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Chapter Three

Calibers and Ammunition

The double-action revolver has been produced in an astonishing variety of calibers and chamberings over its history. Some calibers such as the large rimfires popular in the ‘old west’ have disappeared completely, but you’ll find many of the centerfire chamberings are still being sold. There is a cartridge and revolver combination for virtually any use, though there are sometimes ‘good’ and ‘better’ choices for any particular application.

You can find technical information about any cartridge, but just as important as dry specifications are the impressions of those who have actually used the round. With that, here are my personal opinions about each of the cartridges currently (or commonly) chambered in factory revolvers.

This is just a small sampling of the myriad chamberings that have been made for the revolver, from the .22 Long Rifle to the .44 Magnum. There are even larger and more powerful cartridges available for the adventurous!

These are borne of my experience as a shooter, gunsmith, handloader, hunter, competitor, and self-defense instructor. I have no doubt that someone, somewhere could find some reason to disagree with each and every one. That’s true of any aspect of shooting. It’s been said that if you ask any two shooters about a caliber you’ll get three opinions, which leads me to opine that we should append ‘anything to do with guns’ to the list of topics which should never be discussed at the dinner table!

The .22 Long Rifle

This rimfire cartridge was introduced in 1887 and today is said to be the single most popular cartridge in the world. There were in fact many different .22 rimfire cartridges produced, but it was the Long Rifle which proved to have the staying power.

Revolvers in the ‘twenty-two’ often have increased capacities over their centerfire cousins, and it’s not unusual to find medium-framed revolvers carrying nine rounds of the rimfire cartridge versus six of the more powerful chamberings.

If you’re a handgun hunter these revolvers make the taking of small game a challenging endeavor. Every revolver owner should have at least one that shoots the .22LR, if for no other reason than they’re just fun to shoot!

Though not as common today, at one time you could find any given revolver model chambered in both a centerfire cartridge and in the .22LR. The selection of such models today is slim and getting slimmer, but even though you may not find an exact equivalent you can still find many popular revolvers for this round. Having a revolver chambered for the .22LR makes a great understudy for the larger caliber version, allowing economical practice without needing to endure recoil.

An important safety reminder: many people, myself included, have no problem shooting a .22LR rifle without hearing protection. Such a small cartridge fired from a long barrel doesn’t have a large noise signature. The .22LR rifle isn’t all that loud, but a .22LR revolver is painful! The short barrel, along with the blast from the barrel/cylinder gap, allows the full force of the round’s noise to impact the ears. It’s surprisingly loud and definitely dangerous to your hearing. Treat the .22LR with the respect it deserves and wear hearing protection whenever shooting.

The .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire

The .22WMR, or ’22 Magnum’ as it’s usually called, is a significantly more powerful than the .22LR. Despite its name the .22WMR has very little in common with the Long Rifle: the case is longer and greater in diameter, giving it a big boost in powder capacity. More powder means more power, and this littlest Magnum definitely has it.

A typical .22LR cartridge, for instance, propels a 40 grain bullet at 1,200 feet per second (fps). The .22WMR, by contrast, throws that same bullet at a blistering 2,000 fps. That’s a big gain in performance!

The .22WMR is not nearly as popular as the Long RIfle, and not as many revolvers have been chambered for it. Ammunition cost may be a factor in the Magnum’s popularity, as WMR fodder is far more expensive than the LR. Because of this lessened demand there aren’t many revolvers chambered for this 1960-vintage round, but they are out there.

The .22 Magnum makes a fine close range varmint cartridge and many people use it for its longer usable range over the .22LR. It is also sports a significantly louder report than its smaller brethren, and ear muffs are an absolute must. Recoil is slightly more than the .22LR, but still much less than any centerfire cartridge.

Over the years there have been questions about the WMR’s accuracy, or lack thereof. Many people have complained that the handguns (and rifles) chambered in WMR are not as accurate as the same guns chambered in .22LR. Various explanations have been offered, and though I don’t believe the round to be inherently inaccurate I note that I’ve never found one which I’d consider extremely accurate.

Some have promoted the .22 Magnum as a self defense round, and while it’s certainly better than nothing it’s still not generally considered powerful enough to reliably stop an adversary. For this reason I don’t recommend the WMR as anything other than a last-ditch option.

