A friend of mine....

by Glen, Tuesday, October 29, 2013, 14:01 (3986 days ago) @ Brian A
edited by Glen, Tuesday, October 29, 2013, 14:04

...made up 23 K-frame 5-shot .44 Specials back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He gave one to Elmer Keith to field test and it made the cover of Guns magazine (Nov. 1979?). He took the idea to S&W and tried to sell them on the idea, but they were afraid of people taking Keith's 17.0 grains of 2400 loads and shooting them in the little K-frames (obviously a bad idea). He still has 3 of those guns left (no they are NOT for sale, I have tried....). Shortly thereafter S&W introduced the L-frame, and then later in the 90s, they revisited this idea and introduced the L-frame 5-shot .44 Special (696). I bought the first 696 that came into this region and immediately took it over to show my buddy, and he pulled out the gun that EK field tested (a 4" by the way) and we compared the two side-by-side while he told me stories about this project.

One of those stories was that while he was making these .44 Specials, he also made a 5-shot .41 Magnum K-frame (also a 4"). Partway through the second box of factory ammo, he bulged a chamber, so he brought the gun home and disassembled it (I have seen the pieces of this gun, including the cylinder with the bulged chamber).

He also made a 5-shot K-frame .45 Colt. Needless to say, the cylinder walls and forcing cone are getting pretty thin when you put a .45 in a K-frame, but he did, and he said it worked just fine. Obviously the .45 Colt was only fed low pressure loads (<15,000 psi peak pressure). I have tried to buy this gun, and each time he just looks at me, smiles, and chuckles to himself....