Daily Archives: February 10, 2008

Revolvers

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I loves me revolvers. For many years I was (and still somewhat am) a fan of the Smith and Wesson handguns. (Actually, Im a fan of their revolvers…I think their autos are just horrible.) Its become trendy to badmouth the revolver as archaic and hopelessly outdated for modern needs. With the exception of the big bore magnums for use in the outdoors, revolvers have been all but declared dead for use as a serious self-defense tool.

Tappan, in his books ‘Survival Guns’, prefers the 1911 (heavily modified, of course) to be the superior self defense arm and that anything else is tantamount to tying one hand behind your back.

The revolver carries less ammo, is more difficult to shoot accurately, slow to reload, cannot be easily repaired compared to the auto, and is best relegated to tasks such as dispatching wounded animals, taking potshots at varmints and plinking.

The truth, in my opinion, is somewhere in between. And, like a lot of truths, is fairly subjective.

I normally carry a Glock 9mm of some kind. I like its large capacity, durability, reliability and low cost. I don’t care if the gun gets wet, snowed on, dropped, or banged around.

However, I have a goodly supply of 4” revolvers in .38/.357 Mag. and I think they have a definite place in my plans.

Ballistically, as good as the 9mm, .40 S&W, and .45 Acp are they all take a back seat, statistically, to the .357 magnum 125 gr. JHP in terms of efficacy in bringing vigorous violence to a standstill. That’s not guesswork (not my guesswork, anyway) that’s the findings of a couple guys who spent a good deal of effort reviewing various shootings and tallying up the numbers. (Marshall and Sanow, I believe.)

The revolvers have only a couple advantages over autos and all of those advantages relate to the ammunition. Bullet design is not critical for reliable functioning as it is in the autos. That is to say, a revolver will ‘feed’ even empty cases whereas most autos have to have the finished cartridges maintain a particular profile to feed reliably. (A few exceptions, such as the bottleneck .357 Sig exist, but those are rare exceptions.) The revolvers ability to function is completely independent of the power level of the ammunition in a revolver. That means that a lightweight ‘plinking’ load will function in the gun as reliably as a ‘full house’ magnum load. Autos require a certain amount of ‘oomph’ in their ammo to ensure reliable cycling of the moving parts. Revolvers can function with shot cartridges, plastic bullets or even blanks. Autos, by and large, cannot.

So should we all march to war with Colt Pythons on our hip? Of course not. Revolvers are slow to reload. Sure a professional gunner like Jerry Miculeck can reload a revolver in less than a second…with full moon clips..after training for years. Generally speaking, a revolver is going to be a lot slower to reload than an auto. Speedloaders of various types decrease reload times immensely over one-at-a-time cartridge loading but its still slower than the auto. The 5-,6-,7-,or even 8-shot revolvers are still less than half the capacity of your average double-stack automatic. A broken part in a revolver is more than just a parts replacement exercise…often there’s a bit of hand fitting involved using files, polishing stones and the like. Tappan said you could fix an auto as fast as you could swap parts, and that you could fix a revolver as fast as you could get it to a gunsmith. Theres a bit of truth to that.

As I said, Im a Smith and Wesson fan but I have, as of late, come to admire the Ruger revolvers. Not for their appearance, which is usually rather unattractive, nor for their ergonomics which is also usually at the bottom of the list. No, the Rugers, to me, have one quality that makes their ungainly looks and awkward ergonomics acceptable. It’s the same quality that makes the ungainly AK acceptable to me – rugged, brutal reliability. The Rugers are ungainly and ugly because they are built like tanks. As much as I love my Smiths I know that after a steady diet of magnum loads the smaller guns (K frames) will start to shoot loose. Even Smiths flagship .44 Magnums had issues and had a few redesigns back in the late 80’s/early 90’s. On the other hand, the Rugers tend to just eat whatever you put in them and keep going. This is the big attraction to me.

When do I carry a revolver as opposed to an auto? Usually just when the mood strikes. I never really see it as a huge tactical disadvantage. I grab a Model 10 or Model 27, a few speedloaders and walk out the door. I shoot doubleaction pretty well and feel I shoot the revolvers more accurately than the autos.