The .32 caliber family

The .32 caliber revolver has a long history, stretching back to the 1860s. Many different .32 rimfire revolvers have been made, and in 1896 the New York Police Department became the first agency to have a standard issue revolver – the Colt New Police in .32 Colt. Revolvers have been made in Colt and S&W .32 cartridges, as well as popular rifle rounds like the .32-30.

Time has passed the .32 caliber by, and today there are only two .32 caliber centerfire cartridges being offered to the American double action revolver buyer: the .32 H&R Magnum and the .327 Federal Magnum. The two are closely related, the Federal Magnum being essentially a lengthened and more powerful version of the older H&R round, similar to the .357 Magnum being a lengthened version of the .38 Special. With the introduction of the .327 in 2008, sales of the H&R Magnum – which was never terribly popular – appeared to decrease. It’s now difficult to find a double action chambered for the H&R Magnum, while revolvers for the .327 Federal are present in most of the maker’s catalogs.

Originally considered a good self defense cartridge, today’s .32 is still touted by some as a suitable round for those who are recoil sensitive. This is a recommendation of some debate, because while the .327 Federal certainly has less recoil than the .357 Magnum against which it’s often compared, there is currently little to no real world data on how well it serves this task.

Most authorities today consider the .32 to be suited only for backup duty to a larger, more powerful round. Ironically, the .327 Federal would make a very good long range varmint and small game cartridge, but most of the revolvers chambered for it tend to be of the short barreled defensive variety. The .32 cartridges thus struggle to find their niche in the 21st century.

The .38 Special

One could write an entire chapter, if not a book, on the history of and uses for the .38 Special cartridge. Originally introduced in 1899, it didn’t become popular until it was chambered in the Smith & Wesson ‘Military & Police’ revolver of 1902. Today it remains at the top of the charts in terms of popularity, both in ammunition and gun sales.

This isn’t surprising when one considers the phenomenal flexibility of this cartridge. It is supremely accurate for demanding target shooting, sufficiently powerful for self defense, a good choice for small game and varmint hunting, and easy to plink with. New shooters often start out with light target loads in a .38 Special, while experienced shooters load heavy, fast cartridges for more serious work.

The Special accepts a wide range of bullet weights and profiles, and there are more choices in the .38 caliber than in virtually any other. There are flat bullets for premier target shooting, hollowpoint bullets loaded to the cartridge’s maximum pressure intended for self defense, light bullets for small game hunting and competition, heavy bullets for larger game, and varieties that make informal plinking economical. It’s easy to reload, has readily available components, accepts a huge variety of powders, and the cases can be reused many times. If one wanted to standardize on a single caliber for everything, a good argument could be made for the .38 Special.

The .357 Magnum

If there were ever an election held for the best self defense cartridge of all time, the .357 Magnum would have a very strong caucus. Introduced by a partnership of Smith & Wesson and Winchester in 1934, the .357 was nothing more than a lengthened .38 Special case, giving more room for powder and hence higher velocities. The .357 gained an immediate following for its raw power combined with the .38 Special’s superb accuracy.

The Magnum produces very high velocities compared to the Special, but with that increase in power comes a corresponding increase in recoil and muzzle blast. The Magnum has proven a reliable performer in self defense applications and a terrific medium to large game cartridge, as well as a consistent winner in many kinds of handgun competitions. Since the .357 Magnum revolver will also shoot the .38 Special round, an excellent case can be made for a .357 revolver being the perfect ‘do everything’ gun.

Cartridge nomenclature is anything but logical, let alone consistent. The .38 Special was named because the outside of the case measures approximately .380 inches in diameter. The bullet sits inside the case, so it has to be of smaller diameter, and so the .38 Special uses bullets that measure .357 inches. If that seems logical, why is the .357 Magnum, which uses the same diameter case and bullet, so named? It’s been said that the .357 was used so as to avoid confusion with the Special round. Despite the difference in name the two cartridges share the same bullets, and .38 Special can be fired in revolvers chambered for the .357 Magnum. The reverse is not true, because the Magnum cartridge is physically longer and won’t fit in the shorter Special chamber. Why, then, are the .44 Special and .44 Magnum, which have the exact same relationship as the .38/.357, not named differently? The answer is lost to history!

