight, give me the wantsies something fierce.

The 2" 327 with the boot-style grip is a handful with .327 Fed ammo, it's really more of a .32 H&R Mag gun. But with a little more weight out front and more to hold on to, .327 Gold Dots might actually be viable.

I wanna put one on the clock...

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Neat Blaster!

Ian's got a video with the story behind a very historically significant Smith & Wesson Chiefs Special, from back when S&W had cool names for their wheelguns instead of boring numbers.

Performance Center

I was pretty happy with how this photo for RECOIL: Concealment turned out. The article's not half bad either, if I do say so myself.

It's on newsstands now, or you can get a genuine dead tree copy from BezosMart.

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A Jog Around the Blogs

• Surveillance Detection Principles: "Follow-Home" robberies are a thing. Do you know how to tell if you are being followed and what to do if you are?


• Jim Grey is trying his hand at bite-size five minute podcasts every Wednesday this year.


• Revolvers are just Awesome.

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I have been kilt onna streets yet again.

 

A couple of common taters objected to my post about speed strips, because there are several speedloaders which are much faster.

I replied:

"In general, with a revolver carried for personal defense (as with any handgun carried for personal defense) you're going to solve the problem with the ammunition in the weapon or you aren't going to solve the problem.

Reloads, whether for a Glock 34 or a J-frame, are mostly woobies, as well as a way to save you the embarrassment of having to hand a half-empty gun to responding officers.

If you're playing some game where you're reloading revolvers on the clock, a speedloader is definitely the way to go. But the fastest ones, like the SL, are useless for CCW because of the ease with which they will disgorge their contents. The only speedloader that holds its rounds sturdily enough that I'd recommend it for carry is the old HKS, which is only marginally faster than strips.

Plus speedloaders are bulky AF to carry, and most people won't bother.

But you do you."

(True Story: I had an HKS CA-44 loaded with five .44 Spl 200gr Silvertips rolling around loose in the bottom of a purse for close to a decade without dropping a round.)

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