Here’s what I like in revolvers and why…

.357 Mag. and .38 revolvers are usually pretty cheap (used police guns are huge bargains) and can be reloaded for at tremendous savings. I usually shoot 125 gr. Gold Dot hollowpoints although out of the snubbies I shoot lighter bullets to keep velocity high. If I’m going to be afield I usually carry 170 gr. (or even 200 gr.) hard cast bullets for penetration. I like 4” barrels on most belt guns although I would carry 5” barrels if they were more common. I feel the 5” is the best compromise for concealibility and performance.

As I mentioned, Ruger revolvers get the nod for ‘Mad Max’ type situations but I still buy the Smith and Wessons if the price is right. Those are pretty much the only two revolvers I personally recommend. There are cheaper guns (Astra, Rossi, etc) but their quality leaves much to be desired. A strong candidate is the modern Taurus revolver. (I would stay away from any old Taurus from, say, pre-1988 or so) They tend to be excellent guns at good prices. Also, Taurus is very responsive in terms of coming up with models that the public wants. Their Titanium Tracker guns are excellent examples of innovation and responding to the market. While I would usually not buy a new Smith (cost, absurd locking mechanism, new barrel system, etc) I would not hesitate to buy a good used one.

Smith has made a couple innovative guns lately, one of which would almost make me rethink my position on their new direction. The Model 327 is an 8-shot .357 with a light rail mount. This is an excellent platform for the wheelgun fan but I do not like alloy-framed revolvers. If they made it out of steel I’d be first in line to buy one. (I dislike alloy framed guns as being too light for the .357 cartridge. Additionally, and this is just a personal opinion with no basis in fact or experience, I don’t think they last as long.) The K-frames are a bit light for a steady diet of heavy .357 loads but easy to carry, the L-frame guns are a better choice (I think the old 686 and especially the 681 guns are excellent examples of a combat-worthy revolver) and if you don’t mind the weight the N-frame .357’s (esp. the glorious Model 27’s) will give a lifetime of service. J-frame .357’s are handy hideout guns but I wouldn’t shoot .357’s through them any more than I needed to.

In Rugers, I think the GP100 as a belt gun, the SP101 as a snubby, and the massive .44 Alaskan are about the most durable guns you can get for their purpose. Im preferring stainless over blued for most of my revolver needs but with proper care a blued finish can be just as good.

A few words about ammo….

Good performing ammo for the .38 and .357 are probably cheapest of all calibers to buy and reload. The .357 especially lends itself to reloading. Bullet weights can go from 95 gr. at around 1500+ fps (Lyman 47th, pg 390, 4” bbl.) to a 200 gr. Bullet at 1200+ fps (also Lyman) making the .357 Mag an extremely versatile cartridge. For economy, shooting cast bullet .38 loads will save you huge amounts of money and still give good performance.

So why do I keep the revolvers around? How exactly do they fit into my needs? They’re cheap enough that I can stick a revolver, a couple speedloaders, a box of ammo, and a holster into a .30 cal.  ammo can for less than $200. As much as I like my Glocks for their $370~ price tag (police trade-ins) that’s still around about twice what I can usually find a decent used .38 for. So, for me the .38 and .357 revolvers fit into my plans in the following ways:

  • They are cheap enough to have several and to be ‘disposable’ if need be. (Leaving one in the truck, hiding one at an offsite location, etc.)
  • Extremely cheap to feed
  • Ballistically adequate for most self-defense tasks
  • Excellent as tertiary level backup/extra guns
  • Good choice for trading material

Lastly, I want to mention calibers. The .45 ACP revolvers are quite handy and simplify logistics by shooting the same ammo as your 1911. Ditto for the 9mm revolvers. And the .44 Mag and .41 Mag beat the .357 hands down. And while I love revolvers in all those calibers (except .41 and .45 Colt which both don’t impress me) from a preparedness standpoint the .38/.357 has the edge on ammo availability, affordability (which can never be underrated), versatility. If you don’t want to add another cartridge to your logistics planning then by all means get the 9mm or .45 ACP revolvers. I try to keep my list of calibers to a minimum but I feel the .38/.357 is too good, too common and too valuable to leave off my list.