The .41 Magnum

Often credited to (or blamed on) the late Bill Jordan, the .41 Magnum was originally intended to be a medium-power police service cartridge. Something got lost in translation, however, and what appeared from the collaboration between Smith & Wesson and Remington was instead a fire-breathing hunting round. The .41 throws a 180-grain bullet out of a six-inch barrel in excess of 1,300 fps!

Sadly it never gained much market share but it did endear itself to the people who chose to shoot it. The .41 Magnum has earned a small but almost fanatical following among handgun hunters, who prefer the round’s lighter recoil and flatter trajectory over the .44 Magnum while retaining terminal effectiveness that almost duplicates the mighty .44. Guns for the .41 are invariably large-framed revolvers most suited to hunting and handgun silhouette competition. Probably not a good choice for a self-defense round, owing to the virtual certainty of over-penetration at any reasonable distance.

The .44 Special and Magnum

The ‘forty-fours’ share the same relationship that the .38 Special/.357 Magnum do: the latter being a lengthened, more powerful version of the Special which predates it. The Special was introduced in 1908, while the Magnum appeared in 1955. The Special demonstrates modest recoil for the caliber, while the Magnum has a deserved reputation as a recoil monster.

The Special is a superbly accurate target cartridge, and while suitable for self defense suffers from a lack of variety in factory ammunition. The Magnum shares the Special’s inherent accuracy and adds a healthy dose of raw power. (Who can forget the first Dirty Harry movie, with Clint Eastwood brandishing a S&W Model 29 and intoning, “This is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world”?) The .44 Magnum is a superb hunting round, capable of taking all manner of North American big game plus not a few of the African species. It is generally considered overly powerful for self defense, but there are those who would argue otherwise.

The .44 Magnum is not a round for a beginner. While not the heaviest recoiling handgun round, it’s still a handful for those who are not experienced in recoil control. In a short barrel the muzzle blast is considerable.

The .45 Colt

The .45 Colt (colloquially, if not entirely accurately, referred to as the .45 Long Colt) is one of our oldest cartridges, originating during the black powder era of the 1870s. Originally designed as a service cartridge to be chambered in the Colt 1873 Single Action Army (the ‘Peacemaker’), the .45 Colt survived the military’s transition to autoloading pistols primarily because of a nice mix of attributes: good accuracy, terminal effectiveness, easy reload-ability, and long brass life.

In recent years it has become fashionable to handload the .45 Colt to extreme velocities for those revolvers that can take the stress. The result of this ‘hot-rodding’ experimentation was the introduction of the .454 Casull, essentially a Magnum version of the old round. (The .460 S&W Magnum can be thought of as a Magnum-Magnum .45 Colt, being essentially a lengthened Casull.) The .45 Colt makes a fine hunting and target round, but defensive ammunition is a bit hard to come by. Revolvers for this round are large and not usually of a size for efficient concealed carry.

The .45ACP

Wait, isn’t the .45ACP also known as the .45 Auto? Yes, it is, but it’s been chambered in revolvers for a very long time.

The .45ACP was introduced in 1905 for the U.S. Army, but didn’t get much of a foothold until the 1911 pattern pistol was approved in – you guessed it – 1911. It became our standard issue handgun cartridge, but when World War I broke out we had a problem: we couldn’t produce enough 1911 pistols to equip everyone who needed a sidearm. An interim solution was to ask Colt and Smith & Wesson to re-chamber their large frame revolvers for the standard .45ACP cartridge.

.45ACP cartridges were originally chambered in revolvers using half-moon clips, on left, which evolved to the modern full-moon clip on right.

Moonclips aren’t limited to the .45 – the 9mm auto cartridge has been sporadically chambered in revolvers, requiring the use of 9mm moon clips.

Since the ACP had no rim, it could not be ejected from a revolver cylinder. The solution was the invention of the half-moon clip, holding three rounds of ammunition and allowing simultaneous extraction and ejection. (Over time the half-moons were combined into a single full moon clip holding six rounds.) These modified revolvers were adopted in 1917 and served through the war, with many being sold as surplus in the 1930s.

The surplus guns were very popular with civilians, and new models were produced as well. This popularity resulted in the creation of the .45 Auto Rim cartridge, which was nothing more than the ACP with a rimmed base. This allowed the owner of a 1917 or later revolver to use a .45 cartridge without the need for the bothersome clips. Though not proving to be terribly popular, Auto Rim brass can still be found today.

