The 9mm felt a tad bit more sporty. I wasn't sure if it would be accurate to any degree, as essentially, more than half of the 9mm cylinder is a smoothbore barrel. The bullet has to travel a ways before it engages the rifling and when it gets there, 9mm bullets are a couple of thousandths undersize for a revolver barrel. Maybe if I had fired from a rest, I might have seen more of a difference.
The reason that I went to the range was to shoot this new acquisition:
That is a Smith & Wesson Military and Police Model of 1905, 4th Change. It was a cop's gun, one who got to keep his issued gun when his department upgraded to possibly Model 19s in the late 1960s. I haven't researched the serial number, but possibly it dates from Roaring Twenties. The mechanicals were excellent (timing was good, no endshake, firm lockup) and the bore was bright. A S&W expert will note that the backside of the front sight has been modified from a half-moon to an angled flat face. The well-worn grips are postwar diamond magnas. And, as you can readily see, the gun spent a lot of time in holsters.
The price was stupid-cheap, at a point that I'm not going to pass by a solid K-frame Smith. Let's just say that it was cheaper than those cheap-jack Filipino guns and leave it at that.
The sights, compared to a later Model 10, suck. But they are good enough for me to keep it in "minute of thug", shooting one-handed double-action at fifty feet. It did twist a little in my hand; I'll have to buy a grip adapter if I'm going to shoot it very much.
As for the "dinosaur" bit, after I went off the range, a bunch of people came in and soon all of the lanes were full. Everyone was shooting a version of those self-littering bottom-feeders.
Which is probably why I could buy a ratty-looking five-screw Smith for the price that I paid for it.
Very nice. Plastic guns have no souls but that one has stories to tell. Cross S&W's palm with some cash and they can tell you who they sold that to originally.
ReplyDeleteI might spring for a factory letter.
ReplyDeleteAnd every one of those other lanes, their hands would be shaking so bad if they had to actually use that weapon in self defense that they'd get one shot off and then the gun would jam because of a misfeed due to limp-wristing. That's something no revolver on the planet will ever do.
ReplyDeleteYep, as long as the oil hasn't gummed up or the rotating surfaces in the cylinder haven't rusted, a revolver's pretty much going to go *bang*. Most of the possible failure points can be averted by a bit of TLC every year to so.
ReplyDelete