Oyeboteb,

Thanks for the comments and experience, especially the story of you and your dad. My dad is not so interested in firearms, but both of my grandfathers were, and both carried M1911s in WWI and WWII; I still have my father's father's Colt Governement model that he carried in WWII, but not here in Germany. Anyway, I understand the value of a parent or family member making sure that a child learns about firearms in environment such as we both had; it teaches safety and respect and often begins one on a journey through life at least to some degree.

I have experience with handloading, and would love to do handload, for a variety of weapons I have here in Germany, however, one must take a reloading course and obtain a license to do that, and it's simply too hard to make that happen, as well as expensive here in Germany.

I understand the value of softer shooting with lead nosed bullets, but they are not easy to come by here in Germany either, the Germans prefer FMJs; until just a few years ago, handgun ammuntion couldn't even have hollow points. I have never been that crazy about lead bullets due to leading. I began thinking about that, and went back and very carefully examined the bore on my M1917 and discovered it had an alarming amount of lead around the throat. It took me about an hour with Shooter's Choice (the best I had at the time; Hoppe's #9 is really hard to find over here and I'm all out) to get all that lead out of the bore and forcing cone. I don't mind long cleaning sessions, in fact I rather enjoy them, but what concerns me is how hard all that lead was to detect. Interestingly, my chambers are clean through and through, so somebody did a pretty good cleaning before me, but missed all that lead. Anyway, I guess it's the old soldier in me, but I prefer and least a semi-jacketed bullet these days, copper is much easier to detect and clean (unless you are talking about machine guns).

As far as the high shooting, I'm not too concerned with it, was just wondering if anyone else had that experience. I was able to compensate pretty easily, but I'm accustomed to regulated sights and sight pictures at that range, so it's a bit of mental excercise to change up like that. It's alright though, you basically are looking at the full target when you aim like this. I wonder if it's regulated for 25 meters? I'll have to try it out, but don't have a 25 meter range easily available to me. In any event, the old warhorse shoots so well, it's not such a big deal, just adds to it's personality if anything. I've owned a lot of handguns, both autos and revolvers, but there's something really special about this one, it's no wonder S&W has resurrected it. I started out wanting a newly made one, but could not find a dealer over here that had any or would order them; so I found this old one instead and couldn't be happier. I am deeply interested in history, particularly military history, so this just makes the deal even sweeter. It amazes me that a revolver ninety two years old could function so well.

I really like that long barrel on your "artillery model". Did you buy it like that or have it rebarreled? I like to look at all the photos of the other M1917s, and am thinking seriously one day about a S&W reblue as I don't intend on ever selling the M1917 and don't care so much about collectibility. I really like that reblue on Lefkiguy's stag handled M1917, wouldn't mind mine looking like that one day!