 

 

 

Testing and checking before storage

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I purchased some new steelwire shelving for the bunker last week and spent a few hours setting it up and moving things around. Its interesting to go through stuff that I haven’t handled or examined in several years. I wont say I found anything I didn’t know I had, but I sure found things that I haven’t seen in a while. More interestingly, I saw the evolution of the various things I’ve done to take some of the risk out of me and the girlfriends future. For example, theres a very definite evolution of AR mags..theres old GI mags from when those were all I could afford sitting next to the case of brand new contract mags. Military East German surplus canteens sitting next to the crate of new CamelBacks. Swedish alcohol stoves sitting next to the Primus Optimus stoves, that sort of thing. The point is that its pretty easy to see that as time went by, and my ideas of what was and was not necessary changed, what was stored away changed. Kind of like my own personal time capsule or timeline.

I should also point out that in the process of moving pretty much everything around I found no failures of packaging or materials. A few years ago I discovered one of my 5-gallon water cans was half empty as a result of a tiny microscopic pore-sized leak. There was no excuse for that…I hadn’t tested the five-gallon container prior to use. I just assumed it would be fine since I bought it new. That was a very important lesson. Nowadays new water containers get filled and set on top of some old newspaper and left for a week. If theres even the tiniest leak, the newspaper will show it as wrinkles on the paper.

Testing before storage applies to everything that can possibly be tested. Obviously some things cant be tested without compromising them (Fire extinguishers, for example….or parachute flares, lightsticks, primers, etc.) but if it can be tested its getting tested.

Flashlights, radios, etc, etc, all get tested prior to storage. Same for things like tents, sleeping bags, and the like (they get set up, all the zippers are tried several times, inspected for damage/holes/tears, that sort of thing.)

After every natural disaster you can read about some guy on one of the various preparedness forums who will say that he was feeling a bit cocky because as the disaster approached he knew he was prepared. And then he’ll go on to say how after the event he went out to the garage, fired up his generator and….didn’t fire it up. His generator needed new brushes, had a bad carb, needed oil, was missing an air filter, etc. In short, it wouldn’t work because of something he would have known about if he had tested the thing once a month or so. Im sure you can see the moral here.

Broadly, I don’t rely on anything I haven’t used before and verified the functionality of. (Yes, bad sentence construction…my bad.)

Its not difficult to swap D batts through a half dozen flashlights to make sure they work before putting them away. Nor is it difficult to give the water cans a nudge once in a while to make sure they’re full. Or crack open an ammo can once in a while to make sure everything is secure and safe. Think about the most important gear you’ll need immediately in an emergency – that’s the stuff you need to keep up on. You cant just purchase this stuff, read the instructions and stick it away. You have to familiarize yourself with it, try it out to learn its proper usage, and make sure the thing even works before you go and stick it away and cross it off your checklist.

Food is a trickier item. We cant really crack open a bucket or mylar bag once a month to make sure everything is nice and dry. But, we can move buckets around and make sure they don’t leave a trail of something when moved, make sure no moisture has built up under them (you do store your buckets a few inches off the floor with room for air to circulate around them, right? Right?), check the MRE boxes for damage, etc, etc. Fortunately once you’ve packaged food in a mylar bag, then sealed it up in a 5-gallon bucket it pretty much is going to be impervious to most things. Just inspect the bucket for damage (like chew marks from rodents) every so often and you’ll probably be fine. My biggest concern is pest damage but everyting is stored in heavyduty containers and thus far, with some stuff having sat for almost nine years, I’ve yet to encounter any problems. (knock on wood)

Not everything requires being inspected every few years. For example, most of my AR magazines are sitting in .50 ammo cans. Unless there was some sort of biblical flood occurring they’ll pretty much remain as they are right now for the next fifty years. Thus, I don’t really bother checking them except to notice if they’re still there or not.

Sure it’s a pain in the ass to spend an hour checking seals on buckets, viability of flashlights, integrity of water containers, etc, etc. but imagine the consequences if you don’t. It really is the suckage to think ‘no problem, I’ll jest grab [items] and be all set’ and then find that what you were looking for [expired/leaked/sprouted/got contaminated/mildewed/degraded] and you’re now outta luck and forced to go to Plan B..which, hopefully, you have and took better care of than Plan A.

Im not perfect…I just realized I’ve yet to go through my first aid kit that I carry in my everyday bag. Every year I go through it an replace things like antiseptic wipes and other semi-exipirable items. So, now I have an idea of what I’ll be doing this evening.

To boil down 1000 words into a couple sentences:

  • Check every item for functionality before you store it away
  • Store things in a manner that will protect them
  • Examine/inspect your stored gear on a regular basis