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Old 08-02-2010, 12:15 PM
Dave Dave is offline
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Per John Linebaugh:
"While the S&W will take these loads safely such loads will greatly shorten the life of your gun. The frames on S&W are not heat treated thus are pretty soft. With loads that exceed what the gun can comfortably handle the frame stretches immediately lengthwise and then springs back. This all causes battering and soon your gun has excessive endshake. I don't know how long it takes to wreck a N frame S&W with heavy handloads but Jeff Cooper printed one time he saw a model 29 go out in the realm of 1,000 hot handloads if I remember correctly. I would agree that serious damage could be done in this amount of shooting with too heavy a handload.

The bearing surfaces on the front and rear of the cylinder in the DA guns just aren't as massive as the single action guns and the lock-up system isn't near as rigid as the single action base pin system.

In short, several small parts can't be expected to stand up as well as a few heavy parts."

John Linebaugh has also stated that he keeps his loads in the S&W .45s to around 25,000 psi max. A 625 will do almost anything you need it to do with a 260 grain bullet moving at around 900-1000 fps. Why batter your gun needlessly?
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