There was a article in Guns and Ammo in the 1990's about rifle barrel wear and what they said about rifle wear is probably applies to pistol barrels. They said that if a shooter stayed away from corrosive ammo and hot reloads that with factory ammo a rifle barrel reaches its peak accuracy around 1000 rounds and holds that accuracy until about 5000 rounds and then slowly starts to deteriorate. That's with a high powered rifle at very high pressures and bullets traveling at 2600 FPS or higher. Their conclusion was that the average rifle shooter never even reached max accuracy out of his rifle because so few would shoot 1000 rounds through their rifle.

I think the same would apply to pistol barrels and that they would last even longer because they endure less pressure and the bullets traveling at slower velocities. They did an article on the Glock pistol about a year after it came out and they took three to a shooting club and provided the ammo for the guns and they shot 10,000 rounds of FMJ through each and they had no failures or decrease in accuracy. I also have to say that my three Model 29's are 29-2's.

My conclusion on this is that the average person isn’t going to shoot out a barrel with standard ammo whether full metal jacket, Jacketed, or lead in their lifetime unless they are a very serious competition shooter. I would not hesitate to shoot any standard ammo whether factory or reload in my S&W revolvers for fear of wearing it out.

I am going to amend this and say after reading Gun 4 Fun's point that I would agree that care should be taken with early Model 29's and because of their very high value so I would only shoot lead. I agree with Tim that is steels are made to different strengths and if smith designed the barrels on these for lead then it's probaly best to shoot lead in them. I have a pre 36 and my gunsmith told me to shoot 158 grain bullets because that is what it was designed for and to only use 124 grain +P's for defense loads but not for target shooting.