This startedfrom reading the recently resurrected thread
"Working up The Anemic .32 S&W Long Load". It contains several factual, and all too often repeated, errors. It strikes me as pathetic the dearth of knowledge concerning this cartridge! Here are two examples:
Foremost is the frequently seen
"The .32 S&W Long is loaded down in deference to all the weak top-break revolvers chambered for this cartridge" ABSOLUTELY WRONG! With the exceptions of the significantly strengthened Harrington & Richardson top-break revolvers made during the 1950s-'60s, and a few European target revolvers chambered for the .32 S&W Long, to my knowledge there has
never been a top-break revolver chambered for this cartridge! Show me one!
Second is
"The .32 S&W Long was introduced with the Model 1 1/2 tip-up revolver in 1878." Again, absolutely wrong! The
.32 S&W was introduced with the Model 1 1/2, NOT the
Long! The .32 S&W
Long was introduced for the
first S&W solid frame revolver, the First Model .32 Hand Ejector, in 1896. This was basically very close to the end of the era of S&W top-break revolvers, even though a few continued to be catalogued nearly until WWII.
How so many can be so pitifully uninformed about such a basic subject as the .32 S&W Long completely escapes me! One of my pet peeves with on-line forums is people who know nothing about a subject, yet insist on posting threads that many newbees, that come to these forums for real information, will take for factual because they expect the members with significantly long-standing on the forum have posted it! Unfortunately it isn't necessarily so!!!!
As with nearly
all cartridges the .32 S&W Long is loaded to match the ballistic performance of the original cartridge when originally introduced. This is generally true of .38 Special, .44 Spl, .45 Colt, .45 ACP, .32 ACP, 9mm Parabellum, etc, etc, etc!!! Yes, there are +P loadings for many older cartridges, but this doesn't make the the original loads "anemic"!
And, as with the above cartridges, .32 S&W Long can be loaded to give significantly higher performance than factory loads. There is virtually no demand for an improved performance loading of .32 S&W Long, hence no +P pressure standard has ever been established. This is strictly the realm of the handloader. There
is some higher velocity data out there for the cartridge, particularly in some of the older Lyman manuals. Ammunition developing in excess of 1000 FPS is reasonable with 100 grain bullets, even in 3" barrels.
.32 S&W Long is an extremely accurate cartridge that deserves to be much more popular than it is.