Was the range 25 yards? Less?
I also often shoot a bit to the left with fixed sights. But S&W sights tend to be more often "on" for me than was the case with Colts that I've shot. Rugers are usually as close as Smiths or better. But the absolute champ was, remarkably, a .45 Colt New Service with 5.5-inch barrel. That gun would put all six shots in a ragged hole at 25 yards, firing offhand. And that ragged hole was in the ten ring very often. The gun did seem to be sighted "center" hold with Remington's 250 grain lead load at 25 yards. I've also fired some M&P/Model 10 and 64 S&W's that were very accurate and a M-36-1. My .45 Colt was made about 1935, BTW. It is possible that a prior owner had had the barrel turned a tiny bit to bring the sights on target. That gun didn't just shoot to the sights; it fired groups on par with my 6.5-inch barreled M-29 .44 Magnum, which was one of the most accurate revolvers that I've ever owned. I was profoundly impressed.
You are well aware that I contest your various statements that std. service loads of the 1950's and '60's actually clocked 900 FPS from four-inch revolver barrels.
That is simply not consistent with published chronograph tests that I've seen over the decades. Many lots of ammo did well to break even 800 FPS. That was sometimes from six-inch barrels! From snubs, it might be as low as 600 FPS. I remember being pretty disgusted at the time when I realized how light these loads were. I think the ammo makers were already worried about old M&P and cheap Spanish revolvers.
What I still haven't seen is modern chrono tests of ammo loaded in the 1920's and 1930's, when even I think the cartridges may have been a little hotter. But would tests now determine what that ammo would do when it was fresh? Storage conditions and age might well affect the results, and there weren't many private chronographs in use then. (Maybe none!) Performance tests tended to consist of seeing how many pine boards were penetrated by a given bullet and caliber.
The best answer may be to duplicate these board tests and see how many boards would be penetrated by modern ammo and compare that to published trials of that day. But would we have the same sort of boards, aged or weathered the same, no knots, etc.? Still, that's the only way that comes to mind to determine if old ammo really was hotter.
We do know that this basic "service" ammo was causing stopping failures in real shootings for decades before improvements arrived. And San Antonio cop and gun writer Tom Ferguson said that the 200 grain load wasn't much good, either. He was going by actual shootings and dog shootings, if memory serves. I think I've seen versions of that load with a pretty blunt nose and some with a normal RN contour. I don't know if the blunt nose profile really helped much.
You do have some nice guns there, and I don't think any of us, me included, would wonder if Plus P ammo is safe in these examples. It's those from around WWI that worry me.
Especially if one thinks that all Plus P ammo is the same pressure. It's not, even if it all has to be under the SAAMI top limit. But some is probably right at the gate on that and some is milder.
That's why I caution against using Plus P indiscriminately in any or all .38 revolvers.
Additionally, I challenge the occasional statement that there was no difference between M&P revolvers made in 1957 or later (when model numbers arrived) and earlier ones. In his, "Handgunner's Guide", printed about 1960, famed holster maker Chic Gaylord said that a S&W official had told him that current Model 10's were being made of a
new and stronger steel better able to tolerate hot loads. Gaylord made a point of mentioning that, because he favored Colt's Official Police as being safer with warm handloads. He said that some ammo that the Colt would tolerate would turn some other brands into the equivalent of a hand grenade.
He was very gratified to learn that S&W had begun using stronger steels.
That was current info at that time, well ahead of the industry introducing Plus P ammo in 1974. Considering that most gun writers (and their editors and advertising managers) avoid telling the truth about such issues, he was brave to publish that. But Gaylord was not a magazine writer, in the main. He was a holster maker not dependent on his writing for an income. He evidently wasn't getting the deep discounts and freebies that many gun editors receive. And he was publishing in a book not involving an ad manager. I think he spoke the truth as he knew it then.
That said, I feel sure that the M&P or Model 10 made by the 1950's was well able to withstand any commercial load without blowing up. His handloads were probably excessive for anything short of a larger Colt or a .38-44 revolver.
I hope that you will not be miffed at my mentioning this, in view of our longstanding difference of opinion on this matter.
I justify commenting here because of your assertion in this thread that normal standard .38 ammo was loaded at 900 fps before about 1972. Even published tables showed it at only 860 fps, and those figures were from a six - inch pressure barrel, not from a revolver!
You do have some nice guns and I enjoyed this post, apart from the usual issue about pressure/velocity matters. You take pretty good pictures, too.
Special day at the range.
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