The ACP-revolver combination received a big boost in popularity in the late 20th century when shooting matches that exploited the reloading speed of moon clip equipped revolvers became popular. This was helped by match rules that favored large, heavy bullets of the type used in the cartridge.

The .45ACP makes a fine self defense and target round, though revolvers chambered for it are inevitably large and heavy. This tends to limit the appeal of the .45 for concealed carry, though is certainly not a hindrance in competition or hunting activities.

The Boomers: If some is good, more is better!

In the last few decades we’ve seen the introduction of cartridges that push the limit of the power that can be contained in a revolver. It started in the 1970s with Elgin Gates and his SuperMag calibers, designed for the demanding sport of long-range metallic silhouette competition.

The SuperMags were never terribly popular, being chambered primarily in Dan Wesson revolvers, but the concept was what mattered. Many people continued experimenting with extra-powerful rounds, testing the extremes of revolver construction and human tolerance for recoil, and today we have a large collection of such hand cannons: the .454 Casull, .460 S&W Magnum, 480 Ruger, and the king of the hill: the mighty .500 S&W Magnum.

These are specialized cartridges designed primarily for handgun hunting of large game, though some have been pressed into service in the game of steel silhouette shooting. None are suitable for self defense or pure target shooting, but they excel at the task for which they’re designed.

The recoil generated by these monsters is probably at the outer edge of controllability for most shooters. Shooting a heavy Magnum cartridge is rough on the body’s joints, and shooting multiple sequential shots at any rate of speed is painful for even the most experienced shooter. (I did so one time, and vowed never to try something so stupid again!)

Bullet types

One of the revolver’s advantages that we touched upon in the first chapter is its relative indifference to bullet types. In all but a very few specific instances a revolver doesn’t care what bullet is loaded, it only cares that the bullet is of the correct caliber and cartridge type. An autoloader, by comparison, is sensitive to bullet weight, length, and even shape. Ammunition that doesn’t closely adhere to that which the gun was initially designed for will cause frustrating stoppages.

Unlike autoloader, the revolver isn’t sensitive to bullet weight, shape, or material. As long as the caliber is correct the revolver will work!

This advantage allows the revolver shooter to pick the ammunition best suited to the job, not the one that’s necessary to get the gun to work. There is a wide variety of loads to pick from, and as long as the cartridge is correct for the gun the combination will work.

Plain or jacketed?

Revolver bullets are offered in plain lead, plated lead (lead with a very thin plating of copper), and jacketed varieties. It’s not unusual for a revolver shooter to have some of each on hand, picked to for the best combination of performance and economy.

Plain lead is the staple of revolver shooting. Lead bullets are usually cast, though some are swaged from very soft lead. Lead bullets generally have grooves cut to hold a solid lubricant, which helps to keep the bullet material from rubbing off and fouling the bore. Lead bullets are usually found in the most affordable ammunition, because they are the least expensive bullet to make. There are exceptions, however, as solid lead bullets in heavy weights are often used by serious handgun hunters. Such ammunition using them is usually made in small quantities by specialty companies and carries a larger price tag.

Lead bullets are often available in a larger variety of diameters within a caliber than any other bullet. While any given caliber has a specific bullet diameter, there can be small variances between guns which can be compensated for by slightly changing the bullet size.

For instance, the nominal diameter of a .38 Special bullet is .357 inches. That works well for most guns, but what if you have a revolver whose chamber or bore is slightly oversized? It’s not uncommon to find guns which measure .358 or .359 inches, and the serious accuracy buff can order lead bullets in the size that will best fit his gun. That’s one of the chief methods to build the most accurate ammunition for any given gun.

Speaking of accuracy, lead bullets are often the most accurate available. Since there is only one component to worry about, their size and weights are very consistent. A jacketed bullet, for instance, can have variance in both the core and the jacket, which means that the weight and concentricity of the resulting slug can vary. Lead bullets can be made closer to standard size and weight, which helps accuracy. The standard target load, regardless of caliber, is almost always a plain lead wadcutter bullet.

Excess lead deposited in bore can require the use of a special tool, called the Lewis Lead Remover, to remove. Regular and thorough cleaning, along with proper ammunition choice, reduces leading.