The FL 8 3/8” barrels are very different handling than S&W’s traditional 8 3/8” barrels. The traditional 8 3/8” barrels are a delight to fire one handed. The FL 8 3/8” barrels are way too snout heavy for one handed use. They’re fine for two hands but the 8 3/8” barrel length, as opposed to say 8 ¼” or 8 ½”, originally came about to meet the 10” maximum sight radius allowed in one handed bullseye matches. The rules were changed to allow optical sights which now dominate bullseye matches. Even for those of us who still shoot bullseye with 8 3/8” revolvers new production 8 3/8” S&Ws became worthless when the geniuses in S&W’s marketing decided all revolvers would sell better looking Pythonish.

The niches for FL 8 3/8” barrels appear to be the silhouette matches fired at 200 meters with iron sights where the barrel is rested across your leg, a few hunting applications and casual range use. Various action matches have displaced silhouette at most clubs and snubs and CCW handguns are the current collecting fad.


Clint Eastwood pretended to fire a 6 1/2” 29-2, and it wasn‘t FL. It is in the NRA National Firearms Museum.